Publications

Community Safety, Rights and Recognition: towards a Coordinated Prostitution Strategy?

Community Safety, Rights and Recognition: towards a Coordinated Prostitution Strategy?

Maggie O'Neill (2022)

Community Safety Journal. Vol 6. Issue 1. Feb 2007 pp 45-52

This article argues that there are two main barriers preventing imagining and actioning an inclusive, holistic strategy for prostitution reform in the UK. It identifies five key tenets needed to improve the situations for men and women involved in selling sex. Findings from innovative research methods are used to explore how community safety may be improved.

What’s anti- social about sex work? Tracing governance in constructions of sex work as anti-public

What’s anti- social about sex work? Tracing governance in constructions of sex work as anti-public

Scoular, J. Pitcher, J. Campbell, R. Hubbard, P. and O’Neill, M. (2022)

Community Safety Journal Vol 6. Issue 1. Feb 2007 ISSN 1477-5883

This article considers the deployment of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) against female sex workers in light of the UK government's quest for the development of coherent legal and policy frameworks to tackle the problem of on-street sex work. It is concluded that ASBOs should not be issued against sex workers, particularly given their potential to impact negatively on social/welfare work.

Making Connections: Ethno-mimesis, Migration and Diaspora

Making Connections: Ethno-mimesis, Migration and Diaspora

Maggie O'Neill (2022)

Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society Vol. 14, 3, 289–302

Participatory Methods and Critical Models: arts, migration and Diaspora’

Participatory Methods and Critical Models: arts, migration and Diaspora’

Maggie O'Neill (2022)

Crossings:Migration and Culture on ‘The Arts of Migration’

This article reflects on a ten-year trajectory of research, predominantly in the East Midlands, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The projects all employed participatory action research methods that involved working in partnership with forced migrants (those situated in the asylum–migration nexus) and community arts organizations to explore the connections between arts, migration and diaspora. The article considers the benefits and issues surrounding this kind of creative, participatory and arts-based work in relation to the transformative potential of art, narrativity and storytelling, and the processes and senses of belonging and place-making experienced by the participants. Key themes raised by the research include the tension between human rights, dignity and humiliation; the role of nation states in the production of refugees; the wider context of globalization and neo-liberalism; and the possibilities for a radical democratic imaginary in arts-based research with migrants.

Borders, risk and belonging: Challenges for arts-based research in understanding the lives of women asylum seekers and migrants “at the borders of humanity

Borders, risk and belonging: Challenges for arts-based research in understanding the lives of women asylum seekers and migrants “at the borders of humanity

O’Neill, M, Erel, U., Kaptani, E. and Reynolds, T. (2022)

Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture,

This article critically discusses the experiences of women who are seeking asylum in the North East of England and women who are mothers with no recourse to public funds living in London to address the questions posed by the special issue. It argues both epistemologically and methodologically for the benefits of undertaking participatory arts-based, ethno-mimetic, performative methods with women and communities to better understand women’s lives, build local capacity in seeking policy change, as well as contribute to theorizing necropolitics through praxis. Drawing upon artistic outcomes of research funded by the Leverhulme Trust on borders, risk and belonging, and collaborative research funded by the ESRC/NCRM using participatory theatre and walking methods, the article addresses the questions posed by the special issue: how is statelessness experienced by women seeking asylum and mothers with no recourse to public funds? To what extent are their lived experiences marked by precarity, social and civil death? What does it mean to be a woman and a mother in these precarious times, ‘at the borders of humanity’? Where are the spaces for resistance and how might we as artists and researchers ‐ across the arts, humanities and social sciences ‐ contribute and activate?

Walking Borders, Risk and Belonging

Walking Borders, Risk and Belonging

Maggie O'Neill and Ismail Einashe (2022)

Journal of Public Pedagogies

Walking borders, risk & belonging makes a case for using walking as a biographical interview method (WIBM) in order to do critical public pedagogy—using conjunctural analysis—that engages in unsettling and troubling the white, male privilege and basis of walking, and indeed the ‘turn’ to walking rooted in Eurocentric practices. The authors build upon a long history of: i) using walking, participatory and arts-based methods (ethno-mimesis) to do social research on migration with migrants, and; ii) the importance of creating space for stories of asylum, migration and marginalisation to be shared and heard through critical pedagogy, critical journalism, and walking as an arts-based research method.

