COVID-19, sexual workers and trans people: On the margins of the Social State .

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on two particularly vulnerable groups: sex workers and trans people. The choice is made assuming gender as a broad concept that unmasks not only the relations of inequality between women and men, but also those of all those people who do not perform the normativity socially assigned to their gender. On the other hand, hanging on a concept of vulnerability that emphasizes the weakness of social and legal structures to guarantee equality and protection against discrimination, the impact of restrictive measures of rights on such situations is analyzed, evidencing how the lack of an adequate status of rights generated an aggravation of the conditions of vulnerability. Likewise, the requirements
for access to some of the socio-economic measures approved after the declaration of the state of alarm in March 2020 are dissected, in order to verify if they led to an effective expansion of the margins of the social state or if, on the contrary, they have consolidated the exclusion from the social protection system.