Law in Action: Local-level prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers

This article comparatively analyses city-based prostitution policies and practices and their effects on sex workers in countries that have adopted a partial criminalization model of intervention towards prostitution – Belgium and Italy. The two case studies selected for this research – the cities of Antwerp (Belgium) and Catania (Italy) – were chosen for their adopted local approach towards prostitution in designated red-light districts (RLDs): whereas prostitution has been collaboratively governed in Antwerp, it has simply been tolerated in Catania. By considering the factors that have led to the development of prostitution policies and practices in these two cities, and their characteristics both within and outside the two cities’ RLDs, this article compares and analyses the effects produced on sex workers across city areas. The study revealed a number of similarities between the two local cases considered: local practices towards sex work in both cities have been shaped by urban regeneration in RLDs, and by concerns about nuisance and crime across city areas (irregular immigration and trafficking, in particular); in all instances, they have had similar exclusionary effects on sex workers – and especially on the migrant women among them. The study also identified two key differences in the practices towards prostitution adopted in these two cities: they differed in the level of access to support services offered to sex workers and in the pervasiveness of proactive police control. The article concludes by arguing that all these local practices – including the ones that are seemingly different – ultimately converge in their ethos: they reinforce the socially constructed status of migrant sex workers as either law-breakers or trafficked victims to be subject to control and, in the latter case, also protection.