Livable lives

The objective of this article is to identify the practices of vindication of the sexual work from women in Iquique. With this purpose and within the framework of ethnographic research from a feminist ethnomethodological perspective, we conducted interviews with 14 women from different countries and observations of the daily life of cabarets, brothels and streets of sex work during six months in this city in the north of Chile. From the analisis performed we identify, three types of claim practices: i). The normative conventions, that arise from the rationalization and adaptation to the different norms established around the sexual work and that establish an own order of their social scene; ii). The methods, defined as common and routine procedures that these social actors use in their daily lives and that conform the professional practices of sex; iii). The strategies, actions to establish the best way to carry out your activity or counteract situations that hinder your work. These claims practices are far from acting in a uniform and static way, rather they will operate according to the characteristics of these social actors and their work scenarios.