Social justice for sex workers as a ‘politics of doing’: Research, policy and practice

Social justice for sex workers as a ‘politics of doing’: Research, policy and practice

Sharron Fitzgerald, Maggie O'Neill, Gillian Wylie (2022)

Irish Journal of Sociology

Undertaking our intervention in Irish feminist prostitution politics as a ‘politics of doing’ social justice through our separate and combined research, we extend our analysis by invoking Nancy Fraser and Barbara Hudson’s theoretical work on social and restorative justice. We wish to develop a theoretical framework that can serve as a roadmap for restorative social justice – the process of achieving rights, recognition and redistribution through relational, reflective and discursive interventions in sex work research, policy and practice. We argue that by ‘thinking’ sex workers’ positionality in social relations differently, the ‘doings’ of restorative social justice for sex workers can begin or take place

Special Section on Sex Work and Social Justice

Special Section on Sex Work and Social Justice

Sharron Fitzgerald, Maggie O'Neill, Gillian Wylie (2022)

Irish Journal of Sociology

Advancing social justice for sex workers contributes to this vision of a feminist politics of doing transformative research. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives, it offers alternative paradigms and methodologies to advance an agenda for change for sex workers. Developing a politics of doing sex work research requires that we devise our questions differently, develop clearer knowledge and understanding of the definition and constitution of social justice for sex workers and then apply this to rethinking sex workers’ positions in social relations and research conducted with, not simply on or for, them.

Criminal Women

Criminal Women

Sharon Grace, Maggie O'Neill, Tammi Walker, Hannah King, Lucy Baldwin, Orla Lynch, Vicky Seaman, Fiona Measham and Kate O’brien. (2022)

Policy Press Feb 18th 2022

Accounts of female offenders’ journeys into the criminal justice system are often silenced or marginalized. Featuring a Foreword from Pat Carlen and inspired by her seminal book ‘Criminal Women’, this collection uses participatory, inclusive and narrative methodologies to highlight the lived experiences of women involved with the criminal justice system. It presents studies focused on drug use and supply, sex work, sexual exploitation and experiences of imprisonment. Bringing together cutting-edge feminist research, this book exposes the intersecting oppressions and social control often central to women’s experiences of the justice system and offers invaluable insights for developing penal policies that account for the needs of women.

Biographical Research On the Move:Theorising, experiencing, imagining (the Chicago School reloaded)

Biographical Research On the Move:Theorising, experiencing, imagining (the Chicago School reloaded)

Maggie O'Neill (2022)

Polish Journal of Sociology

This paper explores the importance of walking in biographical methods and critically reflects upon its theoretical, experiential and imaginative application 100 years after the publication of the The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. In doing so I ask how might walking as an ‘arts based’ approach to doing biographical research in collaborative and co-productive ways contribute to the conditions that support human well-being, re-ethicise social research and critically address social pathologies? In answering this question I focus upon the importance of critical theory and biographical sociology in understanding biography and history and propose that the experience of walking with another, conducting a WIBM, opens up the possibility of dialogue, listening as understanding, ‘resonance’, evokes trust and the potential for solidarity, as part of an ethics of listening. However, in doing so we must be mindful of the ethical implications of WIBM. Examples from walking biographical interviews illustrate the discussion.

methodological Innovation in Research: Participatory Theater with Migrant Families on Conflicts and Transformations ovewr the Politics of belonging

methodological Innovation in Research: Participatory Theater with Migrant Families on Conflicts and Transformations ovewr the Politics of belonging

Kaptani, E. Erel, U, O'Neill, M, Reynolds, T. (2022)

Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.

This paper introduces notions of conviviality as both a research practice and a research outcome through an exploration of the racialised and gendered experiences of migrant mothers and young girls in the current hostile environment for migrants in the UK. We argue that innovative, participatory theater and walking methods constitute a convivial practice, particularly helpful for addressing the everyday lives of migrant families within the current racist climate in the UK, characterized by the effects of the hostile environment on migrant families. Furthermore, the innovative participatory arts and action research methods in this project allowed the creation of relations between research participants and with the research team. These methodological and conceptual tools, we argue can strengthen research that challenges and goes beyond current xenophobic and racist conflicts.The innovative methods support research for social transformation, challenging prevalent racist discourses on migrant families, through building creative groups to express and publicly share their lived experiences.

Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: walking as critical pedagog

Creative Methodologies for a Mobile Criminology: walking as critical pedagog

O'Neill, M.Penfold-Mounce, R.Honeywell, D. Coward-Gibbs, M. Crowder, H. and Hill, I. (2022)

Sociological Research Online

We argue for a mobile criminology that attends to space, place, and time to analyse theories and concepts in criminology, as well as to undertake and apply research. In this article we share a biographical walk with David Honeywell, a convict criminologist, and two examples of criminological walks as pedagogic methods. We suggest that through walking (as a teaching, learning, and research method) we are able to get in touch with the past, present, and future of crime, justice, and punishment in ways that foster knowledge and ‘understanding’ in corporeal, relational, and material ways forming a critical, cultural, mobile pedagogy. Walking through the city, engaging with spaces, places, and stories associated with crime, is a way of seeing and feeling the history of crime, justice, and punishment in the present, as well as offering critical and imaginative methods for doing criminology in societies on the move.

Walking in the Boboli Gardens in Florence: Toward a Transdisciplinary, Visual, Cultural, and Constellational Analyses of Medieval Sensibilities in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Walking in the Boboli Gardens in Florence: Toward a Transdisciplinary, Visual, Cultural, and Constellational Analyses of Medieval Sensibilities in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

James O'Neill and Maggie O'Neill (2022)

Qualitative Inquiry.

In this article, using the metaphor of the “constellation,” we offer a transdisciplinary methodology to complicate Euro-western renaissance humanism, in our exploration of the gendered, temporal, spatial, and cultural aspects of renaissance Florence, through a walk in the “Boboli gardens” in the footsteps of Poliphilo. Walking helps us to form a sense of our past, present, and future, and in walking, we gain ground in the “art of paying attention” (Ingold). In our walk, key emerging themes are the gardens as a metaphor for visual culture; the phenomenological, temporal, and spatial transgression of gender norms and their demarcated thresholds; gardens as stimulating cognition and the sensorial; and the developing art of garden aesthetics and the architectonic.

Frontiers in Time Research

Frontiers in Time Research

Elisabeth Schilling and Maggie O'Neill (2022)

Springer

This book discusses various facets of current time-related social research: past related biographical research; present related research on time focusing upon the educational system, future-oriented innovations in working and organizational processes as well as methodological questions of time research. It is an interdisciplinary opus that includes sociological, psychological, educational, philosophical and economic approaches to frontiers in time research.

Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics

Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics

Teela Sanders, Maggie O'Neill, Jane Pitcher (2020)

2nd edition 2017 with new and additional material

Imaginative criminology Of spaces past, present and future

Imaginative criminology Of spaces past, present and future

Lizzie Seal and Maggie O'Neill (2019)

Policy Press

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Walking Methods: Research on the Move

Walking Methods: Research on the Move

Maggie O'Neill and Brian Roberts (2019)

Routledge

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How an artist-academic collaboration worked to amplify migrant women’s voices

How an artist-academic collaboration worked to amplify migrant women’s voices

Kaptani, E. Reynolds, T, O’Neill, M. and Erel, U (2018)

Open Democracy

Walking, well-being and community: racialized mothers building cultural citizenship using participatory arts and participatory action research

Walking, well-being and community: racialized mothers building cultural citizenship using participatory arts and participatory action research

Maggie ONeill (2017)

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Biographical Research: Methods of Cultural Sociology

Biographical Research: Methods of Cultural Sociology

Maggie O'Neill (2016)

Cultural Sociology Edited by Stephan Moebius, Frithjof Nungesser, Katharina Scherke, VS-Verlag

A Sense of Belonging: walking with Thaer through migration, memories and space

A Sense of Belonging: walking with Thaer through migration, memories and space

O’Neill, M and Perivolaris, J. (2015)

Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture Volume 5 Numbers 2 & 3 pp327-338.

Diasporic Futures edited by Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe

Diasporic Futures edited by Marsha Meskimmon and Dorothy Rowe

Maggie O'Neill (2015)

Manchester University Press

Women, Art, Migration and Diaspora: the turn to art in the social sciences and the ‘new’ sociology of art?

