Master Thesis
GOVERNING SEX WORK THROUGH THE EUROPEAN UNION?
Insights from the Red Light District of Amsterdam
Student F.G. Aaron Giuga
Supervisor Julien Jeandesboz
Second Reader Marijn Hoijtink
10600078
Research Project Europe, Boundaries, Orders
University of Amsterdam
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Table of Contents
1 Introduction
p. 5
2 Theorizing sex work
p. 10
2.1 Approaching sex work with foucauldian lenses
p. 11
2.2 A sociological framework
p. 12
2.3 Acts of citizenship
p. 15
3 Methodology
p. 17
3.1 Design
p. 17
3.2 Techniques
p. 18
3.3 Biases/Limits
p. 19
4 Heterogeneous legal strategies
p. 20
4.1 ‘How prostitution is dealt with across Europe’
p. 22
4.2 How sex work is framed across the EU
p. 27
4.3 Sex workers and citizens
p. 29
5 Law in action: sex work ‘on the ground’
p. 32
5.1 Fee, forced, or rational choice?
p. 33
5.2 ‘Stigma kills’
p. 36
5.3 The path of criminalization
p. 39
6 Conclusions
p. 46
6.1 Recommendations
p. 48
6.2 Further research
p. 49
Bibliography
p. 50
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Annex 2 – 560 NGOs against Honyeball
p. 80
Annex 3 – A critique of the Honeyball report
p. 86
Annex 4 – The Declaration of sex workers
p. 98
Annex 5 – Interview with ‘Metje Blaak’(report)
p. 104
Annex 6 – Interview with ‘M’(email)
p. 106
Annex 7 – Interview with ‘Mariska Majoor’
p. 114
Annex 8 – Interview with ‘Pia Covre’ and ‘Carla Corso’
p. 134
Annex 9 – Interview with ‘Felicia Anna’
p. 158
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1. Introduction
On Wednesday the 26th of February, 2014, the Members of the European Parliament voted in favour of a resolution to criminalise the purchase of sexual services in all member states of the EU. “The vote formally establishes the EU’s stance on prostitution and puts pressure on member states to re-evaluate their policies on sex work” (Oppenheim, 2014). The report (see appendix 1), issued by a Labour spokeswoman of the UK, Mary Honeyball, attracted attention and criticism, which subsequently led to the mobilization of a coalition of 560 NGOs and some 90 academics that urged MEPs to vote against the Honeyball motion (see appendix 2 and 3).The criticisms pointed towards the inaccurate data presented in the report, and highlighted the evidence produced in recent years which was clearly suggesting that laws and policies affecting sex work should have pushed towards more decriminalization and legalization, so as to improve the working conditions of sex workers, and reduce their vulnerability and stigma in contemporary societies (see, inter alia, Open Society Foundations 2012a, 2012b). The debate was divided on two fronts: on the one side, sex work was considered as a key vector in the fight against human trafficking and as an inextricable form of violence against women. On the other side, sex work was understood as an independent form of labour, and should have been regarded as such; the problem of human trafficking was to be detached form that of prostitution, and allies to fight trafficking in persons were to be found among sex workers by ameliorating their working environment. Yet, regardless of the massive European-scale mobilization of activists, sex workers and academics, the European Parliament deliberated in favour of the Honeyball motion, creating a first instance for the harmonization of sex work policies across the EU. How did we arrive to such decision?
When analysed through the lenses of sex work, the EU presents an image that is characterized by a high fragmentation, and in which debates over sexuality and laws affecting sex have been spurious but tense. Before the Honeyball motion was presented to the EP, there have been other instances in which the question of sex work had surfaced. In 2005, another coalition, this time led mostly by sex workers and human rights workers, organized in an international network (ICRSE) and drafted a Declaration, with attached Manifesto, prompting the EU to take action and reminding the rights to which every sex worker was entitled to under international law and conventions (see appendix 4). Going further back, in December 2000, 80 countries signed the U.N. ‘Protocol to Suppress, Prevent and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children’ in Palermo, Italy (so-called ‘Trafficking Protocol’, or ‘Palermo Protocol’). In that occasion, the negotiations were targeted by heavy feminist lobbying, which were also divided on two sides: on the one side, led by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), sex work was regarded as a violation of women’s human rights; on the other side, led by the Human Rights Caucus, the attitude towards sex work was less concerned with trafficking, but more with the “lives of sex workers, and regarded prostitution as a legitimate labour” (Doezema 2005, p. 62).
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This sustained resonance of ‘contrasting camps’ let us suppose that the nature of the arguments regarding sex work might find place in the realm of ideologies, transcending physical frontiers. In particular, it drives our attention to the fact that on the one hand sex work is understood singularly and by itself, whereas on the other hand is assumed in combination with human trafficking and sexual slavery. Lynne-Musto (2009) tracks some of the conflations and contradictions in U.S. discourses on human trafficking, and finds that a significant turn in feminist discourses happened at the end of the ‘80s: “Barry’s (1979) conflation of prostitution with sexual slavery and trafficking has had a profound influence on feminist abolitionist organizations, chief among them the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), which has harnessed and politically mobilized around Barry’s claim that all forms of prostitution are oppressive and that trafficking thrives in areas where prostitution is legalized, regulated, and/or decriminalized” (O’Connor & Healy 2006, p.9 in Lynne-Musto 2009, p. 285). Outshoorn (2005) traces back the link between prostitution and trafficking at the end of the 19th century, which in her view resulted from an increase in migration (Outshoorn 2005, p. 142). Although within the EU prostitution and trafficking have been on the agenda since 1986, and in the EP resolution of 1993 no mention of taking measures against prostitution itself reflected the sex work approach (Outshoorn 2005, p. 151), the understanding of sex work as a main source of gendered violence and human trafficking informed also Europeans feminist groups, mostly with fundamental religious orientations such as CATW, and heralded the end of prostitution once and for all. However, when matched with the impacts that such mentalities have produced, one finds a utterly different image of sex work.
This study will analyse the question of sex work in relation to the freedom of movement to which every EU citizen and/or worker is entitled to (as laid down in Art. 21 and Art. 45 of the TFEU, 2008), and will take a screenshot of the complexities that surround sex work in the context of the EU. By analysing how the relationship above mentioned is played out in practice, and contrasting it with the discourses that form the basis of such practices, it will elucidate the scripts that have been enacted when the question of sex work has emerged over time.
