Mapping Sex Work Stigma: A Scoping Review on Sex Work Stigma Across Legal Frameworks in the Global North

Abstract

Sex work remains one of the most stigmatised professions globally, with stigma significantly affecting sex workers’ health, safety, and access to services. Legal frameworks play a central role in shaping and reinforcing this stigma, yet the relationship between law and sex work stigma remains underexplored. This scoping review maps existing empirical literature on how different legislative frameworks in the Global North contribute to the production, experience, and resistance of sex work stigma. Drawing on 35 peer-reviewed studies, the review identifies key gaps in conceptual clarity regarding both sex work and stigma and highlights the multi- level ways in which stigma operates. Structurally through laws and moral discourses, institutionally through healthcare, housing, and policing, and individually through social interactions and internalisation. Findings show that stigma persists across all legal models due to deeply entrenched cultural narratives and institutional practices. Decriminalisation offers greater protection and opportunities for stigma resistance and is recommended in most studies to create a first step towards more rights for sex workers. This review underscores the need for legal, institutional, and cultural reforms that move beyond criminalisation and toward full social recognition of sex work as legitimate labour. It calls for greater conceptual precision around sex work and stigma in future research and sustained inclusion of sex workers’ voices in academic and policy debates.