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The chapter analyses the meaning and relevance of emotional labor for sex workers in the US–Mexican border city of Tijuana. In Tijuana’s sex industry the management of emotions has become an expression of professionalism and also a marker of distinction between sex workers. Engaging with Arlie R. Hochschild’s argument that the performance of “inauthentic” emotions at work inevitably entails negative consequences for workers and leads to estrangement, the chapter draws attention to the fact that individuals constantly create emotions and align them to their desires and aspirations in life. Highlighting the ambiguity of emotional labor in sex work, the chapter shows that while the emotional labor involved in sex work can be demanding, it also entails a range of benefits for practitioners.

This book is concerned with intimacy that has become part of market exchanges, or intimacy that in some way has become integrated into laboring processes to increase the value of labor. We understand intimacy in the most broad and basic manner as a form of connection. The Latin word intimus can be translated as innermost. Privacy, familiarity, sexuality, love and personal connection are notions that are generally understood as related to intimacy. Being intimate with somebody, for instance, involves “being close” or “closely connected” to somebody, which can be understood in physical, emotional and cognitive ways. An underlying premise that guides our understanding of intimacy, and subsequently the selection of the contributions and the structure of this book is that a “close connection” (intimacy) exists between a person and their own feelings, sexuality and body. Hereby, however, we intend to not determine or morally judge individuals’ relationships to their own feelings, sexuality and body, or whether intimate practices or aspects of the self should or should not be part of market transactions.