The first problem that makes this study arise has been mentioned above, namely that in the EU the regulation of sex work is fragmented and not harmonized, creating thus inconsistencies within the legal space encompassed by the Union. A second problem has also been mentioned, although more indirectly: throughout the last 15 years at least, sex workers have repeatedly called for the recognition of their profession, but have been constantly ignored in every negotiation at the international level which nevertheless had significant repercussions on their activities and lives. This has had as detrimental side-effects an increase of discrimination and stigmatization from both governmental agents and public opinion. To an extreme, this has resulted in condoms been confiscated, and increasingly been used as evidence in judicial trials that prosecute sex workers and related parties as criminals, increasing the risks to which they are exposed on a daily basis (see, for instance,
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Human Rights Watch 2012). In this vein, the actual ‘solutions’ to prostitution are having the same results virtually all over the world: the stigmatization of sex workers and of their profession (except for New Zealand, where the law has been developed in concert with sex workers and is being monitored with their assistance). As Crownhurst et al. (2012) put it when analyzing prostitution policies in Europe, “whatever the regulatory approach upon which they are based – e.g. criminalization, regulation, abolition – the prostitution policies examined are fraught with ambiguities, lacunae, and contradictions that are reflected in their implementation (or lack thereof), thus furthering the vulnerability of individuals operating in the sex industry” (Crownhurstet al. 2012, p. 187). Significantly, the authors point clearly to the lack of research on the effects of the governance of prostitution across Europe (Ibidem). McCarthy et al. (2013) agree, when after having critically reviewed legislations that fully criminalize, partially decriminalize, or fully decriminalize they prompt further research to “examine [the] consequences of legal strategies to build evidence-based policies” (McCarthy et al. 2012, p. 267). Thus, this study aims at “exploring the gaps that exist between prostitution policies ‘on paper’ and what they actually achieve once implemented” (Kilvington et al. 2011; Wagenaar 2006; Scoular and O’Neil 2007; Pheonix 2009; Scoular 2010; Skilbrei and Homström 2011; in Crownhurst et al. 2012, p. 188). How, then, has sex work been studied? Which knowledge has informed policy makers concerned with regulating sex work?
According to Frank and Phillips (2013), sex laws studies are an emerging field that was blocked, thus offering a poor literature review: “sex was too prosaic, too private, too taboo” to be investigated on an academic level (Frank and Phillips 2013, p. 250). Importantly, they argue that this field “reflects its social foundations”, and “is emerging in response to interrelated changes in the wider social context” (Ibidem). They see these changes as following the reconstruction of society prompted by the Second World War, which also spurred the merging of 1) sexuality into sex, 2) human rights into national laws, and 3) global into comparative perspectives (p. 249). In their view, these three duos constitute the social foundations of the emerging field, and “the construction of [one] element of each pair fundamentally altered and energized the other” (p. 251). The tension that derive from the interaction of these elements subsequently surfaces when one is questioned; for instance, the distinction between sex and sexuality is manifested in the distinction between acts of sodomy and gay identities (Altman 2002; Boelstorff 2005; in Frank and Phillips 2013, p. 253); between sexual acts (private) and sexual identities (public). Similarly, “long-standing nation-state prohibitions come alive under the new yardstick of universal freedom and justice as the national prohibitions confront the international protections” (Boyle and Meyer 1998; Halliday and Osinsky 2006; in Frank and Phillips 2013, p. 254). Going further, the authors identify the empirical literature on sex laws to be divided into two segments: one that follows “the elaboration of sexuality rights in a global perspective”, and one that “studies sex laws in comparative perspectives, though increasingly through the lens of global sexuality rights” (Frank and Phillips 2013, p. 259). As they conclude, “none of these issues
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are new per se; rather, global human rights offers new approaches to pre-existing subjects” (Ibidem). Importantly, as Crownhurst et al. note, “a red thread running throughout most contributions is the emphasis on the contradictory way in which prostitution is approached in policies” – for instance, by treating sex workers simultaneously as victims and criminals, or by excluding them from prostitution policy making (Crownhurst et al. 2012, p. 190). The short literature review offered here suggests that the ideological opposition that emerged during the negotiations over sex work (human rights versus human trafficking) are symptomatic of a deeper tension, namely between a national and a transnational framework. In fact, whereas on the one hand the human trafficking approach is justified from the obligation of states to protect their citizens from illegitimate exploitation and violence, the human rights approach is on the other hand motivated by freedoms and rights to which every person is entitled under global covenants, regardless of their country of origin. Aradau et al. (2010) seem to concur with this explanation, in that they interpret the Declaration of sex workers of 2005 as a challenge to conventional notions of citizenship, and a push towards a conception of citizens that does not exclude migrants. In their words, the mobilization of 2005 underlies a tension “between a citizenship that is derivative of the nation-state, and a citizenship that is defined by the free movement” (Aradau et al. 2010, p. 945).
This new conceptual shift presents in turn another difficulty, however: existing legislations on sex work do not considering their frameworks migrant workers, which according to recent estimates represent 70-80% of sex workers in Europe, and account for over 60 nationalities (TAMPEP 2009). How, then, do we deal analytically and politically with sex work in the EU, if in some instances it is not recognized by law and therefore for the authorities does not exist? How can we devise sounding policies, if we exclude a priory a consistent part of the reality upon which we are to act?
In the following pages I will present a combined cross-study in the pursue of some clarifications regarding the various issues aforementioned. The next chapter will lay down the theoretical foundations upon which I intend to dissect the question of sex work, by borrowing notions and conceptual tools from the discipline of political sciences, sociology, and philosophy. Whereas to understand how laws and policies are designed we need to investigate the rationalities of those who govern and bother Foucault’s work on governmentality, the discoveries of sociology seem to best apply if we are to make any sense of the effects that these laws have on the everyday lives that build up European societies “from the bottom” (Favell and Guiraudon 2011), and grasp some of the complexities that such mentalities produce when enacted through the law. Under the suggestion of Aradau et al. (2010), furthermore, I will present the notion of acts of citizenship theorized by Isin (2008), so as to move closer to the dynamics that are enacted under our eyes regardless of bounded nation-state distinctions. Mounting these three
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different lenses all together will allow us to see different faces of the EU that coexist around the question of sex work.
Before analysing how sex work is legislated across the EU, I will present the methodological challenges that such a study presents, and recapitulate the objects of our study that every notion presented before allows us to see, thus seeing a different image of the EU at every turn. The dominant discourses on sex work will be further delineated; document and content analysis will be complemented with secondary analysis, and in-depth semi-structured qualitative interviews with a partial ethnography of the Red Light district of Amsterdam. Since making a representative sample of sex workers seems virtually impossible for the notorious fugacity of the population of sex workers and the heavy stigma associated with them, the scope of the interviews will be to offer an indication of the life-styles that sex workers may have, while investigating the motivations that drove some of them to become part of this contested industry.
