Feminism, Prostitution and the State

The Politics of Neo-Abolitionism

Eilis Ward, Gillian Wylie, Eilis Ward, Gillian Wylie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317370116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume focuses on charting the rise of neo-abolitionism and offering a critique of the idea, its logics and consequences. A model of state policy which aims to abolish prostitution through legislation, Neo-abolitionism criminalises the buyer of sex but not the seller. It is currently law in Sweden and other Nordic states and dominates the framing of policy debates in many other Western liberal contexts. Pressure for adoption of this policy has come from radical feminists who understand prostitution and sex trafficking as a form of violence against women.

This volume argues that this convergence between radical feminism and state's interests arises from the emergence of, on the one hand, 'governance feminism' which seeks to have its ideals implemented through 'top-down sovereigntist means', and on the other hand, state's interests in legitimising stricter border controls and law enforcement responses in relation to transnational organised criminality, 'illegal' migration, and security.

Based around a series of country case studies each chapter will explore the politics surrounding the emergence of neo-abolitionism and its trajectory through those polities, whether the paradigm has been adopted, rejected or is still under debate. The volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of Social and Public Policy, Gender and Women's Studies, Politics and International Relations and Critical Legal Studies/Criminology.

1 Neo-abolitionism and transnational advocacy networks

Globalising an idea

Gillian Wylie

Introduction

As each of the case study chapters of this book will illustrate, the resonance or not of neo-abolitionism in different polities is very much affected by the ‘moral geography’ of each state and society. ‘Moral geography’ is a term that captures the ways in which ideas of morality are bounded by the particularities of place and space (O’Brien et al. 2013). That said, ‘place and space’ today are, more than ever, enmeshed in the context of globalisation and neither physical nor moral boundaries can be hermetically sealed in the contemporary world. That neo-abolitionism is simultaneously on the agenda in so many advanced capitalist states speaks to its presence as a globalising ideal and although ideas do not just ‘jump’ between states (Carline and Scoular this volume), determined transnational lobbying is part of the dynamic by which this idea, like many others, spreads.

Transnational ‘moral entrepreneurs’, in the term coined by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink (1998), work actively at the international level to frame concepts, lobby policy makers and socialise them to new ideas, ultimately aiming to get international bodies and their constituent states to adopt new normative frameworks. As this chapter will show, neo-abolitionism – like historical prostitution abolitionism before it – has taken such transnational form through the activities of radical feminist international advocacy networks. They have found allies in particular states too, with Swedish and American administrations providing crucial support as exemplars and advocates. The influence of such ‘moral entrepreneurs’ can be seen behind the formation of international law and in interactions within domestic civil and political societies as nation-states engage in policy debates about neo-abolitionism.

This chapter will use two examples to illustrate these dynamics. The first draws on the negotiation of the anti-trafficking Palermo Protocol at the United Nations in 1999–2000. International women’s groups shadowed these talks putting forward vociferous but often contending views. While the final Protocol undoubtedly reflects multiple influences, the chapter will focus on the discernible impact that neo-abolitionist activism had on the outcome of the negotiations and the Palermo text. The second example focuses on the regional level of international politics, analysing the role of transnational civil society lobbying in and around the European institutions, particularly the European Parliament (EP). As this case shows, in recent years the parliament adopted an increasingly neo-abolitionist stance and the role of radical feminist activism, particularly centred in the European Women’s Lobby, has been instrumental in this.

From these examples, it is possible to see and comprehend the successes of internationally networked radical feminism in promoting the spread of neo-abolitionism. Yet, as will be proposed at the end of this chapter, there are costly consequences in this transnationalisation of neo-abolitionism. Arguably, governments are not only drawn to neo-abolitionism and anti-trafficking action by consideration of moral harm in prostitution or particular conceptualisations of gender equality. Rather the more ‘carceral’ approach (Bernstein 2010) to prostitution and trafficking embedded in neo-abolitionism chimes well with the interests of advanced liberal-democratic states in controlling their physical borders in the globalising world of neo-liberal economy and insecurity. The punitive approach towards the organisers and buyers of prostitution which neo-abolitionism legitimates has the consequence of enabling ever-increasing state control over female migrants’ lives. This is surely a problematic outcome for a purportedly feminist politics and goal.