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Advances in Biographical Methods: Creative Applications

Advances in Biographical Methods: Creative Applications

Maggie O'Neill, Brian Roberts & Andrew Sparkes (2015)

Routledge 2014

Rooted in a long and diverse genealogy, biographical approaches have developed from a focus upon a single story, a ‘life story’ and personal documents (e.g. diaries), to encompass (more routinely) autobiographical secondary and archival research and analysis - as well as multi-media, arts based creative multi-sensory methods. Biographical Research and practices as part of human understanding helps people to make sense of what has been and what is happening in their lives, cultures, communities and societies. Advances in Biographical Methods: Creative Applications takes up these themes: theorising, doing and applying current advances in biographical methods. It demonstrates the momentum with which they areas are developing as a field of scholarship, especially in relation to creative innovations and applications, such as in new forms of interview and other practices, and debates on its interlinking with art, performance and digital methods.

Walking biographies and innovations in visual and participatory methods: Community, Politics and Resistance in Downtown East Side Vancouver

Walking biographies and innovations in visual and participatory methods: Community, Politics and Resistance in Downtown East Side Vancouver

Maggie O'Neill and Philip Stenning (2014)

in The Medialization of Auto/Biographies:Different Forms and their Communicative Contexts co-edited by Heinz,C. and Hornung, G. Hamburg:UVK

Moving images: Psychoanalytically-informed visual methods in documenting the lives of women migrants and asylum-seekers

Moving images: Psychoanalytically-informed visual methods in documenting the lives of women migrants and asylum-seekers

Haaken, J and O'Neill, M (2014)

Published in Journal of Health Psychology

Crossing Borders: Transition and Nostalgia in Contemporary Art Edited by Dr Ming Turner and Dr Outi Remes

Crossing Borders: Transition and Nostalgia in Contemporary Art Edited by Dr Ming Turner and Dr Outi Remes

O'Neill, M (2014)

Taipei: Artouch Publications

SECTION: Body and Image-Space: walking, transition and belonging.

The Medialization of Auto/Biographies: Different Forms and their Communicative Contexts co-edited by Heinz,C and Hornung, G

The Medialization of Auto/Biographies: Different Forms and their Communicative Contexts co-edited by Heinz,C and Hornung, G

O'Neill, M. and Stenning, P (2013)

Hamburg: UVH

SECTION: Walking biographies and innovations in visual and participatory methods: Community, Politics and Resistance in Downtown East Side Vancouver.

Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture

Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture

O'Neill, M & Seal, L (2012)

Palgrave Macmillan

Taking the notion of transgression – the breaking of boundaries – as its starting point, this book brings a fresh approach to cultural criminology by exploring representations of the transgressive in fictive texts and ethnographic research. Chapters focus on topics of urgent contemporary interest, including school shooters, violent female avengers, sex workers, those labelled 'mad', serial killers, asylum seekers and skid row residents. The book is interdisciplinary in scope, blending insights from film and media studies, literary criticism and psycho-social analysis with cultural criminology. It also presents cutting edge, participatory arts-based ethnography carried out in the UK and Canada.

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A Special Edition of the journal Crossings: Migration and Culture on ‘The Arts of Migration’ Volume 2.

A Special Edition of the journal Crossings: Migration and Culture on ‘The Arts of Migration’ Volume 2.

Pearce, L. and O’Neill, M (2011)

Intellect Books

Career, Migration and the Life CV: A relational cultural analysis

Career, Migration and the Life CV: A relational cultural analysis

Schultheiss, D. Watts, J. Sterland, L and O’Neill M. (2011)

special edition of the Journal of Vocational Behaviour on ‘Career and Migration,’

In response to the precarious and disadvantaged position of forced migrants in the United States and the UK, marked by unemployment, under employment and loss of career capital, this paper draws upon a relational cultural paradigm and a life design career model in order to understand migrant work life, shape the career intervention process and examine the implications for vocational practice. An innovative career intervention is introduced and discussed, the life CV, which has been used with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK within the context of relational paradigms that reflect the intertwined nature of people's relational and working lives. The paper argues that by engaging in the activities and meaning making associated with the creation of a life CV, different life perspectives and designs become possible and individuals are enabled to consider new ways of knowing themselves and presenting themselves to potential employers.

