To browse Academia. Isabelle Johansson. Trafficking in human beings is a topic that has received a lot of attention the last ten years. It has been referred to as a modern form of slavery and a crime against humanity. There is a flood of actors working to fight trafficking and save its victims, occupied with different forms of victim assistance.
At the same time the European Union is augmenting restrictions on visas and asylum legislation, border controls and deportations, which makes migrants from certain countries who wish to travel to Europe despite these restrictions vulnerable to exploitation. Claiming victimhood is often the only way for irregular migrant women in the sex industry to obtain a legal status in contemporary Italy.
However, the category and its legal and social benefits are out of reach to many. Irene Peano. In this paper, I propose an analysis of the apparently contradictory attitudes towards transactional sexual exchanges, as they have emerged in public debate and informed legislation and policies in Italy over the past few years.
The ambiguity towards commercial sex is linked to a specific dynamic of power, which denies sexual labour the status of work and makes it the object of repressive and criminalising policies, whilst at the same time habitually demanding sexual services in exchange for money, gifts or favours.
The article shows how criminalisation functions as a prominent form for the control of subjects, related to the workings of sovereignty. In particular, I consider the ways in which the criminalisation of prostitution and of undocumented migration, which compound in the figure of the migrant prostitute, represents a means for the exertion of sovereignty and relates to the centrality of desire, transgression and their disciplining in the contemporary context.
