This research explores how the body is implicated in transmuting meaning for women who are substance dependent on opioids and have engaged in survival sex work. Using a hybridized application of narrative, theorizing, and interviews, this interdisciplinary thesis identifies some of the ways these women navigate the constraints of their marginalization. Eight women were interviewed on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in Vancouver, British Columbia. The research works to acknowledge and explore how these women exist in an ‘alternate’ economy in order to obtain opioids to meet their life-needs. The employment of materialist feminist examinations of alienation and access to capital located shared experiences in the women’s narratives. Though the research did not reveal an explicit connection between the body, meaning, and sex work, there was a strong indication of meaning making through advocacy and engagement with those in similar social positions.
