Special Issue: “Prostitution in twentieth century Europe”

Dolinsek, Sonja, und Siobhán Hearne. „Introduction: prostitution in twentieth century Europe“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 121–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2022.2029361. (Free)

Azara, Liliosa. „The new face of Italian prostitution in the aftermath of the Merlin Law: forms, debate and repression“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 268–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2021.2018405.

Dolinsek, Sonja. „Tensions of abolitionism during the negotiation of the 1949 ‘Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others’“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 223–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2022.2026893. (PDF)

Hájková, Anna. „Why we need a history of prostitution in the Holocaust“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 194–222. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2022.2028739.

Hearne, Siobhán. „Selling sex under socialism: prostitution in the post-war USSR“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 290–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2021.1937952. (Free)

Martin, Annalisa. „‘Cleaning up the cityscape’: managing commercial sex and city space in Cologne, 1956–1972“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 311–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2021.1971624.

Papadogiannis, Nikolaos. „Greek trans women selling sex, spaces and mobilities, 1960s–80s“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 331–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2021.2013447. (Free)

Petrungaro, Stefano. „Police and prostitution in Yugoslavia: a nuanced relationship“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 170–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2022.2029362.

Simic, Ivan. „Prostitution in socialist Yugoslavia: from Stalinism to the Yugoslav way“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 249–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2022.2026298.

Svanström, Yvonne. „Prostitution as non-labour leading to forced labour. Vagrancy and Gender in Sweden and Stockholm, 1919–1939“. European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 29, Nr. 2 (2022): 145–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2021.2018406. (Free)

On the Sensory Policing of Vices: Morality at Work in a German Vice Squad

Leser, Julia. ‘On the Sensory Policing of Vices:  Morality at Work in a German Vice Squad’. Journal of Extreme Anthropology 4, no. 1 (7 March 2020): 22–44. https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.7358.

Abstract

This paper explores the policing of vices and offers a critical inquiry into the affective politics of policing practices seen through police and state ethnography, political anthropology, and the ‘affective turn’ in social and cultural theory. It shows how the moral worlds of policing sex work and performing raids in the red-light ‘milieu’ are constituted in the making of boundaries through visual, olfactory, somatosensory, and auditory sensations, which can be understood as normative performances in the realm of morality. Police officers do not engage in a neutral gaze but transform the sensuous into sensations that enact these normative distinctions between the ‘normal’ and the ‘abnormal’ – the morally questionable red-light ‘milieu.’ These practices can be read in regard to a morality that is conveyed in and through the officers’ sensational performances in an observingly affective and somatic manner. Morality not simply is but is being done—and performing affects and sensations plays a significant role in the making of moral worlds in the realm of policing. Raiding the red-light ‘milieu’ is a performance on disorder and order, on what is normal and what is not, and thus a deeply political practice that reveals how order- and boundary-making operates through basic sensations and feelings, of the sensuous, the aesthetic, and the somatic.

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Mobilizing shame and disgust: abolitionist affective frames in Austrian and German anti-sex-work movements

Birgit Sauer (2019). Mobilizing shame and disgust: abolitionist affective frames in Austrian and German anti-sex-work movements, Journal of Political Power, 12:3, 318-338, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2019.1669262

This article analyses anti-sex-work mobilization in Austria and Germany since 2014. An affective perspective on the websites of these groups shows how their framings run the risk of establishing a disciplinary regime of governing people, of a restrictive, heterosexist norm of sexuality, and of gender inequality. Abolitionist strategies in the two countries thus produce an affective governmentality excluding those who should not belong to the affective community, i.e. those who do not submit to limiting their sexuality to the private realm of monogamous relationships. Finally, the article suggests that the abolitionist affective mobilisation feeds into the self-affirmation of traditional branches of women’s movements in the two countries.

Contested boundaries: The moralization and politicization of prostitution in German cities

Grohs, Stephan. 2019. ‘Contested Boundaries: The Moralization and Politicization of Prostitution in German Cities’. European Urban and Regional Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/0969776418822083.

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Abstract

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The local regulation of prostitution in Germany is a contested area of urban politics. In this issue area, morality claims intersect with the material interests of home- and landowners and the security demands of ‘ordinary’ citizens. The Prostitution Law of 2001 has liberalized the legal framework: the legislation ‘normalized’ sex work, triggering the re-definition of urban strategies to regulate prostitution. This article analyses the conflict dynamics and the framing of conflicts over regulations in four German cities. It identifies the main actors, coalition-building processes and the framing of conflicts, and links these elements to the resulting policies. With regard to theory, it explores the relevance of classical explanatory approaches to local governance such as party politics, urban growth coalitions, political culture and bureaucratic politics to the value-laden issue of prostitution. It thereby contributes to the growing academic interest in the nature of morality policies and the question of the specific conditions under which prostitution is framed as a moral issue or as a ‘normal’ subject within urban politics.

Police Enforcement of Street Prostitution as a Quality-of-Life Offense: New York City, United States, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Cohen, Bernard. 2018. „Police Enforcement of Street Prostitution as a Quality-of-Life Offense: New York City, United States, and Frankfurt am Main, Germany“. Deviant Behavior 0 (0): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2018.1431096.

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The present paper compares how police in Hunts Point, South Bronx, New York City and Frankfurt am Main Germany manage street prostitution as a quality-of-life offense. Methods utilized for this research include observation and “conversation” in public spaces with prostitutes, police, and community members. This paper deals with characteristics of street prostitutes, police enforcement, actual interaction between police and street actors, and impact of these methods on prostitutes. For decades, broken windows policing has been utilized to counter quality-of-life offenses in urban neighborhoods such as NYC, and evidence regarding its effectiveness has often been questioned. In attempts to address prostitution, two variant policing models were identified and examined through the framework of broken windows theory: Punitive/Criminalization Policing and Containment/Laissez-Faire Policing. Broken windows policing probably lowered the incidence of quality-of-life offenses including street prostitution. However, broken windows theory does not take into account socially constructed myths that persist about prostitution, nor the realities that counter them. This paper addresses these myths and how they may inform policing practices, resulting in negative corollary effects which must be eliminated.

