Survival strategies and health repercussions in forced displacement: Transactional sex in focus

In this episode of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters Podcast, Eszter Kismődi speaks with Dr Shirin Heidari and Professor Monica A. Onyango about their multi-country study, Survival Strategies and Health Repercussions in Forced Displacement. Drawing on research conducted between 2021 and 2024 in Jordan, Lebanon, Türkiye, Greece and Switzerland, they examine how transactional sex emerges within conditions of legal precarity, restricted asylum regimes, housing insecurity and limited access to work and services. The conversation challenges binary notions of “choice” and “force”, highlights intersecting health consequences including sexual and reproductive health outcomes, and calls for integrated, rights-based responses grounded in lived realities.Read the full paper at srhmjournal.org.