Asylum, Migration and Community

Asylum, Migration and Community

O'Neill, M (2010)

Policy Press

Issues of asylum, migration, humanitarian protection and integration/belonging are of growing interest beyond the disciplinary areas of refugee studies, migration, and social policy. Rooted in more than two decades of scholarship, this book uses critical social theory and participatory, biographical and arts based methods with asylum seekers, refugees and emerging communities to explore the dynamics of the asylum-migration-community nexus. It argues that inter-disciplinary analysis is required to deal with the complexity of the issues involved and offers understanding as praxis (purposeful knowledge), drawing upon innovative participatory, arts based, performative and policy relevant research.

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Culture, Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation Through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research (PAR).

Culture, Criminology and Sex Work: Resisting Regulation Through Radical Democracy and Participatory Action Research (PAR).

Maggie O'Neill (2010)

Journal of Law and Society

aking a feminist cultural criminological analysis to the regulation of sex work in the United Kingdom, this paper argues against the dominant deviancy and the increasingly abolitionist criminal justice model for regulating sex work. The paper begins by offering a critique of the dominant regulatory regimes which have operated since the Victorian era, amended in part in the 1950s with Wolfenden, and currently being reinscribed with the Home Office strategy on prostitution and various pieces of legislation. The focus is specifically upon research with female sex workers and the usefulness of using Participatory Action research methodologies (PAR) with sex workers, agencies, and policy makers in order to foreground the diverse voices and experiences of sex workers, challenge the current focus on abolitionist criminal justice regimes and outcomes, and offer an alternative framework for a cultural materialist analysis of sex work, drawing upon the work of Nancy Frase

Walking, Sensing, Belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

Walking, Sensing, Belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

Maggie O'Neill and Phil Hubbard (2010)

Journal of Visual Studies

This article outlines a research project that used participatory action research (PAR) and arts practice (ethno-mimesis) to explore the senses of belonging negotiated by asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants in the English East Midlands. At the core of this project was a walking event in which refugees and new arrivals guided long-term residents through the city, tracing an imaginary and real journey that linked the here and now with the then and there. Reflecting on the ways that walking evokes and invokes, this article suggests that while walking should not be privileged as a way of knowing, it has certain sensate, embodied, relational and collective attributes which rendered it particularly useful as a means of exploring the importance of being-in-place among a group whose lives are often depicted as markedly transnational.

Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics

Prostitution: Sex Work, Policy and Politics

Sanders, T, O'Neill, M & Pitcher, J (2009)

Sage 2009; 2nd edition 2017

Many commentators have attempted to analyze and explain the nature of prostitution. However this is the first textbook to offer a complete overview of the way it operates within contemporary society, its characteristics, organizational structures, and cultural contexts. The book also explores how criminal, social, and health policies have sought to regulate and control the selling of sex. Written by leading experts with over 20 years’ experience in researching and teaching on the field, this is a must for all criminology, criminal justice, and sociology students taking modules in sex industry and prostitution studies.

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Living with the Other: Street sex work, contingent communities

Living with the Other: Street sex work, contingent communities

O’Neill, M. Campbell, R, Hubbard, P. Pitcher, J. and Scoular, J. (2008)

Crime, Media and Culture 4, 1, pp 73-93.

There is substantial literature on how fears of Other populations are prompting the increased surveillance and regulation of public spaces at the heart of Western cities. Yet, in contrast to the consumer-oriented spaces of the city centre, there has been relatively little attention devoted to the quality of the street spaces in residential neighbourhoods beyond the central city. In this article, we explore how media representations of sex workers as an abject and criminalized Other inform the reactions of residents to street sex work in such communities. Drawing on our work in a number of British cities we highlight the different degrees of tolerance which residents express towards street sex work. In light of the Home Office strategy document, A Coordinated Prostitution Strategy, this article concludes by advocating participatory action research and community conferencing as a means of resolving conflicts and assuaging fears of difference.

Transnational Refugees: The Transformative Role of Art?

Transnational Refugees: The Transformative Role of Art?

