May-Len Skilbrei - Prostitution Policy in the Nordic Region: Ambiguous Sympathies

Ambiguous Sympathies

MAY-LEN SKILBREI
Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, Norway

CHARLOTTA HOLMSTRM
Malm University, Sweden

First published 2013 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright May-Len Skilbrei and Charlotta Holmstrm 2013

May-Len Skilbrei and Charlotta Holmstrm have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Skilbrei, May-Len.
Prostitution policy in the Nordic Region: ambiguous sympathies/by May-Len Skilbrei and Charlotta Holmstrm.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-4426-8 (hardback: alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-3156-0260-8 (ebook) ISBN 978-1-3170-7452-6 (epub) 1. ProstitutionGovernment policyScandinavia. I. Holmstrm, Charlotta. II. Title.
HQ125.S34S55 2013
363.4400948dc23

2013004542

ISBN 9781409444268 (hbk)
ISBN 9781315602608 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781317074526 (ebk-ePUB)

The book builds on a series of research projects funded by the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology, the Nordic Council of Ministers, the Research Council of Norway and the Swedish Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority. The large-scale project Prostitution in the Nordic Countries funded by the Nordic Councils of Ministers brought the two of us together, and at the host institution of the project, the Nordic Gender Institute NIKK, we particularly thank Solveig Bergman and Jennie Westlund. This project brought together scholars that were already working on questions of prostitution and human trafficking in the Nordic region, and it gave us an opportunity to get to know eachother and eachothers work even better. The participants in the research project Prostitution in the Nordic Countries deserve special thanks: Gsli Hrafn Atlason, Jeanett Bjnness, Katrn Anna Gumundsdttir, Synnve Jahnsen, Jari Kuosmanen, Anne-Maria Marttila, Anneli Siring, Marlene Spanger and Marianne Tveit.

We are also both indebted to our families for support and patience. We have seven children between us, and they are not always happy about us being hard-working moms. May-Len thanks her family; Ove, Bertil, Erin, Kasper and Petter, and Charlotta thanks her family; Ola, Hugo, Axel and Felix.

Over the last decade there has been great interest internationally in the development of prostitution policies in the Nordic countries after Sweden, Norway and Iceland introduced general bans against buying sex while it continues to be legal to sell sex in all these countries. particularly on the issue of prostitution (Skilbrei and Holmstrm 2011). In the Nordic countries the issue of prostitution has been high on the public agenda for several decades, and in most debates it is taken for granted that the countries share the goal of wanting to abolish prostitution.

There are, of course, also significant differences between the countries, and throughout the book we will present and discuss similarities and differences concerning the approach to prostitution. The similarities are great enough in important aspects to make developments in one country interesting for understanding developments in the others, as they share central features of welfare statism and a high degree of gender equality, as well as having intertwined national histories and commonalities in terms of culture and legal traditions (Nousiainen and Niemi-Kiesilinen 2001: 4). The analysis involves some degree of comparison between the Nordic countries, but we will not treat the countries as separate entities to be mapped and compared. Neither the region nor the countries are closed circuits wherein policies are forged. Policies and approaches in the region are not created in a vacuum but are rather a part of global policy processes. Not least since the concern over trafficking has stepped up transnational activities that are directly and indirectly influencing the prostitution market and the question of what policies individual countries can apply. In this book the focus is on the intra-regional developments, and even though we relate this to how the Nordic countries relate to developments elsewhere, we first and foremost present the Nordic case.

The Nordic countries are often treated as representatives of a Nordic model of prostitution policies, and are as such also often heralded for their progressive policies towards prostitution (see e.g., Raymond 2004). Politicians, journalists, researchers and activists internationally relate their arguments about what prostitution policy to apply to particularly the Swedish case, discussing whether the Nordic model or Swedish model constitutes a best practice for dealing with prostitution or not. Both in politics (e.g., in Vancouver Courier 8 March 2011 (Siuk 2011), on CNN 31 March 2011 (Ask 2011) and in the Scottish Parliament (2012)) and research, Nordic examples are used when debating prostitution policies in other countries, such as the UK (see e.g., Sanders, ONeill and Pitcher 2009) and France (see e.g., Allwood 2006).

The policy development in the Nordic countries points to a different approach from that of several other European countries. Examples of this is how in the Netherlands (Outshoorn 2012), Germany (Pates 2012) and in Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium (Weitzer 2012: 79) prostitution is approached with a form of regulation that includes decriminalisation of third-party involvement in prostitution and the issuing of licenses for establishments that organise and promote prostitution. The choice to criminalise only the act of the buyer in the Nordic countries also stands in contrast to the policies in countries which criminalise both buying and selling sexual services, such as Romania, Croatia and Serbia. Internationally, this way of approaching prostitution is widespread.

As the unilateral criminalisation of the purchase of sex in several of the Nordic countries has attracted a lot of attention, it is also something that many have an opinion about. It has great symbolic value, whether this is deemed a success or a failure.

There are numerous examples of presentations of individual Nordic cases or aspects of them in academic articles and book chapters. The literature on Sweden is much larger than on the other Nordic countries, including analysis of the Swedish situation and comparison between Sweden and other countries. In addition to empirical work on the Nordic situations, Nordic examples are used in research as representatives of a distinct approach to prostitution. Despite the volume of research in the area we propose that there is a knowledge gap and a subsequent need for more detailed and systematic descriptions, and a comprehensive analysis. We argue that the research conducted in the field has to understand the Nordic cases within a larger context than is typically done in the literature. Both international and Nordic representations of the reasons for and effects of the prostitution policies of the Nordic countries are often somewhat misguided or simplistic, representing them as a unitary approach or an undivided success or failure. Research on prostitution policies elsewhere points to the fact that the relationship between arguments for an approach and the formulation and implementation of policies is a complex issue (see e.g., Matthews 2008, Wagenaar and Altink 2012). Through our own empirical work on prostitution in the Nordic countries since the mid-1990s we know there is a great divergence between the formulations of laws on prostitution and the establishment of rights of the people involved on paper on the one hand, and in praxis on the other. Just simply presenting Nordic prostitution policies as they appear on paper is thus not sufficient if the goal is to understand how prostitution is approached in the various countries and in the region.