In Germany, new research carried out by Black Sex Worker Collective sheds light on how queer identity, migration status, race and sex work intersect to push their communities into homelessness.
“It’s easy to say, just decriminalise sex work. But at the end of the day, that’s only a small piece of the pie. We have to work on decriminalising people’s entire existence – blackness, queerness, womanhood, work itself. None of it can be separated.”
Akynos, The founder and director of Black Sex Worker Collective
With this blog series, we’re sharing insights from the work of LGBTI organisations tackling injustice, racism, and the unique challenges faced by racialised LGBTI communities in Europe. We hope their stories and practices will inspire and resonate. We believe that community-rooted approaches – even when locally or culturally specific – can highlight pathways and possibilities far beyond their original context. You can read the previous blog in the series here.
Black Sex Worker Collective centers is work where Blackness, queerness, sex work, migration, disability and other lived realities intersect. For Akynos, the work of the Collective is rooted not in strategy but in the reality of their life. “We were born into these intersections. We have no choice but to organise this way, because our entire existence is tied to them,” they explained.
That commitment to holding multiple realities at once shaped their most recent project: a peer-led study on queer homelessness in Germany. “I’m a two-time migrant, and I saw how much our community is suffering from lack of housing. It’s rampant,” Akynos said, reflecting on the research they conducted in 2023-2024 and presented for the European LGBTI movement this June.
The collective surveyed 84 LGBTI individuals in Germany through an online survey, and conducted in-person interviews with 34 participants, capturing diverse intersections of queerness, sex work, gender identity, migration status, and sexual orientation to explore experiences of housing and discrimination.Their findings were stark: nearly half reported housing insecurity, ranging from shelters to couchsurfing. Over half were dissatisfied with their housing because of racism, financial precarity or lack of safety. Sex Workers in particular faced higher rates of housing discrimination, often denied flats because of their occupation. The data exposed widespread discrimination by landlords and housing providers, with stigma around sex work standing out as a major obstacle to securing stable housing. “We envisioned housing without discrimination based on race or occupation,” Akynos explained. “But right now, those barriers are systematic.”
Having all lived through housing discrimination themselves, the research team spoke with clarity about the implications. They are calling for housing protections to include occupation, stronger anti-discrimination enforcement, secure housing for migrants, and more funding for peer-led solutions. For the Collective, being seen as researchers as well as organisers was also important: “This study was a way to solidify that Black Sex Workers are involved in every aspect of living and life.”
But the Collective’s work goes beyond research. Akynos emphasised that they can never take a single-issue approach: “It’s easy to say, just decriminalise sex work. But at the end of the day, that’s only a small piece of the pie. We have to work on decriminalising people’s entire existence – blackness, queerness, womanhood, work itself. None of it can be separated.”
Art is central to how they build that broader understanding. “We use food, dance, storytelling… practices that speak to people without demanding they read a book or engage with academic language,” Akynos shared. “It’s about making our histories accessible, palatable, and unforgettable.” Community gatherings, from annual dinners to workshops on digital defence and self-defence, are woven with these creative practices. They are at once cultural, political and protective.
And for Akynos, solidarity must also be lived, not only declared. They spoke of the “gentle whorephobia” that still runs unchecked in many activist and queer spaces, where sex workers’ labour, voices and resources are used but not respected. “It’s not enough to say, ‘I respect Sex Workers.’ You have to actively practise not being whorephobic, the same way you practise being anti-racist or anti-misogynist. Respect us, put value on our work, and tread lightly when you deal with us.”
The work of Black Sex Worker Collective reminds us that dismantling housing injustice or racism cannot be separated from dismantling whorephobia. By documenting queer homelessness in Germany, their research highlights a broader truth: liberation will only be achieved when we dismantle all forms of systemic discrimination side by side.Stay tuned: in October we’ll launch a comprehensive briefing on LGBTI homelessness in Europe that brings together research and evidence-based policy recommendation from the Black Sex Worker Collective and four other organisations, offering an unprecedented insight into lived realities of LGBTI people experiencing homelessness in four European countries. Make sure to sign up for Rainbow Digest so you don’t miss it.