The fourth chapter will deploy the theoretical framework upon the existing legislations in the EU, and highlight the first inconsistencies that will be encountered. By analysing how sex work is dealt with and framed across Europe, this section will elaborate on the conflation between sex work, human trafficking, and sexual slavery. The exportation of the ‘Nordic model’ is legitimized by the claim of its successes in reducing level of human trafficking and prostitution. What at first sight appears here is instead that sex workers move underground, and that authorities have less instruments to detect genuine cases of trafficking, suggesting thus that the mistake lies in applying one (national) model to the area of the EU rather than developing one that would take into consideration the variety of subjects residing in Europe. Moreover, when confronted with the legal understanding of the European Court of Justice, the question of sex work is necessarily cast in a different light: sex workers that are EU nationals are first and foremost persons entitled to the same provisions that member states are obliged to fulfil to their own nationals. Cornerstones among these are the freedom to “reside and move freely” within the Union (Art . 21 TFEU), and may not be discriminated based on nationality grounds “as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment” (Art. 45:2 TFEU). This, however, seems to be complicated by the moral assumptions surrounding sex work and its regulation.
After having approached the law ‘in theory’, the next chapter will focus on the life experiences of sex worker extracted from my own interviews in the Red Light district of Amsterdam and complemented with other submissions presented in official documents and/or gathered by other authors. Here, the focus will be on the contrast between the discourses on and the practices of sex work, and examine the effect that law has ‘in action’. Whereas the dominant discourse of human trafficking purports the protection of victims of trafficking, police, official, and citizens’ practices starkly oppose this claim. Even where sex work is legal, such as in Amsterdam, sex workers are not granted bank accounts, loans, nor mortgages, and are refused apartments for the stigma associated with their profession.
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When travelling, one’s look can be sufficient to instil the doubt of trafficking, thus sex workers are subject to arbitrary checks, and travelling becomes obnoxious. This suggests that models that criminalize sex work (however partially) are ideologically driven but do not find resonance with facts or evidence gathered in academic and official studies. Thus, by denying basic socio-economic rights and excluding a significant part of the population from the freedom of movement and residence, such models are in conflict with Human Rights regimes and EU law.
Finally, the study will conclude recapitulating and by mounting together the different images that captured the EU under different lights, in different moments, and different depths. By doing so, I will offer a first short film that tries to capture the complexities of the EU and the governmentality of sex work, while seeking to enhance the debate that informs policy makers as well as ordinary citizens.
2. Theorizing sex work
As already mentioned above, this study intends to analyse the relationship between freedom of movement and sex work in the context of the European Union; but before proceeding in our analysis of the governability of sex work in Europe, it seems necessary to delineate the notion of sex work in the first place, as well as the conceptual tools that will help us focusing on the issue at hand. Thus, this chapter will be structured to account for the theoretical notions that, subsequently, will frame the object of the study. Allow me to borrow an analogy from the world of photography and cinematography to clarify this point: each section represents a pair of lenses through which the image of Europe’s sex work can be analyzed. This does not mean that they are the only lenses through which approaching the EU is possible, but it entails that in my opinion they represent a powerful combination of filters to discern, differentiate, and de-naturalize European lights. However, the dimensionality of such image would reach its clarity only by mounting the three lenses all together, as it happens with 3-D glasses at the cinema.
That said, this study will approach sex work as a distinct matter from prostitution, a word that in many senses may imply similar notions but nonetheless uncovers very different sentiments, powers, and actors. However, if in some instances the two words will be used interchangeably, it will depend on the fact that some sex workers may not identify with such notion (Westeson 2012, ff. 858), or that it might help the reader not to lose track of the discussion. In fact, prostitution represents just one segment of what is by now recognized as the sex industry, and which rests on a variety of activities – such as strip teasing, peeping, escorting, pimping, pornography, call-services, and massage parlours – signalled by the ever widening scope that the purchase of services related to sex and sexuality has reached with the advent of the internet (see, inter alia, Hubbard et al. 2008, p. 148; also, Mendes Bota 2014). One broad definition of sex work is presented by UNAIDS, which define it as “the exchange of money or goods for sexual services, either regularly or occasionally, involving female, male, and transgender adults, young people, and children, where the sex worker
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may or may not consciously define such activity as income-generating” (UNAIDS 2005). Sex work can be conducted formally or informally. In some instances, sex work is only a temporary informal activity. UNAIDS further delineate the notion, by distinguishing between commercial and occasional sex work: “women and men who have occasional commercial sexual transactions or where sex is exchanged for food, shelter or protection (survival sex) would not consider themselves to be linked with formal sex work. Occasional sex work takes place where sex is exchanged for basic, short-term economic needs and this is less likely to be a formal, full-time occupation. Commercial sex work may be conducted in formally organised settings from sites such as brothels, nightclubs, and massage parlours; or more informally by commercial sex workers who are street-based or self-employed” (Ibidem).
2.1 Approaching sex work with foucauldian lenses
The first pair of lenses I intend to use to analyse sex work in Europe is the notion of governmentality developed by Michel Foucault, a neologism he invented to refer to governmental rationality, or the art of government1. With government I refer to what Rose and Miller (1992) termed a “problematizing activity” (Rose and Miller 1992, p. 181). It rests upon the assumption that there are problems to be solved by governmental actors; in fact, “it is in its acts and moments of problematization that mentalities and their forms of reasoning can be identified” (Haahr and Walters 2005, p. 6). Governmentality therefore interrogates the “relation between government and thought” (Dean 1999, p. 19). As mentioned, I use governmentality as a form of political analysis, as a tool kit rather than a theory in itself. The reasons for this choice are various and listed by Haahr and Walters: first, it allows me to “conduct a critical and reflexive political analysis of mentalities of government”; second, it presents “a historicized investigation of changing forms of power”; third, it allows me to “thematize the relationality of power and the identity of the governed”; fourth, it pushes my analysis to be “concerned with the technologies of power” (Haahr and Walters 2005, p. 5). Some of the questions that may arise from such perspective are: how is Europe being imagined/governed here? On the one hand, one can see a Europe that is free from the plight of prostitution, and women are finally able to regain their lives and release themselves from a millenary patriarchal domination. On the other hand, one sees an image of Europe that is quite different, one where its citizens are free to choose with whom they want to have sex with2. Going further, how are mobility and sex work to be governed? By what means? Who is to govern who? And why should they be governed? What are the problems generated by sex work? Which rationality and which problematizations form the interplay between sex work and mobility? Finally, what forms of identity does it presume and construct for the governed?
1 In few more words, Foucault defines governmentality as a particular way of thinking about and exercising
political power ‘which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security’ (Foucault 1991a, p. 102).
