We support calls from sex workers and sex worker advocacy organisations for the full decriminalisation of sex work. In our support for decriminalisation, we join calls from sex worker organisations in rejecting the Nordic (‘End Demand’) model and ‘legalisation’ of sex work. These carceral measures simply enable punitive measures and State regulation in addition to creating two-tier system of sex work and eroding the rights of sex workers.
Stop poverty not prostitution
Firstly, it’s important to note the link between poverty and prostitution. Government economic policies including austerity and introduction of Universal Credit cause destitution and push more women (particularly single mothers) into prostitution. Sex worker organisations like the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) have done a huge amount of work highlighting the reality that of the approximately 72,800 sex workers in the UK, the majority are mothers working to support families.
Despite a wealth of evidence about the link between poverty and prostitution, the Government and enforcement pursue an agenda that increases arrests, criminalises and crackdown on sex workers. In our call for the full decriminalisation of sex work, we join demands from sex workers in calling for anti-poverty measures such as increasing welfare benefits and repealing no recourse to public funds (NRPF).
What has this got to do with migrants’ rights?
Enforcement, policing and carceral feminist approaches to sex work including prostitution harm all sex workers, including migrant sex workers. Furthermore, alongside structural racism, anxieties about commercial sex are embedded in the histories of immigration controls, and migrant sex workers also face additional risk of visa revocation, deportation and detention. These approaches rely on racist, femonationalist assumptions that position men of Colour as traffickers while women of Colour as “helpless, seductive, infectious,” both as threats to the nation.
While tackling exploitation is important, particularly in standing in solidarity with migrants in their fights for rights and justice, conflating exploitation with sex work is dangerous. It fails to acknowledge or tackle the role of the State in creating these problems and instead places the blame on individuals. In the migration and modern slavery sector, sex work is largely framed through this racist reductive lens of White saviourist anti-trafficking or ‘humanitarian’ approaches that strips sex workers of their agency and ability to make choices for themselves. It reinforces racist assumptions that racialised sex workers, especially those from the Global South, are helpless and in need of saving. Furthermore, these approaches are often led by White and Global North governments, organisations, and institutions without addressing or correcting the harmful institutions, policies, and practices, built on “racism, classism, xenophobia, whorephobia*, and transphobia, and other systems of oppression, that put racialised and migrant sex workers at risk of discrimination and violence.”
The reality is that anti-trafficking raids are used as an apparatus to police migrant sex workers, exert control over their bodies and deport them. From the infamous 2016 immigration raid on six massage parlors in Soho to a more recent raid in a strip club in north London (the latter was passed on to MRN through our Network), these operations are exercises in State control over women, sex workers and migrants designed to humiliate and terrify them.
“For us as sex worker organisations and allies, any policy or pronouncement that potentially conflates sex work with sexual exploitation and trafficking fails to understand the varying nature of sex work.” – from evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee by Decrim Now, English Collective of Prostitutes, SWARM (Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement), Sex Workers’ Union and others.
The Nordic Model is not the answer
In the UK, there’s a huge push to implement something called The Nordic Model. The Nordic Model criminalises the purchase of sex, rather than the sale. It is a framework which subjects sex workers to regulations which violate their agency, privacy and autonomy.
Under the Nordic model, evidence shows that migrant sex workers are “aggressively deported” even those with permission to work. As our friends at Decrim Now state: the criminalisation of prostitution and the criminalisation of migration work in tandem to produce precarity, vulnerability and harm in the lives of people who sell sex. The Nordic model is not a solution to these problems: instead, it maintains and in some ways intensifies them.
In fact, evidence from the Norwegian and Swedish governments show that these models may increase the power of exploitative third parties such as traffickers. Despite this, the push to criminalise the purchase of sex is ramping up, gaining support from MPs like Tonia Antoniazzi and being proposed in the upcoming Crime and Policing Bill.
Carceral feminism, carceral systems
The Nordic Model is fundamentally problematic because it reinforces carceral systems, like policing, punishment, prisons, detention and deportation. Carceral feminism is the belief that policing and criminalisation are the key ways to ensure justice for women, ignoring how misogynistic institutions like the police perpetuate violence against women.
This approach relies on strengthening a criminal justice approach to women’s rights in addition to giving more powers to immigration enforcement to tackle exploitation. As the European Sex Workers Rights Alliance succinctly put it: “Laws highlighting the ‘carceral underpinnings’ seek to restrict or repress the already limited options undocumented, racialised, marginalised and discriminated groups of people have.”
Why decriminalisation?
Criminalisation makes sex work dangerous. It causes a wide range of problems that diminishes the rights of sex workers. Under UK law, sex workers are unable to work together for safety or are unable to report violence against them for fear of being arrested or deported (there is no firewall between immigration enforcement and reporting of crimes). It’s also important to distinguish between ‘legalisation’ and ‘decriminalisation’: legalisation would impose laws and regulations that permit sex work under certain conditions by the State, while decriminalisation removes all laws and penalties in addition to rejecting monitoring of sex work by law enforcement.
Decriminalisation is a fundamental step in improving sex workers’ access to safety, rights and justice. It is a step in increasing sex workers’ power when dealing with clients, police, employers and other actors including landlords. It means that sex workers would be able to find work without the threat of arrest or deportation.
In short, decriminalisation is a fundamental part of tackling exploitation or trafficking because it provides mechanisms for safe reporting and strengthens employment rights for sex workers. Conflating commercial sex with exploitation does nothing to tackle systemic misogyny or systems of oppression, instead it simply strengthens the ability of the State to surveil, police and punish sex workers or those it deems ‘undesirable’.
In line with our move towards abolition, we fundamentally oppose any push that would introduce greater policing, incarceration, prosecution and State power. We stand in solidarity with sex workers in their fight for rights and full decriminalisation. We invite other migrants’ rights organisations, including anti-trafficking charities to do the same by signing our statement.
*‘whorephobia’ refers to discrimination, stigma and prejudice against women and people who sell sex. Find out more: No silence to violence. SWARM have published some zines from sex workers who talk about their experiences of whorephobia: Being the Catalyst – Jack Parker – SWARM and femme whore – SWARM
To learn more, check out the work of our friends at:
- English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP)
- Sex Workers Advocacy and Resistance Movement (SWARM)
- Decrim Now
If you are an organisation or charity who wants to join our support for the full decriminalisation of sex work, sign the statement here.
Use Decrim Now’s tool to send an email to your MP opposing criminalisation, and join sex workers’ call for the full decriminalisation of sex work.