Maggie O'Neill (2008)

Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(2), Art. 59,

This paper focuses upon the transfor­m­ative role of art and the methodological approach of working with artists to conduct ethnographic research with refugees and asylum seekers. In exploring the space or hyphen between ethnog­raphy (sociology) and arts based practice (photos, in­stallations, textual practice) I suggest that the combination of biography/narrative (ethnography) and art (mimesis) becomes a "potential space" for transformative possibilities. More specifically, draw­ing upon Walter BENJAMIN's (1992) The Story­teller I will discuss the methodological contribution of combining biography/narrative with art forms (ethno-mimesis) in creating a "potential space", a reflective/safe space for dialogue and narratives to emerge around the themes of transnational identities, home and belonging. The importance of renewing methodologies for the work we do within the area of forced migration, humiliation, "egaliza­tion" and human rights (LINDNER, 2006), the role of the arts in processes of social inclusion, and the vital importance for creating spaces for dialogue and performative praxis through participatory methodologies are also discussed.

Prostitution and Communities

Prostitution and Communities

maggie O'Neill and Rosie Campbell (2007)

Sex Work Now Campbell and O’Neill [eds] Willan.

The Contribution of Qualitative Research to Policy Development Street Sex Work in Local Neighbourhoods

The Contribution of Qualitative Research to Policy Development Street Sex Work in Local Neighbourhoods

Pitcher,J. Campbell,R. Hubbard P. O'Neill, M. & Scoular,J, (2007)

Qualitative Urban Analysis (2007) edited by Paul Magin Elsevier Press .

Prostitution, gentrification, and the limits of neighbourhood space

Prostitution, gentrification, and the limits of neighbourhood space

Hubbard,P, Campbell,R. O’Neill,M. Pitcher,J. and Scoular,J. (2007)

Atkinson,R.and Helms, G [eds] (2007) Securing an urban renaissance: Crime, community, and British urban policy Bristol: Policy Press.

Ethno-mimesis, feminist praxis and the visual turn

Ethno-mimesis, feminist praxis and the visual turn

Maggie O'Neill (2007)

Cultural Sociology [ed] Tim Edwards. London: Sage Press.

Re-imagining Diaspora through ethno-mimesis: humiliation, human dignity and belonging

Re-imagining Diaspora through ethno-mimesis: humiliation, human dignity and belonging

Maggie O'Neill (2007)

Bailey,O., Georgiou,M and Harindranath,R [eds] (2007) Reimagining Diasporas: Transnational Lives and the Media London: Palgrave.

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Regulating Prostitution: Social Inclusion, Responsibilization and the Politics of Prostitution Reform

Regulating Prostitution: Social Inclusion, Responsibilization and the Politics of Prostitution Reform

Jane Scoular and Maggie O'Neill (2007)

British Journal of Criminology 47 (5) pp.764-778.

Following Matthews' (2005) recent examination of prostitution's changing regulatory framework, we offer a critical account of the move from ‘enforcement’ (punishment) to ‘multi-agency’ (regulatory) responses as, in part, a consequence of new forms of governance. We focus on the increasing salience of exiting—a move favoured by Matthews as signalling a renewed welfare approach, but one which, when viewed in the wider context of ‘progressive governance’, offers insight into New Labour's attempt to increase social control under the rhetoric of inclusion, through techniques of risk and responsibilization. By exploring the moral and political components of these techniques, we demonstrate how they operate to privilege and exclude certain forms of citizenship, augmenting the on-going hegemonic moral and political regulation of sex workers.

Sex Work Now

Sex Work Now

Campbell, R. & O'Neill, M (2006)

Cullompton: Willan

Sex Work Now provides an authoritative overview of female sex work and policy in the UK, and addresses a number of key contemporary issues and debates. These include sex worker unionization, migrant sex work and trafficking, communities and sex work, male clients of sex workers, the policing of prostitution, zoning of street sex work, young people and sexual exploitation, drug use and sex work, exiting, violence and sex work. Throughout the book is shaped by the lives and experiences of sex workers themselves drawing on applied, policy or participatory action research. This book approaches the subject from an interdisciplinary perspective, cutting across conventional boundaries of sociology, criminology, politics and social policy. Contributors to the book include academics, researchers, practitioners and activists who are among the leading commentators on prostitution in the UK. provides overview of sex work in UK considers impact of recent legislation and policy, especially Sex Offences Act 2003 focus on lives and experiences of sex workers themselves.