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Moreover, by taking into consideration the question of governmentalities, one necessarily needs to tackle the concepts of freedom and liberty, thus focus my attention on the relationship between these two concepts and sex workers. Under such perspective, “liberty is registered not only as the right of individuals legitimately to oppose the power, the abuses and usurptions of the sovereign, but also now as an indispensable element of governmental rationality itself” (Foucault 1978 in Gordon 1991, p. 19-20). Similarly, freedom becomes “a tool, a technology for the achievement of specific governmental objectives” (Haahr and Walters 2005, p. 45). In other words, freedom serves an end. It does not constitute an end in itself. With such lenses, it is possible to re-conceptualize the ‘protection rights’ granted under EU law as a governmental object that serve the end of a specific freedom, a freedom of movement, which in turn serves yet another purpose, namely the stimulation of economic processes and a “harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of living” (p. 48). Yet, recent developments over questions of freedom and liberty (such as data privacy) suggest that also the reasoning behind this conceptualization of governmentality might be shifting towards new sites of power struggle, and that, by disrespecting liberty, “ignorance of how to govern” (Gordon 1991, p. 20) might find locus in high spheres of politics.
From this perspective, significantly, law is not what is important, but becomes another variable in the strategic objectives that aim at governing the population (Foucault 1991, p. 95). Sexuality itself, furthermore, becomes “a regime of power and knowledge that develops within institutions and practices that aim to harness the strength and developmental potential of human bodies and put them to use in industrial production and technological warfare” (McWhorter 2004, p. 40). What this means, in other words, is that the target of legislations concerning sexual activities is not sex per se, but the bodies that enact such act; the end of such legislation is, subsequently, the ‘management’ of the population taken into consideration, and the insertion of the same into specific industrial production chains (such as agriculture, for instance).
2.2 A sociological framework
The second lenses through which I intend to approach sex work comes from the discipline of sociology. The reasons for this resonate with those that have been presented above: the sociology of the European Union has just started to emerge as a field of study, and, as clarified by Favell and Guiraudon (2011), it inserts itself in EU studies as an “alternative toolbox of concepts and methods” (Favell and Guiraudon 2011, p. 18) that can fruitfully complement the “limitations and controversies” that currently reside “within political science paradigms” (p. 6). My aim is thus to contribute to this agenda by following the hints of Favell et al. (2011) when writing The Sociology of the European Union, while assessing the effects of the EU upon the everyday lives in Europe. Moreover, there are several advantages that doing a sociology of the EU can offer, and are listed by Nilo Kauppi (in Favell and Guiraudon 2011, p. 157-170): first, “it links politics to the development of European
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societies and their national political fields through the use of historical analysis” (see the introduction); second, “it takes individual perceptions seriously, concentrating on the embedded agency3 of individuals and groups, their collective identities as key elements of the EU”; third, “sociology analyses political action as strategic action in a more or less stable context”. The EU is by no means a stable context, and this entails going beyond the common sense that actors are always behaving in a rational and calculative way. Fourth, “in contrast to traditional institutional approaches, it introduces critical thinking tools that transcend European national specificities (or methodological nationalism), narrow political agendas and the ideology of the European Union” (Kauppi and Madsen 2007 in Favell and Guiraudon 2011, p. 170). According to Nilo Kauppi, “sociology takes into account not only institutional and legal structures but also, and perhaps most significantly, systems of meaning and cultural/symbolic structures” (in Favell and Guiraudon 2011, p. 159). This presents the chance of “combining social structural and cultural/symbolic structures in one analysis”(Ibidem). Besides the theoretical advantages listed above, it is clear that also such framework will significantly alter the methodology of the study, and this will be discussed more in exhaustively in the next chapter.
Applying a sociological perspective to the study of the European Union thus means approaching it not just as a given, crystallized outcome of European integration, but questioning the EU as a process itself that is in turn constitutive and affective on the dynamics that drive the various regions of Europe towards more, or less, integrative results. It means transposing the major questions of sociology into the study of the EU: “questions of class, identity and mobilities, culture, social stratification and economic organization” (Favell and Guiraudon, p. 24). It seems clear, then, that the moves of an empirical sociology of the EU shift the object of our study towards the impacts on class formation and mobility (p. 4, emphasis added). In other words, it drives our attention not only to the dynamics that shape political responses from the ‘top’, but also towards the everyday lives and experiences of the social foundations of Europe, the ‘bottom’, which would nonetheless contribute to the study and development of a European ‘society’. In parallel, this entails conceiving of the “Europeanization4 of European economy and society as both an upstream and downstream flow of processes building the EU” (p. 11). However, speaking of a European society is in itself problematic and debatable, as it entails the notion of European social classes that still have to be assessed empirically; yet, as Díez Medrano argues, “evidence of Europeanization precedes evidence of European social classes” (in Favell and Guiraudon 2011, p. 26). Whether we are witnessing the emergence of a European society is thus beyond the scope of this thesis, although for many scholars with a Durkheimian view it
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By embedded agency I refer to the fact that reproducing social resources – any kind of socially valued symbolic entities (such as, for instance, money, beauty, education, knowledge or legitimacy) – requires collective action in socially structured fields of action. In other words, social capital requires constant upkeep and usage (Kauppi, p. 155-6)
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By Europeanization, I refer to the definition provided by Díez-Medrano (2011), who describes it as ‘the widening of the geographical scope of the national citizens’ lives and economic and political activities on a European scale’ (p. 31).
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is already a social fact (see, for instance, Trenz ch. 8). On the other hand, the mobilization of sex workers in 2005 showed to be comprehensive of the variety of genders that are by no means a specificity of sex work. In fact, by mobilizing gender, the notion of European citizenship enriches itself with unprecedented implications. The question here posed is exactly what it means to be European: there is a push toward a ‘different Europe’, and area of ‘freedom, security and justice’ that is so regardless of one’s own sexual preferences or country of origin. This points directly to the core constitutive of social classes, namely identity. What impacts has the EU had on the everyday lives of European citizens? What effects is it having on the lives of sex workers? Whereas the Europeanization of national economies has advanced (more or less) steadily, the formation of a European identity – and therefore society – has been something much more complex to achieve. One main reason for this are national constraints on European integration (Díez-Medrano, p.42-45; see, also, Milward, 2000). In short and simple words, “societal integration is a process that both integrates and differentiates European society in new ways” (Trenz, p. 193), and, even though “Europe is able to uphold its internal diversity and stabilize its external relations only under cosmopolitan assumptions” (Beck and Grande 2007 in Trenz, p. 205), “banal nationalism still rules in Europe today” (Billig 1995 in Díez-Medrano, p. 47). And yet, regardless of nationalistic assumptions, in 2005 a coalition of European workers united in front of Brussels. Whether or not these workers feel European, however, can only be assessed by asking them.