In order to set the context for the discussion of these examples of transnational neo-abolitionist lobbying, the chapter begins by setting out a theoretical framework drawn from International Relations theory, to provide a way of conceptualising how ideals spread and have influence in international politics. The idea of the ‘norm lifecycle’ captures how ideals are firstly promoted by ‘moral entrepreneurs’, then gain influential allies, and so cascade from the global to the regional and the local. This theory will provide a necessary framework to make sense of the detailed discussion of the activism and influence of neo-abolitionist entrepreneurs at the UN and the EP, ultimately revealing how transnational neo-abolitionism comes to intersect in ways that are both influential upon and constrained by the moral geography of particular places and spaces.

Moral entrepreneurs and the lifecycle of international norms

Norms are ideas about what constitutes appropriate behaviour. They can be ‘regulative’ in terms of defining what an actor ought to do and/or ‘constitutive’ in terms of determining what kind of behaviour is required for an actor to be considered legitimate in their context (Risse 2000). So, in the world of international politics, protection of human rights or environmental standards could be examples of norms that define what nation-states ought to do, whereas respecting the ideal of sovereign equality is a norm that constitutes what it is to be a state. Having said this, within the academic discipline of International Relations there are different perspectives on whether normative ideals matter at all in explaining the way the world works. Realist theorists argue that power balance and national interests matter far more than ideas about how actors ought to behave. However, since the unexpected end of the Cold War – which was provoked in large part by unconventional ideas and actors – caused a turn towards more sociological readings of international politics, the idea that norms matter in shaping how states understand themselves and act has become more widely accepted (Katzenstein 1996).

In their seminal attempt to answer the question of how international norms form and take effect, Finnemore and Sikkink (1998) suggest that it’s possible to trace ‘norm lifecycles’, spanning the social life of ideas from their inception to adoption. According to this lifecycle model, normative change starts with the efforts of ‘norm entrepreneurs’ or ‘moral proselytisers’ who seek to shape and frame international understanding of their chosen cause. Furthering the cause involves moral entrepreneurs in building transnational networks and alliances, lobbying at global forums and working to influence the negotiation of international laws or conventions. Once a new normative framework emerges in these venues, states begin to sign and then ratify international agreements (by transposing new international commitments into domestic laws). Finnemore and Sikkink suggest this process reaches a ‘tipping’ point once a critical mass of member states sign up (they suggest about 40), leading the norm to ‘cascade’ into the international system. During a cascade there is increasingly rapid endorsement of the new norm, as governments become aware that its adoption has become an expected aspect of legitimate international behaviour. By its lifecycle’s end, the norm is embedded in global and regional international frameworks and domestic politics, coming to seem ‘common-sensical’ to governments and peoples alike (see Finnemore and Sikkink 1998 for a detailed description of the norm lifecycle). All the while, ‘transnational moral entrepreneurs’ remain part of these processes, lobbying regional institutions and governments and lending support to local civil society activists to spread the norm.

In the reality of international politics, the story of international norm change is much more convoluted than the neatness the lifecycle model implies (Wylie 2016). Norm evolution is made fraught by pre-existing normative commitments, issues of power politics, the material interests of states and ‘norm battles’ (van Kersbergen and Verbeek 2007) between entrepreneurs who are oftentimes at loggerheads over the value, meaning or interpretation of ideals. Moreover, new international norms do not automatically transfer to domestic political scenarios but are accepted, reshaped or contested, depending on the mores of national contexts (Acharya 2004), that is the ‘moral geography’ of places and spaces.

