Prostitution Policy

The aim of this article is to offer a comprehensive analysis of the European Union’s neo-abolitionist approach to prostitution, drawing on the literature that addresses the global rise of neo-abolitionism and using key concepts developed by the gendered approaches to the European Union in order to adapt them to the particular context of the European Union. To do so, the article undertakes a critical frame analysis of the European Union’s violence against women policies, as it is in such policies that prostitution has been most thoroughly addressed, in combination with an analysis of the nature and evolution of the European Union’s gender equality policies more broadly. The article contends that the emergence of prostitution on the gender equality agenda of the European Union and the adoption of an explicit neo-abolitionist approach by the European Parliament can be explained by the coalescence, in the mid 1990s, of three key factors: Sweden’s accession to the European Union and the consequent positioning of Swedish femocrats, keen on exporting Sweden’s neo-abolitionist agenda to the European Union, in central positions of power within European Union institutions; the crystallisation of a robust neo-abolitionist velvet triangle through the creation of strong institutional links between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Women’s Lobby, which remained unchallenged; and the gradual development of a hybrid model of gender equality in the European Union which resonates with ne-oabolitionist ideals at the same time as neo-abolitionism itself was increasingly associated to gender equality as a fundamental European Union value.

Abstract The article describes and analyzes debates on
prostitution policies in Norway from 1970 until the introduction
of a ban against the purchase of sexual services in
2009. Throughout these decades, it has varied whether prostitution
as such, that is in principle, has been considered a
problem and if so, whether it has been seen as predominantly
a legal or a social problem. In some periods, only particular
forms of prostitution have been considered problematic,
while prostitution as such has not been considered in need of
legal intervention. In other periods, prostitution per se has
been considered the problem, and in these periods attempts
to differentiate between different forms of prostitution have
been resisted. The coming together of the pragmatic and
principled concerns of various political actors was an important
reason for the actual passing of the legal reform
criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. The effective
coming together of principled and practical concerns must
be simultaneously understood in the context of other developments, both locally, nationally, and internationally.

This article examines the so-called “Nordic model” in action. Using feminist argumentation, the model aims to abolish commercial sex by criminalizing the buying of sexual services while not criminalizing the selling, as the aim is to protect, rather than punish, women. Utilizing over 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork and 195 interviews in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, this article argues that in a situation where the majority of people who sell sex in the region are migrants, the regulation of commercial sex has shifted from prostitution to immigration policies, resulting in a double standard in the governance of national and foreign sellers of sexual services. Client criminalization has a minor role in the regulation of commercial sex in the area, and instead, migrants become targets of punitive regulation executed through immigration and third-party laws. Nationals are provided social welfare policies to assist exit from commercial sex such as therapeutic counseling, whereas foreigners are excluded from state services and targeted with punitive measures, like deportations and evictions. My fieldwork reveals a tension between the stated feminist-humanitarian aims of the model, to protect and save women, and the punitivist governance of commercial sex that in practice leads to control, deportations, and women’s conditions becoming more difficult. The article concludes that when examined in action, the Nordic model is a form of humanitarian governance that I call punitivist humanitarianism, or governing in the name of caring.

"Esse artigo pretende levantar dados sobre a criação da zona de prostituição Jardim Itatinga, na periferia da cidade de Campinas, interior de São Paulo. O interesse por essa história acontece em função de uma peculiaridade do bairro: o Jardim Itatinga foi criado estrategicamente nos anos 60 pelo poder público, com objetivo de concentrar numa área periférica, todas as atividades ligadas a prostituição da cidade, garantindo seu zoneamento fora do espaço urbano consolidado. Ou seja, sua criação foi diferente da
maioria das zonas de meretrício que, por diversas razões, concentram “naturalmente” a atividade: o confinamento violento da prostituição no Jardim Itatinga foi planejado. Portanto, parto do pressuposto que a invenção do Jardim Itatinga - enquanto reflexo de uma ordem moral e disciplinadora – exemplifica a atuação planejada da organização urbana na produção de territórios confinados, estigmatizados e marginais."

