%0 Journal Article
%T Treading water: Street sex workers negotiating frantic presents and speculative futures in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
%A Nicolas Lainez
%J Time & Society
%@ 1461-7463
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0961463X18778473
%X Structural conditions shape the temporalities that govern the lives of street sex workers operating in Chau £¿£¿c, a small town in Southern Vietnam. These women live each day as they come and make decisions based on quick returns and the management of daily needs, prioritizing short-term solutions over planning for the future. The ethnographic study of the multiple temporalities that govern street sex work, family care, gambling and debt-juggling practices shows that these women live in a frantic present-oriented temporality that is filled with pressing tasks and routines. This leads to an uncertain future that engenders various forms of hopeful and speculative behaviour, but precludes systematic planning. As a result, these women are treading water: putting effort into keep themselves afloat but never furthering their status and lives or catching up with the currents of development and progress. Overall, this article argues that this day-to-day lifestyle goes hand in hand with the linear and future-oriented time of capitalism and wage-labour that has infiltrated everyday life in post-reform Vietnam
%K Time
%K temporality
%K present-ness
%K capitalism
%K precarity
%K sex work
%K care
%K gambling
%K debt
%K Vietnam
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0961463X18778473