Yet, bearing plenty of such caveats in mind, it is helpful to use the lifecycle model to trace the trajectory of neo-abolitionism as a globalising norm. There are transnational radical feminist networks that have elaborated linkages between contemporary prostitution and international sex trafficking to support their calls for neo-abolitionist policies; they have utilised the spaces of international conferencing and regional governance to push this agenda; and they have built alliances with local civil and political actors in advanced democracies to encourage the socialisation of states to neo-abolitionist norms. In the next sections of this chapter, the moral entrepreneurship driving the lifecycle of anti-trafficking activism, particularly in its neo-abolitionist guise, through the global institution of the United Nations and the regional architecture of the European Union will be described to illustrate these dynamics.

Transnational neo-abolitionism in the late-twentieth century

The focus of this chapter is on contemporary manifestations of transnational feminist abolitionism. However, it is worth remembering that international abolitionist networking linking the exploitation of women and children in prostitution with sex trafficking has a long history, which still permeates into today’s framing of the issue.

Global civil networking, in general, is a practice with a longer history than is often credited in conventional state-centric accounts of International Relations. As outlined in Robert Holton’s work on globalisation, global civil society interaction, whether constituted by formal links between organisations or less formal expressions of social interaction, has a history going back many centuries (Holton 2005: Chapter 6). Yet colonial linkages, new forms of communication, social change and emergent social movements certainly enabled an intensification of global civil life by the nineteenth century. Transnational social movements for the abolition of slavery, for example, emerged in the eighteenth-nineteeth centuries (Hochschild 2005). Likewise, the first wave of feminism dates to this timeframe, and transnational linkages were vital to the evolving movement (Keck and Sikkink 1998).

Within early international feminism, energetic transnational norm entrepreneurship explicitly linking prostitution with sex trafficking was very evident in the late-nineteenth century. For example, Josephine Butler of the International Abolitionist Federation was involved in relentless international efforts to promote the cause of abolishing state regulation of prostitution and the double standards that brought moral opprobrium on the sellers but not the buyers of sex (Jordan 2007). Moreover, concerns about the imagined ‘white slavery’ of European women in the colonised world, boosted abolitionist efforts (Doezema 2010; Soderlund 2013; Limoncelli 2010). Moving into the twentieth century, international abolitionists became influential lobbyists at the League of Nations, with marked effect on the League’s anti-trafficking work and the subsequent 1949 UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others, which equated ‘the evil’ of trafficking with prostitution and defined all prostitution as ‘incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person’ (UN 1949). Although the 1949 text was not widely ratified, the abolitionist tone which evolved through the League of Nations and into the early UN framework set a historical normative precedent which lends international weight to more recent abolitionist entrepreneurs, who look back on the 1949 Convention as an ‘abolitionist victory’ (Marcovich 2002: 9).

After 1949, the Cold War years saw a diminution of international political concern with sex trafficking and prostitution issues, but that period of quiet ended in the latter part of the twentieth century. Anti-trafficking activism was provoked into new life for states and civil society actors by a confluence of the uncertainties of the post-Cold War world, new migration patterns, and a revamped international women’s movement inspired by (amongst other things) the series of UN women’s conferences that culminated in Beijing.

At Beijing there were ‘norm battles’ between women’s NGOs taking radically opposing views on whether prostitution per se is a form of violence against women. Radical feminist groups stressed the harms, inequalities and human rights violations they perceived in all prostitution and sex trafficking, while others argued for recognising differentiations in the experiences of those involved in prostitution and refusing the collapse of all prostitution under the concept of sex trafficking (Raymond 1998). The impact of both camps can be traced in the final Beijing Platform for Action because while trafficking in women ‘for sexual exploitation, pornography and prostitution’ is considered violence against women, most references to prostitution throughout the Platform for Action qualify the problem as specifically relating to ‘forced prostitution’ (UNWomen 1995). Other feminist international civil society gatherings in the 1980s and 1990s were equally marked by contestation between neo-abolitionists, equating prostitution and trafficking and arguing for a shift to focus on criminalising demand, and those coming from a sex workers’ rights perspective (Milivojevic and Pickering 2013). Out of these meetings came the most influential of contemporary neo-abolitionist international networks, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) (Milivojevic and Pickering 2013: 590).

