The ‘many faces’ of migrant sex workers: Exit-oriented portfolio entrepreneurship in the UK and transnationally

This qualitative study examines an under-researched form of migrant entrepreneurship among sex workers in the UK. Drawing on insights from feminist entrepreneurship theory and the mixed embeddedness framework, it explores why migrants enter self-employment in the sex industry and how entrepreneurial agency unfolds beyond entry. Based on in-depth interviews with 16 migrant women, men and transgender people, the study identifies both economic and personal circumstances shaping entry into sex work. It further shows how participants pursued exit-oriented portfolio strategies, including micro-entrepreneurship within the sex industry, alongside investments in property, business ventures and human capital across national and transnational contexts. Sex work thus functioned as a platform for generating economic capital to support entrepreneurial futures beyond the industry. Together, the findings extend migrant entrepreneurship scholarship by conceptualising entrepreneurship in stigmatised markets as exit-oriented, portfolio-based and future-oriented, challenging victim-centred narratives and highlighting situated agency under conditions of constraint.