This article explains the rise of neo-abolitionism in Europe with reference to the intersection that it enables between the gender and sexual politics of neoliberalism, vulnerability, and security. Analyzing the recent adoption of neo-abolitionist prostitution policies in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Ireland, it contends that neo-abolitionism offers a suitable response to the needs that globalized neoliberalism creates for European states, allowing them to extend their control, disguise their moral agenda, and reproduce their material and normative foundations, guaranteeing the reproduction of the population and accumulation of wealth while reasserting their sovereignty and political identity as progressive in gender and sexual terms.

Relatively few policy scholars have analyzed prostitution laws and the governance of sex work. This is unfortunate because the policy area is associated with societal problems, and the systematic study of public policy was initially conceived to address such problems. Moreover, this dearth is problematic for reasons related to how we conceptualize policy processes, actors involved in them, relationships among them, power structures characterizing them and ultimately the significance of policy. Developments in prostitution laws in Canada, through constitutional challenges to criminal provisions and local practices of implementation, suggest the analytical usefulness of the policy community heuristic in capturing important relational dynamics. With a focus on relationships and not merely structural and strategic linkages, it can capture nuances concerning changing dynamics and their implications for policy. Conceptually, this study suggests that agonistic relations emerge within policy communities that may be deeply divided when members experience catalyst events of which the public is aware, cannot easily refute the evidence and converge on a response framework. This study highlights policy developments that in significant ways have been driven by sex workers in Vancouver, BC.

In this paper, I argue that the implementation of the BSwedish model^—the criminalization of the purchase of sex—in Northern Ireland in 2014 provides an example of a morality-driven policy process in which the actual concerns of sex workers were distorted and dismissed. In the policy debate, sex workers were portrayed as victims who had no choice—a claim passionately refuted by many sex workers. As a result of the narrow focus on Bvictim vs. free choice,^ there has been little room to discuss the actual working conditions of sex workers and the structural constraints that inhibit their freedom and negatively affect their well-being. In this paper, I present the contradictions and conflicts between the personal opinions of Northern Irish policy-makers on one hand and the actual experiences and views of sex workers on the other. By juxtaposing these views, I facilitate a belated conversation between policy-makers and sex workers—a conversation which can inform policy debates in other jurisdictions.

Die Situationsanalyse (SiA) ist eine postmodern-feministische Weiterentwicklung der Grounded Theory, die seit den frühen 2000er-Jahren maßgeblich von der US-Soziologin Adele E. Clarke entworfen, in der Politikwissenschaft aber bislang kaum beachtet wurde. Dabei ist ihr Potenzial für politikwissenschaftliche Forschung im Allgemeinen sowie für feministisch-kritische Politikfeldanalysen im Besonderen nicht zu unterschätzen. Mit der SiA kann der gouvernementale Politikbegriff überwunden und eine umfängliche politikfeldspezifische feministische Machtanalyse realisiert werden. Die SiA steht im Einklang mit intersektionalen, postkolonial-feministischen und anderen konstruktivistischen Repräsentationstheorien und ermöglicht es, die feministische Idee einer Vielzahl von konfliktorisch angelegten Öffentlichkeiten in die Politikfeldanalyse zu integrieren. Hilfreich sind v.a. drei Strategien: (1) die Konzeptionalisierung des Politikfeldes als ‚Arena‘, in der verschiedene ‚soziale Welten‘ existieren und interagieren; (2) die Suche nach ‚implizierten Akteur*innen‘; (3) das Sichtbarmachen von epistemischer Diversität. Konkret bietet die SiA mit ihren Mapping-Strategien methodische Werkzeuge, mit deren Hilfe ein Politikfeld in seiner ganzen Heterogenität sichtbar gemacht werden kann. In diesem Beitrag gehe ich zunächst auf die lückenhafte politikwissenschaftliche Rezeption der SiA ein, um sodann aufzuzeigen, wie die SiA für die Politikwissenschaft und insbesondere für feministisch-kritische Politikfeldanalysen fruchtbar gemacht werden kann. Dies verdeutliche ich immer wieder skizzenhaft am Beispiel der deutschen Prostitutionspolitik.
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As a postmodern-feminist advancement of Grounded Theory, Situational Analysis (SiA) was first put forward in the early 2000s by US sociologist Adele E. Clarke. So far, political science has paid little attention to this innovative approach. However, its potential for political analysis in general and for feminist critical policy analysis in particular should no longer be underestimated. Using SiA, researchers can overcome narrow conceptualizations of ‘the political’ that are still widespread in political science and conduct a comprehensive feminist power analysis of a specific policy field. SiA is highly compatible with intersectional, postcolonial-feminist and other constructivist theories of (political) representation. It enables researchers to incorporate the feminist idea of multiple conflictual public spheres into policy analysis. Three strategies are particularly helpful: (1) the conceptualization of the policy fields as 'arenas' in which different 'social worlds' exist and interact; (2) the search for 'implicated actors'; (3) the visualization of epistemic diversity. Furthermore, SiA offers concrete research tools: In order to render visible the policy field in all its heterogeneity, three kinds of maps (situational maps, social world/arena maps, positional maps) can be created. In this paper, I first address the fact that SiA has been largely neglected by political science so far. Following this I explicate how scholars can make use of SiA in political science and especially in feminist critical policy analysis. I illustrate this using the example of German prostitution policy.