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Theorising narratives of exile and belonging : the importance of Biography and Ethno-mimesis in ‘understanding’ asylum

Theorising narratives of exile and belonging : the importance of Biography and Ethno-mimesis in ‘understanding’ asylum

Maggie O'Neill and Harindranath, H (2006)

Qualitative Sociology Review

The article explores the use and importance of taking a biographical approach to conducting participatory action research (PAR) with asylum seekers and refugees in order to: better understand lived experiences of exile and belonging; contribute to the important field of Biographical Sociology; provide a safe space for stories to be told; and in turn for these stories to feed in to policy and praxis.

New Arrivals: Participatory Action Research, Imagined Communities and Social Justice

New Arrivals: Participatory Action Research, Imagined Communities and Social Justice

O’Neill, M, Woods, P and Webster, M (2005)

Journal of Social Justice, Vol.32 No 1 pp75-89

THIS ARTICLE EXPLORES THEMES OF SOCIAL JUSTICE IN RELATION TO GLOBAL REFUGEES and the asylum-migration nexus by drawing upon a participatory action research (PAR) project recently completed in the United Kingdom (U.K.). The research sought to explore and address the needs of newly arrived children and families to the education system in a city in England. In the article, we affirm that a holistic conception of justice is of crucial importance to understanding and promoting social integration within the complex dynamics of the asylum-migration nexus as they affect urban environments. Moreover, we suggest that PAR as a research methodology can address a more holistic model of social justice and avoid some of the potential inequalities in the researcher/participant relationship. Patterns of problematic and positive aspects of the experience of newly arrived families are analyzed in terms of three interlinking models of social justice.

Red Lights and Safety Zones

Red Lights and Safety Zones

Maggie O'Neill, Rosie Campbell and community researchers (2004)

City of Quarters. Urban Villages in the Contemporary City [ed] David Bell and Mark Jayne (2004) London: Ashgate Press

Global Refugees: forced migration, diaspora, and belonging

Global Refugees: forced migration, diaspora, and belonging

Maggie O'Neill (2004)

Narrative and Memory [eds] (2004) Roberts, B, Robinson, D The narrative and memory research group: Huddersfield University.

Prostitution, Ethno-mimesis and Participatory Arts: processes and Practices of Inclusion’

Prostitution, Ethno-mimesis and Participatory Arts: processes and Practices of Inclusion’

Maggie O'Neill (2002)

Swift, J, Swift, J and Davies, T [eds] (2001) Disciplines, Fields and Change in Art education: Art Therapy, Psychology and Sociology Birmingham: University of Central England.

Global Refugees: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

Global Refugees: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

Maggie O'Neill (2002)

Miles, M, [ed] Divers (c ) ities:recoveries and reclamations. Exeter University.

Renewed Methodologies for social research: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

Renewed Methodologies for social research: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

O'Neill, M, Sara Giddens, Patricia Breatnach, Carl Bagley, Darren Bourne and Tony Judge. (2002)

Sociological Review Vol 50 No 1, pp 69-88.

This paper focuses upon renewed methodologies for social research in order to explore and re-present the complexity of lived relations in contemporary society. Renewed methodologies can transgress conventional or traditional ways of analysing and representing research data. This paper combines socio-cultural theory; experience (life stories); and practice (exhibition/performance) defined as ethno-mimesis to explore and better understand key themes and issues evolving from ethnographic work with female prostitutes. By focusing upon life history work with women working as prostitutes and by experiencing women's stories represented through live art we can further our understanding of the complexity of sex, sexualities, desire, violence, masculinities and the relevance of the body – the gendered body, the imaginary body, the performative body, the social body – within the context of post modern times, de-traditionalization, and what Stejpan Meštrović calls ‘postemotionalism’ and compassion fatigue. The paper incorporates stills from a video/live art performance, Not all the time … but mostly … performed by Patricia Breatnach, choreographed by Sara Giddens, sound by Darren Bourne and video produced by Tony Judge. The video/live art performance is a response to transcripts of interviews with women working as prostitutes and fuses dance, text, sound and video.

Prostitution: a Reader

Prostitution: a Reader

Matthews, R & O'Neill, M (2002)

Ashgate

Dilemmas in Managing Professionalism and Gender in the Public Sector

Dilemmas in Managing Professionalism and Gender in the Public Sector

Barry, J, Dent, M & O'Neill, M (2002)

Routledge

Not all the time...but mostly...: renewed methodologies for cultural analysis'

Not all the time...but mostly...: renewed methodologies for cultural analysis'

Maggie O'Neill & Sara Giddens (2001)

Sex Work Re-assessed’ for Feminist Review, No 67, pp.109-110.

