Negotiation Tactics as Everyday Resistance: Challenging the Victimhood Narrative of Female Sex Workers in Tehran

In the contemporary socio-legal landscape of Iran, female sex work is governed by a strict intersection of criminalization and religious taboo. This environment typically reduces women in the sex industry to a reductive binary: they are viewed either as "passive victims" of structural deprivation or as "social pollutants" requiring state correction. This research offers a critical intervention by challenging both domestic and international discourses. While local Iranian literature focuses primarily on health risks and motives for entry, international perspectives frequently frame "Third World" sex workers as powerless victims in need of "rescue"—a narrative that stands in stark contrast to the agency often attributed to women in the Global North. This study challenges these exclusionary frameworks by centering on the active agency and everyday resistance of women in Tehran. Adopting a critical ethnography approach, the research utilizes in-depth interviews to explore the lived experiences of these women within marginalized districts. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s theoretical framework, this study conceptualizes the actions of these women as "tactics"—the situational and mobile "arts of the weak" practiced within spaces controlled by dominant power structures. The primary focus of this inquiry is the process of "negotiation" (chane-zani). Rather than viewing sex workers as mere objects of structural violence, the research examines how they employ negotiation as a form of micro-resistance to navigate hostile environments. The scope of the study encompasses the diverse tactics used by women to manage professional boundaries, navigate state-controlled moral counseling institutions to maintain informal networks, and preserve their social identity against the "stigma of the label" through selective disclosure and the use of pseudonyms. By analyzing these tactical maneuvers, the research argues that marginalized individuals in highly restricted, authoritarian contexts are not merely "damaged" by power but are actively engaged in negotiating and transforming it through their daily survival. This study contributes to Resistance Studies by demonstrating that women in "Third World" contexts are not objects to be saved, but active subjects challenging patriarchal and state-enforced norms through the "art of being in-between.