This paper discusses the genealogy of prostitution policies in Brussels through the lens of morality politics. It uses the analytical framework proposed by Hendrik Wagenaar and Sietske Altink (2012) to compare the formulation and implementation of policies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with today's policymaking in Brussels as well as the discourses underlying those policies. Although it departs from the six characteristics of morality politics, the study introduces one element that adds to the complexity of policymaking in this domain: gender. We argue that a gendered ideology and stigma have informed past and present prostitution policies in Brussels and that the many actors involved in the city's policymaking have more often than not relied on emotions and personal views on female sexuality to support their calls for the control or outright repression of public commercial sex. The comparative analysis illustrates the persistent symbolic nature of policy formulation and a blatant disregard for data, both of which have led to the approval of unworkable laws and sudden policy shifts. However, the participation of new actors in the debates 2 about prostitution in recent years has ushered in an increase in questionings of morality politics and will hopefully bolster calls for fact-based policies.

This article reports on the results of a study on men who pay for sex across Ireland. In presenting a detailed picture of the diverse group of sex workers' clients, their motives and attitudes, we debunk the prevalent stereotypes about men who pay for sex, as continuously used in the public discourse about sex work on both sides of the Irish border: we show that the majority of clients do not fit the image of violent, careless misogynists. We argue that these debates about commercial sex as well as the experiences of those who pay for sex are shaped and nurtured by the specific local context, by conservative Christian morals and the dominant sex-negative culture across Ireland. Finally, we argue that the criminalization of paying for sex which came into effect in Northern Ireland in 2015 and is being discussed in the Republic of Ireland will likely not stop the majority of clients from paying for sex and thus fail to achieve its aim to reduce or abolish sex work.

Despite the primacy of the abolitionist policy regime, adopted in 1960 and which is centred on concerns about the wellbeing of the “victims” of prostitution, contemporary French prostitution policy has sustained a variety of inconsistent policies. Alone, these reforms have not threatened the established abolitionist regime. Together, though, they amount to a cumulative transformation of what French abolitionism stands for. This challenges traditional conceptions of significant institutional and paradigmatic change as predicated on critical junctures. This paper therefore argues that understanding the manner in which policy actors, seeking to further their preferred policy options, garner legitimacy and support for their project within established institutional frameworks requires analysing the interplay between the constraining effect of institutions and the creative and constituting effect of strategic framing. Presenting evidence from the preliminary process tracing of recent two policy reform projects, this paper consequently suggests that framing prostitution policy proposals as compliant with the dominant ideational framework is necessary but insufficient to guarantee reform success. Drawing on ideational and institutional policy theory, the paper concludes that, by virtue of the continuously (re)constructed and negotiated nature of dominant ideational frameworks, the abolitionist paradigm is rendered capable of housing an inconsistent variety of policies through the strategic framing of policy options.