Connected to the idea of a European identity is the possibility to reside and move freely within any of the members of the EU. As demonstrated by Favell and Recchi (2009) with their project PIONEUR, it is the freedom of movement, mobility that mostly characterizes European citizenship: free movement is the EU in Europeans’ minds5. However, are Europeans free to move inside Europe when it comes to sex work? At the present state, such freedom can be exercised only within certain limits (for instance, settling where sex work is legal) which in many instances shrink further in the wave of moral and ethical assumptions - as opposed to facts (for instance, banks increasingly do not allow sex workers access to mortgages or loans, or landlords do not rent apartments because the profession is not recognized or stigmatized); these limits are legitimized by discourses and practices aimed at combating human trafficking and ‘fighting’ illegal immigration, a point which deserves particular attention (see chapter 4). Yet, as Favell and Recchi showed in their research, the ‘mobile’ Europeans are still a marginal segment of the population residing in the EU, however significant such indicator may be. This raises two contrasting perspectives: if, one the one hand, one gives credit to mainstream discourses that conflate sex work with human trafficking and illegal immigration, sex workers should represent a particularly mobile population, moving from one city to another over short periods of time in order to elude the authorities. If, on the other hand, sex workers are no different to other European
5 See, also, how EU citizenship is defined in relation to freedom of movement at the official site of the EU,
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workers, one would expect them not to move so frequently, since nomadism is not the defining character of the actual EU population but rather a marginal characteristic. This will be put to empirical test in the last section of the study, in order to elucidate some of the opacities that governing sex work to date presents.
In short, this sociological framework can be visualized as a web where the notion of governmentality above mentioned can be deployed. It represents a clear-cut blueprint where the discontinuities of the reasoning of those who govern can be identified and contrasted with the reasoning of those who are supposed to be governed. By doing so, some of the spillovers produced by the regulation of sex work can become clearer, and help us highlight some of its merits and deficiencies.
2.3 Acts of citizenship
The last pair of lenses I suggest to mount deal with the notion of citizenship. As mentioned before, the 2005 Declaration challenged the conventional way we understand citizenship, in that a group of workers who are not recognized by European law mobilized politically to seek such recognition. How can we analyse this event? Aradau et al. (2010) see this mobilization as indicative of deeper tension “between a citizenship that is derivative of the nation-state and a citizenship that is defined by free movement” (Aradau et al. 2010, p. 945); between a national and a European citizenship. Citizenship is defined at the European level by means of nationality (to be a European citizen one must be citizen of a member state of the EU) and is something that requires agency (for instance, through voting or exercising the right to free movement). In their view, the Declaration “disrupts a territorially and culturally bound understanding of citizenship as it includes – on an equal basis – migrant sex workers. It also disrupts a rights-based approach inasmuch as the rights claimed in the Declaration are not granted to sex workers and migrant sex workers” (p. 959). This tension resonates with the problematic assumption identified by Favell and Recchi (2011) in their discussion on mobility: “closed social systems of mobility and class structure are congruent with the idea of a bounded nation-state society” (Favell and Recchi 2011, p. 57). However, “the mobility of sex workers is not simply related to migration, but to a mode of sociality that creates possibilities for politicizing exchange relations” (Aradau et al., p 961). The mobility of sex workers, thus, “needs to be defined by virtue of their engagement in exchange relations, which transform personalized community relations and has the potential to politically transform the terrain of European citizenship” (p. 953).
Building on the suggestion of Aradau et al., I therefore want to introduce the notion of acts of citizenship conceptualized by Isin (2008). We can initially define acts of citizenship as those acts that produce citizens and their others (Isin 2008, p.37). In Isin’s view, citizenship is not only a legal status, but it involves practices of making citizens – social, political, cultural and symbolic (p. 17). The main difference here is that while citizenship is produced, - or activated - by actors, acts of citizenship produce actors (for instance, by changing the attitudes of a citizen, worker, or purchaser towards activism). Thus, rather than conceiving
16
of subjects as fixed identities or differences that are already there (inherited by ius soli for example), we can shift our attention to subjectivities that are fluid and to “how we enact ourselves as citizens, strangers, outsiders and aliens” (p. 38). As Isin states, “those activists that acts produce are not a priori recognized by law, as the case of sex workers shows, but by enacting themselves through acts they affect the law that recognizes them” (p. 39). In a nutshell, then, we can define acts of citizenship “those acts that transform forms (orientations, strategies, technologies) and modes (citizens, strangers, outsiders, aliens) of being political by bringing into being new actors as activist citizens (claimants of rights and responsibilities) through creating new sites and scales of struggle” (Ibidem). This seems to best exemplify the case of the Declaration and Manifesto of 2005, as the event produced actors that became answerable to justice against injustice. In terms of our research object, investigating acts is to “call into question the dominant cluster of problems itself” (p. 21). Why, for instance, is sex work a problem? And for whom?
As I have already said, in my opinion these three different lenses form a particular and yet powerful combination of conceptual tools for approaching sex work. While governmentality refers to the macro-level of the processes of the EU, it is short in taking into consideration the subjectivities upon which power is exercised. Thus the need to complement such top-down perspective with one the look the other way around, contrasting the two extremes and delineate the rectangular of the picture we are taking of the EU, or of the film in which we are all, in one way or another, actors and directors. The third lenses, will instead help us distinguishing the various components inside of this frame, namely the persons that reside, travel and/or live within or through the Union and how they act - whether they be men, women, a mixture of the two, and regardless of their national legacy. In other words, the first pair lenses will drive our attention towards what people think about sex work; the second pair of lenses will instead move our concerns to how people feel around the question of sex work; the last pair of lenses will finally look at what people do with the question of sex work. By doing so, it will be possible to discover the dynamics that characterize societal processes marked by a double movement - from the inside to the outside, and from the outside to the inside6 - uncover some of the links that connect micro-practices with macro-processes, and consequently gain knowledge concerning the
meso-level of a social order 7 .
6
Foucault analysed a similar movement when tracking down the genealogy of the art of government to the sixteenth century, where a process of dispersion and religious dissidence accompanied processes of state centralization (1991a, p. 88). It’s what Andreotti and Les Galès (2011) defined as a Weberian process, a ‘dual movement in which borders are strengthened and the inside is differentiated from the outside, while the internal order is organized and gradually homogenized as a national society’ (p. 78). This is nonetheless true for the actual situation of the EU, where the emphasis on border controls has steadily grown (for instance, with the creation of agencies such as FRONTEX, ESDP or the EEAS) and efforts to engage with the European public led to the first public debate, on the 28th of April 2014, over the next president of the European Commission.
7
What Bourdieu calls ‘field’. I refer, however, to a conceptualization that comes closer to what Fligstein (2011) writes of the European society: ‘a genuine reconfiguration of the European social, political, economic and cultural space’ (p. 127).
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3.
