Tolerance vs. expulsions: in search of a rights-based approach to street sex work

In post-modern “space wars” on urban battlefields, sex workers are often targeted as a major source of concern, serving as a catalyst for social anxieties related to gender, sexuality, ethnic and national identities, which in turn are discursively generative of political devices for their inclusion/exclusion and control. In many European cities, combined strategies of policing street prostitution and legislative bans on selling sex in public areas have impacted on the urban geographies of outdoor prostitution, confining it to industrial districts and peripheral areas, where sex workers are at higher risk of being exposed to violence and exploitation, and social workers find it harder to provide harm reduction services, improve sex workers’ rights or promote exit programs. This “expulsion approach” is one mostly adopted by Italian municipalities, in an effort to contrast “urban decay” by targeting street prostitutes' bodies as disturbing and indecorous, to be removed from public view in response to local communities’ complaints. A quite different strategy to address the inconveniencies caused by street sex work – the nuisance and incivilities reported by residents living in areas where it takes place – is the “zoning approach”, adopted, for example, by the Netherlands and by some Swiss municipalities. In my contribution I intend to analyse the potential benefits, even in “abolitionist” countries like Italy, of zoning policies having at their heart the aim to improve the safety, rights and wellbeing of sex workers, not to induce or worsen their marginalization.