Young Men Doing Business: Male Bar Prostitution in Berlin and Prague

 Ellison, Graham, and Ronald Weitzer. “Young Men Doing Business: Male Bar Prostitution in Berlin and Prague.” Sexualities, June 26, 2017. doi:10.1177/1363460717708139.

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Studies of male sex workers are often confined to the individual level rather than exploring their work environment per se or the larger ecological context in which their business activities are embedded. We know relatively little, for example, about the spatial location of erotic worksites (apart from street-level work) or the interactional dynamics of sellers and clients within such settings. This article presents an ethnographic study of bars and clubs in Prague and Berlin where male sexual commerce is transacted. We find important differences between the cities in the social organization of the bars and in participants’ demographic characteristics. The analysis links our micro-level findings to the larger forces of labour migration and sex tourism, factors that differ between the two cases.c

The long shadow of the Iron Curtain for female sex workers in German cities: Border effects and regional differences

Lindenblatt, Andreas, and Peter Egger. “The Long Shadow of the Iron Curtain for Female Sex Workers in German Cities: Border Effects and Regional Differences.” Urban Studies 54, no. 3 (February 1, 2017): 649–77. doi:10.1177/0042098016640655.

Abstract

This paper assesses determinants of habits and prices about sexual work in Germany. The paper alludes to a regional pattern, in particular, in pricing. This pattern varies with the size of cities and across as well as along the former East–West German border. In particular, the evidence suggests that there is a long shadow of the former Iron Curtain which leads to higher conditional prices in the former East than in the West, in particular, in larger agglomerations such as Berlin. Moreover, there is evidence of habit formation and spillovers within regions, which leads to regionally clustered prices as well as unsafe sex services being offered by sexworkers.

Gentrification and the flexibilisation of spatial control: Policing sex work in Germany

Künkel, Jenny. “Gentrification and the Flexibilisation of Spatial Control: Policing Sex Work in Germany.” Urban Studies, December 6, 2016, 42098016682427. doi:10.1177/0042098016682427.

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Gentrification has often been linked to the spatial displacement of the marginalised, including prostitutes. However, in Germany, the legal spaces of prostitution are to a certain extent defensible, and gentrification processes often cover larger parts of inner cities, leaving little room for displacement. Using the example of prostitution in Frankfurt, this paper analyses how police make sense of and shape the shifting geographies of gentrification. It shows how spatial displacement is partially subsumed by two additional police strategies: intensifying attempts to discursively appease protesting citizens, and flexibilising the containment of prostitution in the inner city (e.g. by keeping street scenes on the move and lobbying for temporary brothel licenses).

Special Section: Exploitation and Its Opposite. Researching the quality of working life in the sex industries

Sociological Research Online 21(4), November 2016: Peer Reviewed Special Section: Exploitation and Its Opposite. Researching the quality of working life in the sex industries

Guest Editors: Stef Adriaenssens, Giulia Garofalo Geymonat and Laura Oso

Articles:

Quality of Work in Prostitution and Sex Work: Introduction to the Special Section
Stef Adriaenssens, Giulia Garofalo Geymonat and Laura Oso

On Our Own Terms: The Working Conditions of Internet-Based Sex Workers in the UK
Teela Sanders, Laura Connelly and Laura Jarvis King

Work Conditions and Job Mobility in the Australian Indoor Sex Industry
Fairleigh Evelyn Gilmour

€Too Much Suffering’: Understanding the Interplay Between Migration, Bounded Exploitation and Trafficking Through Nigerian Sex Workers’ Experiences
Nicola Mai

Precarious or Protected? Evaluating Work Quality in the Legal Sex Industry
Alice Orchiston

Transnational Social Mobility Strategies and Quality of Work Among Latin-American Women Sex Workers in Spain
Laura Oso

Ambivalent Professionalisation and Autonomy in Workers’ Collective Projects: The Cases of Sex Worker Peer Educators in Germany and Sexual Assistants in Switzerland
Giulia Garofalo Geymonat and P.G. Macioti

All articles are freely accessible here.

From Control to Terror: German Prostitution Policies in Eastern and Western European Territories during both World Wars

Röger, Maren, and Emmanuel Debruyne. “From Control to Terror: German Prostitution Policies in Eastern and Western European Territories during Both World Wars.” Gender & History 28, no. 3 (November 1, 2016): 687–708. doi:10.1111/1468-0424.12245.

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In both World Wars, the German armies enacted a prostitution policy in all the occupied territories of Western and Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study, this article uses archival research in Poland, France, Belgium and Germany as well as existing studies in five languages to examine the continuities and discontinuities in German prostitution policies between the Western and the Eastern territories during both wars. In exploring the question of continuity, we consider the interaction of local authorities with occupation forces and how prostitution policies in Western and Eastern countries differed from the German ‘home front’. Strong continuities existed between the First and Second World War, including a severe backlash against the abolitionist trend in Europe and the extension of regulatory controls beyond the prostitutes to include other ‘suspect’ women, often justified by concerns over the spread of venereal diseases and public morality and health. Despite these continuities, prostitution policies were even more regressive during the Second World War, with the racial ideology of Nazism as the main trigger for the brutalisation of prostitution policies. German authorities pushed the system to greater extremes, overseeing its evolution from control to terror.