CATW is based in the United States but it is a transnational coalition, counting amongst its membership organizations in Mali, the Philippines, Mexico, Venezuela, Georgia, Japan and India (CATW 2016). CATW consciously links itself back to historical precursors in earlier abolitionism, celebrating the work of women such as Josephine Butler and holding to the tenets of the 1949 UN Convention (Marcovich 2002). A more contemporary theoretical touchstone for its stance is found primarily in the writings of Kathleen Barry. According to Barry’s feminist structuralist analysis, the prostitution of women’s sexuality is the outcome of the exploitative exercise by men of patriarchal power over women (Barry 1979 and 1995). This bald analysis of patriarchy as the overarching social reality, makes Barry the archetypal ‘power feminist’ in Janet Halley’s term, i.e. the feminist who thinks ‘everything about the relationship of males to females manifests domination and subordination’ and ‘characterize male sexuality as a vast social problem’ (Halley 2006: 33–57 and 27). CATW therefore advocates for the neo-abolitionist aim of criminalising male demand for commercial sex.

The chapter on the USA in this book provides further insights into the formation and thinking of CATW and the influential roles of women such as Laura Lederer, Janice Raymond and Donna Hughes in developing the thinking and activism of the network (Jackson, Reed and Brents this volume). As Jackson et al. make clear, CATW’s influence was profoundly felt in US domestic politics, particularly during the Bush Administration in the framing of the Trafficking in Persons Victims Protection Act (2000, then reauthorised in 2003, 2005, 2008) and the work of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. For the purposes of this chapter though, emphasis is on transnational neo-abolitionism and the global and regional spaces where its advocates have worked to influence outcomes. I therefore turn to examine the role of CATW and its allies in influencing the negotiations at the UN which culminated in the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children – the Palermo Protocol of 2000.

The Palermo Protocol: a first example of neo-abolitionist lobbying in action

In the late 1990s, concerns about global organised crime led the UN to task its Committee on Crime Prevention and Control with drafting a new convention on the general issue of organised crime and a number of related protocols, including one on human trafficking. As has become normal practice at such UN forums, accredited civil society organisations were allowed to shadow and lobby these meetings (Reimann 2006). Amongst the many lobbyists on the human trafficking issue was a radical feminist coalition termed the International Human Rights Network (most prominently featuring CATW but including the European Women’s Lobby, the Movement for the Abolition of Pornography and Prostitution (MAPP) and Equality Now among others) and an alternative pro-sex workers’ rights feminist coalition under the moniker of the Human Rights Caucus (that included the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), La Strada International and the International Human Rights Law Group). As Gallagher points out, such intense NGO excitement around the UN Crime Committee’s meetings was an unusual occurrence (2001: 1001). First hand accounts from those who lobbied at the negotiations...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Neo-abolitionism and transnational advocacy networks: Globalising an idea
• 2. From contested to consensus: Swedish politics on prostitution and trafficking
• 3. The Netherlands: Analysing shifts and continuities in the governing of sexual labour
• 4. Strange confluences: Radical feminism and evangelical Christianity as drivers of US neo-abolitionism
• 5. The Irish parliament and prostitution law reform: A neo-abolitionist shoe-in?
• 6. Almost abolitionist: The peculiarities of prostitution policy in England and Wales
• 7. Against the trend: Resistance to neo-abolitionism in Australian anti-trafficking policy debates
• 8. In search of a fair and free society: The regulation of sex work in New Zealand
• Conclusion: Carceral feminism, the state and the sex worker in a globalised era. Whose power?
• Index