Methodology
As the previous chapter suggested, this study will make use of mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative social sciences researches. This chapter will thus delineate the design, methods and techniques that I will borrow from the disciplines of political sciences, sociology, and anthropology. The first section will define the sources that have been used to gather the data presented in following chapters, further elaborating the discourses on and practices of sex work mentioned above and thus demarcating where and when this study needs to be contextualized. By doing so, it will become clearer also why and what I am looking at (what before has been presented as governmental rationalities, identities, and acts of citizenship). The second section will instead refer to the methods and techniques I used in order to operationalize the 3 lenses mentioned in the previous chapter. For us to reveal the governmental rationalities that underpin the regulation of sex work I used content and secondary analysis. On the other hand, in order to ‘put a human face’ onto the study of the EU, I availed myself of the use of semi-structured qualitative interviews. Finally, I complemented the ‘bird’s eye view’ with a ‘fly on the wall’ approach under the suggestion the suggestion of Virginie Guiraudon (2011, p. 142), by applying a partial ethnography to the Red Light district of Amsterdam and move closer to the acts which “create actors that decide to remain at the scene” (Isin 2008, p. 29). Hence, after having delineated how I have looked at the sources I cite in this study, I will move on to shortly elaborating the limits that these techniques and methods presented.
3.1 Design
As mentioned in the introduction, the regulation of sex work is fragmented under different rubrics. On the one hand, sex work has been equated with sexual exploitation and human trafficking. These equation led me to investigate official documents, by both governmental and non-governmental organizations, academic publications, and news and online articles that used the key words ‘prostitution’, ‘sex work’ and/or ‘human trafficking’. However, on the other hand sex work has been promoted as a matter of human rights, thus leading my investigation towards organizations and publications that where equating the term with questions of ‘rights’, ‘gender’, and the ‘conflation’ presented in the previous equation. Lastly, although the assumption that sex workers were a key vector in the spread of the HIV pandemic has been debunked (see, Hubbard et al. 2008, p. 138), discourses that were equating sex work with questions of ‘public health’ and ‘HIV/AIDS’ spurred extensive research, providing further references for the assessment of existing legislations concerning sex work. News articles where selected giving priority to the on-going debate at the European Parliament, thus ignoring many national sources over the question and dating for the most part to 2014. Also, online blogs and Facebook represented a consistent source of information regarding the dynamics of sex work, the discourses that were promoted and/or criticized, and for evaluating general trends and the level of information floating among my own social networks.
18 3.2 Methods and techniques
As stated above, I have instrumentalized content and secondary analysis to the question of governmentality. These approaches are extensively clarified by Adam Bryman (2012, pp. 288-328) who defines the former as “an approach to the analysis of documents and texts that seeks to quantify content in terms of predetermined categories and in a systematic manner” (p. 290), and the latter as “the analysis of data by researchers who will probably not have been involved in the collection of those data, for purposes that in all likelihood were not envisaged by those responsible for the data collection” (p. 312), meaning that I did not collect the data personally and I alone am responsible for the elaboration presented in this study. Ideally, the study would have structured as follows: in the months of March and April, 2014, I should have delineated the bibliography and conceptual framework, while approaching the fieldwork and creating contacts for the interviews and collection of respondents; the month of May should have been devoted to gathering respondents and conducting interviews; finally, the month of June would have been dedicated to the transcription of interviews, the elaboration of data, and the revision of the study. The research questions that lead my investigation have been mentioned in the previous chapter, but some key knots around which I focused my research where: the actors that have been involved in the formulation of dominant discourses and practices (i.e. Honeyball and feminist organizations), as well as those that have been excluded (i.e. sex workers); the time span within which the issue has been discussed (i.e. 2014); where has the issue been discussed (i.e. Parliamentary Assemblies, TV programmes, or on-line magazines); how much has been reported (i.e. frequency and quantity); and why it has been reported (i.e. the emergence of a human trafficking crisis). As for what concerns secondary analysis, I mostly used data gathered by NGOs and INGOs, such as TAMPEP or the Global Commission on HIV. To operationalize the sociological framework, I conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews in the Red Light district of Amsterdam. Ideally, the sample of respondents would have been: 6 to 9 sex workers regularly residing in Amsterdam; 6 to 9 sex workers irregularly residing in Amsterdam; 3 representatives of sex workers; 1 police officer as governmental representative. Sex workers should have been equally divided among genders and into two age categories: (1) under 25 and (2) over 25. Sex workers and representatives would have been asked to talk about their motivations regarding the entry in the sex industry and their perception of the ongoing debate; whether they had worked somewhere else as sex workers; whether they had suffered any violence (physical and/or symbolic) during their experience; whether they had any problems in letting relatives know about their profession; whether they had intention to continue selling sexual services; what was the relationship between them and the authorities; how were the authorities ‘fighting’ human trafficking, and what could the authorities do in order to improve their condition. Interviews were thus structured around these key questions and subsequently conducted in a manner to let respondents gain the floor with their own life experiences, thus adapting from respondent to respondent. Interviews were conducted with the auxiliary of a voice recorder
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complemented with real-time notes, and the subsequent transcripts were shared only with my supervisor. Rules of anonymity have been applied were asked by the respondent, and transcripts of the interviews are attached as appendixes at the end of this thesis.
Finally, in order to gain direct knowledge about the environment in which the study has been conducted, gather respondents and observe the acts that were enacted, I piloted a partial ethnography with the intention of observing the Red Light district of Amsterdam. I went regularly walking in De Wallen, so as to ‘show my face’, trying to avoid directly engaging with the everyday lives of the people living in the neighbourhood but limiting myself to smile when eye-contacting with window sex workers. Notes would have been taken on a systematic way, in real-time and at ‘cold’, and the study would have been complemented with a photographic reportage.
3.3 Limits and biases
In reality, the distinction of task here presented above has been very blurred, resulting in constantly updating bibliography and references, conducting few interviews during the end of May and beginning of June, and elaborating the data throughout the drafting process. One interview has been conducted in Italy, as I had the chance to meet two former sex workers who are politically active since the late 1970s and live in my hometown during my staying in Italy for my mother’s birthday in June. No appropriate revision of the study has been conducted; instead, the whole study is the result of a constant learning-by-doing process, and the mistakes done during this process should be included below. Out of the estimated sample of 15+ interviews, only 5 were conducted, listed hereafter in chronological order: 1) “Metje Blaak”, founder of the former Union for sex workers De RoodeDraad, so as to understand the dynamics of De Wallen in the last decade; 2) “M”, blogger/author of theasterdamdiaries.net (conducted by email), so as to assimilate the view of a ‘regular customer’, regarded as key informant for its closeness to some of the working girls; 3) “Mariska Majoor”, responsible of the Prostitution Information Center (PIC), so as to gain knowledge from ears and eyes that were concerned with the situation of sex workers also transnationally; 4) “Pia Covre” and “Carla Corso” (conducted in italian), former Italian sex workers now coordinating TAMPEP’s project in Italy and reference figures for sex workers in Italy; 5) “Felicia Anna” (pseudonym), Romanian sex worker, author of the blog behindtheredlightdistrict.blogspot.nl and concerned with the misinformation surrounding the sex industry which is affecting her life as well as that of other colleagues of her. No second interview has been conducted with the respondents.