Prostitution in feminism is always the object of a strong polarized debate, most of which is concentrated on the definition itself. It is considered a synonym of violence, as the abolitionists claim, or an occupational choice, as the regulationists claim. As a result of this debate, ideological positions have crystallized into laws regarding prostitution in different countries. At one end of the spectrum we find the abolitionist model in Sweden, where laws abolish prostitution and where the client is fined or incarcerated, but never the prostitute. On the other end of the spectrum we find the Netherlands, where prostitution is considered to be a job and sex-workers are protected by Dutch labor legislation, consistent with the regulationist model. This paper critiques both the models in Sweden and the Netherlands through an exploration on how their laws affect the women who work in prostitution. However, the paper also considers arguments that either model would be a better means of securing prostitutes’ rights than the widespread family of models (including in the U.S) that criminalize prostitutes. My analysis of weaknesses and strengths of each model with respect to their impact on the
lives of women will propose the possibility of formulating alternatives. This paper thus contributes to the larger debate on prostitution without becoming trapped by the dichotomy that is often presupposed within feminist discussion.

Recent work in the field of feminist institutionalism has made important progress in furthering our understanding of gendered institutional change. The present paper adds to this body of research by identifying a specific type of institutional change that has been scarcely addressed until now, namely, the way in which individual ideas can become institutions, which may also be termed the institutionalization of new ideas. It argues that gradual ideational changes play an essential part in many processes of gendered institutional change, and that the interaction between ideas and institutions therefore is of great importance to improve our knowledge of these kinds of processes. Revisiting an empirical study of Swedish prostitution policy the paper specifies two idea-based mechanisms conducive to gendered change, namely consensus of the problem and gendering of the debate, which may function as informal institutions with lock-in effects. The article concludes by discussing how an ideational perspective is a fruitful way forward for research in this field.

In 1998, Sweden was the first country in the world to criminalise the purchase of sexual services, but not the sale of sex. The law represented a new prostitution regime that problematised power relations in prostitution as inherently gendered and hierarchical and made the male buyers of sexual services responsible for the act of prostitution.
The Swedish case is critically important to the study of gendered institutional change and has
been the subject of empirical interest and global debate.
Using the feminist institutionalism approach to the analysis, Criminalising the Client:
Institutional Change, Gendered Ideas and Feminist Strategies offers new insights to the Swedish
case and provides a new analytical framework for micro-level analysis of institutional
change that addresses the struggle for meaning, institutionalisation of new gendered ideas
and the (strategic) actions of feminist actors.

Trotz konzeptueller Gängigkeit mangelt es in der Soziologie sozialer Probleme
an moralsoziologischer Aufklärung über Moralunternehmertum. Auf dispositiv- bzw. diskursethnographischer Grundlage analysiert der Beitrag, wie eine Informationsveranstaltung zum ›Nordischen Modell‹ der Prostitutionspolitik die Kriminalisierung der Nachfrage nach sexuellen Dienstleistungen mit
moralischer Wahrheit ausstattet. Während ausdrückliche Werturteile und die ethische Argumentation randständig bleiben, wird moralische Abwertung zwar durchgängig, aber nur indirekt betrieben. Als entscheidende Diskursstrategie fungiert Emotionalisieren, das über Affektreizung leibbasiert auf moralische Schocks zielt.

Dreßler, Arne (2021): "Affektive Wertdurchsetzung: Emotionssoziologische Perspektiven auf die Verwicklung von Prostitution mit Moral". In: Zeitschrift für Diskursforschung, Jg. 9, H. 1, S. 103-122.

This article reports on the results of a study on men who pay for sex across Ireland. In presenting a detailed picture of the diverse group of sex workers' clients, their motives and attitudes, we debunk the prevalent stereotypes about men who pay for sex, as continuously used in the public discourse about sex work on both sides of the Irish border: we show that the majority of clients do not fit the image of violent, careless misogynists. We argue that these debates about commercial sex as well as the experiences of those who pay for sex are shaped and nurtured by the specific local context, by conservative Christian morals and the dominant sex-negative culture across Ireland. Finally, we argue that the criminalization of paying for sex which came into effect in Northern Ireland in 2015 and is being discussed in the Republic of Ireland will likely not stop the majority of clients from paying for sex and thus fail to achieve its aim to reduce or abolish sex work.