Not all the time … but mostly … is the outcome of collaboration across the genres of ethnographic research, and visual and performing arts. In exploring renewed methodologies for social research Maggie sought to develop a methodological model (ethno-mimesis) rooted in feminist thought and practice, that represented in visual artistic forms the multiple standpoints of women working in prostitution. Ethno-mimesis is a combination of ethnographic research and the representation of this work in visual/artistic form.

Prostitution and Feminism

Prostitution and Feminism

O'Neill, M (2001)

Polity Press

Feminists have long differed in their view of prostitution. While some regard it as a classic form of exploitation and degradation, others offer a more sympathetic interpretation of women's involvement in the sex industry. In this important new book, Maggie O'Neill seeks to explore the theoretical debates on prostitution and the relevance of these to the everyday lived experiences of women working on the streets. Based upon her own ethnographic research - defined as ethno-mimesis - the author seeks to undermine and demystify stereotypical images of prostitutes. She explores the narratives offered by prostitutes themselves, as well as other forms of their representation in film, art and photography, and shows how these various mediums may be used to shed light on the socio-economic processes and structures which lead women into prostitution. These personal accounts produce what O'Neill refers to as 'a politics of feeling', which, she argues, may be used to transform attitudes, policy and practice in relation to female prostitution. By relating these individual experiences to critical feminist theory, the book deepens our understanding of the phenomenon of prostitution in contemporary society. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in gender studies, feminist theory and sociology.

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Love for Sale: the politics of prostitution in Stoke-on-Trent

Love for Sale: the politics of prostitution in Stoke-on-Trent

Maggie O'Neill (2000)

Edensor, T [ed] Re-Imagining the Potteries, Staffordshire University Press.

Adorno, Culture and Feminism

Adorno, Culture and Feminism

O'Neill, M (1999)

Sage

Adorno, Culture and Feminism brings Adorno's work and feminism together, and explores how feminism can both harness and develop Adorno's ideas. The picture that emerges displays how gendered relations and cultural practices and texts operate today, and the relevance of critical theory for contemporary feminisms. Adorno's work on the scale of inequality and repression in the administered society is presented as matching the feminist understanding of the unequal balance of power between the sexes. This volume shows how Adorno's central concepts - commodification, authenticity, the culture industry, Kulturkritik, negative dialectics, non-identity thinking and authoritarian personality - can be used productively and purposefully in feminist thinking.

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Victimization and the Social Organization of Prostitution in England and Spain' i

Victimization and the Social Organization of Prostitution in England and Spain' i

Maggie O'Neill (1999)

Weitzer, R [ed] International Perspectives on Prostitution London and New York, Routledge.

Prostitute Women Now

Prostitute Women Now

Maggie O'Neill (1997)

Scambler and Scambler [eds] Rethinking Prostitution: Purchasing Sex in Britain in the 1990's London, Routledge Press. pp3-29.

Young People and Prostitution from a Youth Service Perspective'

Young People and Prostitution from a Youth Service Perspective'

Green, J. O’Neill, M. and Mulroy, S. (1997)

David Barrett [eds] Child Prostitution in Britain London, The Children's Society. 1997 pp 90-105.

Saloon Girls: death and desire in the American West'

Saloon Girls: death and desire in the American West'

Maggie O'Neill (1997)

Holliday and Hassard [eds] Film and Organization London, Sage. pp117-130

Can Commissioned Research Be Feminist and Can Conflicting Interests Be Serve

Can Commissioned Research Be Feminist and Can Conflicting Interests Be Serve

Celia Jenkins, Maggie O'Neill and Ruth Swirsky (1996)

Lydegate, M, A et al [eds] Desperately Seeking Sisterhood London, Macmillan 1996.

Prostitution and Violence'

Prostitution and Violence'

Maggie O'Neill (1995)

Hester, Radford and Kelly [eds] Women, Violence and Male Power Bucks, Open University Press.pp130-147.

Prostitution and the State: towards a feminist practice

Prostitution and the State: towards a feminist practice

Maggie O'Neill (1994)

Lupton and Gillespie [eds] Women and Violence: dilemma's for a feminist practice . London, Macmillan Press. pp113-134

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