I presented myself with two ways of conducting the ethnography, which would have also directly impacted on the way interviews could have been conducted: the fastest way would have been to pay for sex workers’ time. The other way was to approach ‘randomly’ sex workers after their working hours– and gradually befriend them over the whole period of the study – while waiting for a snowball effect to start. What came out has been a shy attempt of the second approach mentioned. The stigma attached to sex work was present
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also in my head, and it took me a considerable amount of time to break out of it and face the reality in which I found myself. No snowball effect has generated. Thus, respondents have been selected approaching ‘randomly’ sex workers after their working hours. In fact, very few working girls showed to be available to talk at their working place (most likely because they were working), and even less in talking about European politics. Out of the 20 girls with whom I have talked, only two showed interest in the study. No police official has been interviewed. All the interviews have been conducted in English, except the one with Carla Corso and Pia Covre conducted in Italian. The photographic reportage has been started, but for technical reasons and constraint time it was not continued. Lastly, I have not learned Dutch, thus my interaction in the environment has been limited to English, Italian, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese speakers. The language barrier constrained my knowledge in terms of local politics and discourses of sex work, and also in terms of socializing with locals keeping a conversation in their mother language, therefore having them in a more comfortable setting (for instance, when interviewing Metje or Mariska who are both Dutch, or in order to gain key local informants). I thus privileged English over other languages, and did so also for the bibliography. This study must hence be considered bearing these limits in minds.
4. Heterogeneous legal strategies
Transnationality in the field of sex work is a global reality, whether at an intercontinental, continental or regional level (TAMPEP 2009, p. 9). European provisions on sex work vary extensively. Johanna Westeson (2012) lists them in a report for the International Court of Human Rights Policy (ICHRP)8: “they go from absolute prohibition, such as in Albania, Lithuania, Romania and Serbia, to regulation, including Germany, Hungary and Turkey and the Netherlands, to semi-abolition, such as in Sweden, Norway and Iceland... In many European countries, among them the UK, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, the exchange of sex for money is not prohibited, but organized activities surrounding such exchange are illegal and prostitution is not regulated” (Westeson 2012, p. 200; for a general overview, see map below).
The legal approaches adopted by European states thus vary in their design, adoption, and implementation; yet, they share the fact that they are ambiguous and generally do not focus on the protection of the human rights of sex workers (TAMPEP 2009, p. 12). Analysing this legal puzzle is thus challenging, and requires in the first place a method for categorizing the variety of legislations, so as to gain some insights on the matter. Usually, the legal approaches are classified according to the degree of regulation or criminalization that they apply to sex work and related activities. The range goes from abolitionist, prohibitionist or regulationist approaches; typically, these approaches focused directly on sex workers, either criminalizing or regulating their and surrounding activities. More recently, the term
8 The ICHRP closed down in February 2012. It still provides, though, a web-archive of the 14 years of work,
21
abolitionist’ has been coined to depict the ‘unprecedented change of perspective’, as criminalizing women who are seen as victims does not seem reasonable: thus, the focus of this approach shifts towards criminalizing the demand of sexual services, which is usually purchased by males that are understood as being dominant and violent (see, Honeyball motion, appendix 1; also, Schulze 2014, p. 51). However, such models do not take into account the fluidity and dynamic environment that the sex industry in particular - and law more in general– represent: they assume a clear distinction between the mentioned categories, as well as between the subjects involved in the sex trade, but do not offer the possibility for careful analysis. These boundaries are far from being clear-cut, and resonate with what has been presented above as methodological nationalism. Moreover, as noted by Johanna Westeson (2012) “this taxonomy attends exclusively to laws governing the exchange of sexual services, ignoring the many overlapping laws that effectively penalize sex work over and above the offences listed in the criminal code” (Westeson 2012, ff. 859). The Council of Europe, in its latest report ‘Prostitution, Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery’ (2014), simplifies this taxonomy by distinguishing between approaches that legalize and approaches that criminalize prostitution. For the sake of the analysis I will therefore refer to this latter classification; bearing in mind however that these representations do not offer the possibility to cover the complexities that surround sex work and the sex industry, this classification will be complicated in the following chapter that looks at sex work and its relation to law in practice. Therefore, since in the interests of this study are not simply the laws and its impacts on the everyday lives of sex workers but also the rationalities that underlie such legislations, I will refer to the construction of the dominant frames9within which sex work is depicted to the public opinion and by policy makers10. By doing so, it will be possible to understand how sex work is constructed both at the ideological and the practical level; only afterwards would it be possible to reflect on the ‘integrative power’ of the Honeyball motion11. Finally, I will put forth a selected sample of rulings of the European Court of Justice. It is the ECJ that represents the law in Europe, and it is to the ECJ that one has to refer to when wishing to understand how the European reality is interpreted by the law – as opposed to politicians or the media.
9 Frames are cognitive structure that help define how one sees the world. Similarly, the notion ‘problem
framing’ refers to the fact that frames can be manufactured or manipulated by claims makers who use the media to disseminate particular messages to encourage certain interpretations of a social problem and discourage others (Farrel and Fahy 2009, p. 618).
10
In its report ‘Sex Work, Migration, Health’ (2009), TAMPEP provides a change of approach towards sex work, namely by switching from a ‘regulatory approach’ to a ‘frame approach’. The questions that served to compile the frame taxonomy where: How is sex work perceived within the national context? Who is targeted by the
legislative measures? What actions are regulated and in what way? How are the measures implemented and what are the consequences?(p. 14-15). However, data for Croatia and Ireland were not gathered, as at the time
were not part of the EU; thus, for these two countries I interpret the vocabulary used in present legislations and media discourses. Furthermore, Sweden does not appear in the report, I therefore refer mainly to my own literature review, content analysis and my own perception of the debate. See section 3.2.
11As discussed above, the Honeyball motion aims at spreading the ‘Swedish model’ across the EU. See the full
22 4.1 ‘How prostitution is dealt with across Europe’12
As the map presented above shows, at the moment national legislations are fragmented with regards to how to deal with sex work. The motion proposed by Ms. Honeyball would have as its first impact the colour yellow painting the whole map, creating a first instance of policy harmonization with regards to prostitution. Whereas theoretically this would not affect sex workers, since sex work would not be criminalized but only paying for sexual services would become illegal, in practice there is much controversy surrounding this claim. Let us dig a little deeper into the so-called ‘Nordic-model’ and its portrayed success.
