Constructing Agency Under Persistent Precarity: Shame, Anger, and Compassion in the Self-Narratives of Thai Sex Workers

How do individuals construct a sense of agency under persistent precarity? By studying a group of Thai sex workers whose lives are marked by poverty and stigma, the authors examine how individuals in persistent precarity construct different forms of agency, or agentic orientations, through self-narratives. They identify three narrative profiles with distinct agentic orientations: passive fantasizers, who convey shame and little agency; empowered victims, who channel anger into self-oriented agency; and compassionate carers, who exude acceptance and empathy and construct other-oriented agency. These agentic orientations are rooted in how individuals recount and connect their early life and current work experiences through recurrent emotional themes—shame, anger, or compassion—shaped by early encounters with influential institutions such as family (parents), community (Isaan), and religion (Buddhism). Building on these findings, they theorize a process they call cross-temporal emotional threading, through which individuals draw on core emotional threads to link their precarious experiences across time, enabling coherence in their self-narratives and shaping the construction of different agentic orientations. They further show that these agentic orientations manifest in distinct work behaviors and income levels. This study advances theoretical understanding of agency construction and contributes to research on persistent precarity, self-narratives, and the meaning of work.