Westeson notes that “according to the legislative history of the Swedish law, the objective of the law penalizing the customer only was twofold: on one hand to be norm-setting, and on the other to clarify that prostitution is not socially acceptable” (Westeson 2012, p. 199): “[E]ven though prostitution as such is not a desirable societal phenomenon it is not reasonable to also criminalize [the woman] who, at least in most cases, is the weaker party who is exploited by others wanting to satisfy their sexual drive. It is also important to motivate prostitutes to seek help to get away from prostitution, so that they do not feel that they risk any kind of punishment for having been active as prostitutes” (Legislative history to the 1999 law, Proposition 1997/98:55, p. 104).13
12
This map is not complete, in that it does not account for the policies adopted by Switzerland. The alternative is a map adopted by the Council of Europe (2014) which is more detailed in its taxonomy. However, it is derived from Wikipedia, a source I am not allowed to use as a reference in this study.Source: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/interactive/2013/dec/11/prostitution-europe-map-human-trafficking-sweden
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The law entered into force on 1 January 1999, has been repealed in 2005, and was part of a larger package of laws on violence against women. As clarified by Westeson, “the wording of the law is gender-neutral, but it is placed within a legal and philosophical framework of male violence against women and rests on assumptions of male dominance and female subordination” (p. 199). Her arguments find resonance with what Levy and Jacobsson (2014) present about the impacts of the Swedish model, and how “the sexköpslagen has succeded in its goal of redefining the normative social construction and understanding of the sex industry (Florin 2012; Hubbard et al. 2007a; Levy 2014), since the discourses framing the law have so profoundly informed the views of state-sponsored Swedish service providers and the authorities alike” (Levy and Jacobsson 2014, p. 12). The impacts of this normative redefinition, however, seem to be limited to governmental agents and public opinion, leaving aside sex workers and society at large, as will be further elaborated in the following chapter. In fact, whereas one of the main reasons why the exportation of the Nordic model should be adopted at the European level is to promote gender equality in societies, since prostitution is framed as gendered violence against women, one has to remain sceptical about its underlying assumptions: how can a law promote gender equality, if it is framed within unequal gender assumptions? Positive side-effects must nonetheless be taken into account, but in the scope of this study are the effects that such legislation may have at its maximum reach, when it fulfils its goals and alters the existing reality. The underlying preoccupation is that rather than pursing balanced legislations, such model would amplify the swings of the (gender) pendulum. In short, such a law does not promote gender equality, but maintains an epistemological status quo where men are abusive and dominant, and women are passive agents that cannot possibly choose sex as means of transaction. Significantly, it is a status quo marked by the ruling and domination of rich, White people. I will return to this point shortly hereafter.
Another powerful argument for adopting this model is that it is the most effective in countering human trafficking (see, inter alia, Honeyball 2014; also, Mendes Bota 2014). This second argument is particularly problematic, in that it equates sex work, in whatever forms it is conducted, with trafficking in persons. The rationale for this equation is derived from Western liberal feminist thinking which, according to Shah (2011, p. 2), in the 1980s and 1990s argued that a legislative response to the problem of ‘trafficking’ must be based on the following three principles: 1) all prostitution is done by women and girls; 2) prostitution is primarily experienced as violence by women and girls; 3) therefore, all prostitution constitutes human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This led to the promotion of the idea that prostitution is equivalent to trafficking worldwide, “prompting restrictive border management responses14 even though no data supporting the theory that tighter border controls serve to prevent women from engaging in sex work is available” (Shah 2011, p. 3). A strong body of research on sex work shows instead that: 1) sex work is done also by men
14An example is US government officials’ combination of anti-trafficking initiatives with ‘border-management’
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and transgender people, though they are targeted differently by law enforcement; 2) the selling of sexual services is fundamentally conducted as an income generating activity, and not primarily as violence - although the criminalisation of sexual commerce is seen to enhance the violence that sex workers may face; 3) prostitution and human trafficking are not the same phenomenon, and it is incorrect to assume that everyone who sells sexual services is exploited (Agustín 2005, 2008; Andrijasevic 2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2009; Andrijasevic et al. 2012; Aradau et al. 2012; Billington-Greig 1913; Crownhurst et al. 2012; Farrell and Fahy 2009; FitzGerald 2010; Hubbard et al. 2008; ICRSE 2005; Levy and Jacobsson 2014; Lynne-Musto 2009; McCarthy et al. 2012; TAMPEP 2009; Shah 2011; Sukthankar 2011; Westeson 2012).
Deploying the foucauldian lenses here might be revealing: what, then, is achieved by conflating sex work with ‘trafficking’ and ‘sexual exploitation’? Which problem is overshadowed by framing sex work as human trafficking, and which identities does this conflation promote? Whereas from mainstream discourses it seems that human trafficking is a relatively new phenomenon, its conflation with sex work is not. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, news articles and political rhetoric inflamed with stories of young women kidnapped and raped, which subsequently ended up in what at the time was the white slave discourse. Teresa Billington-Greig, a suffragette who created the Women’s Freedom League, writes in 1913: “the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1912 [...] was created almost entirely out of the statement that unwilling, innocent girls were forcibly trapped; that by drugs, by false messages, by feigned sickness, by offers of or requests for help and assistance, girls were spirited away and never heard of again; that these girls, often quite young children, were carried off to flats and houses of ill-fame, there outraged and beaten, and finally transported abroad to foreign brothels under the control of large vice syndicates” (Billington-Greig 1913, p. 428, italics added). Thus, whereas the turn toward the criminalisation of the purchase of sexual services may be coined as neo-abolitionist, the reasoning behind this model dates more than a hundred years ago, and the results are the same as then: the institutionalisation of a claim, and the stigmatisation of sex workers. Keeping in mind that cases of trafficking are by definition hard to track down, and that police reports might be biased at the origin, the discrepancy between the figures reported by official police departments and the media is not only suspect, but inverted – now as then. According to a report on trafficking and prostitution made by the UK police department in 2010, out of a collected sample of 30000 thousand off-street sex workers, 2600 were estimated to be in the most vulnerable situation, that of being forced (Jackson et al. 2010, p. 5-6). This reflects roughly 10% of the sample, which is starkly contrasted by the ‘guesstimated’ 90% of trafficked victims among sex workers purported by some news media and politicians, such as Ms. Honeyball. As Lynne Musto (2009) puts it, “the number of individuals in trafficking is unknown, making representative frames impossible” (p. 282). This deserves a pause for reflection. How did we arrive to such estimates, if for the
