2.1 Sex workers
First, let us take you to Brussels. On 15 and 16 October 2005, 200 delegates from 28 countries around Europe gathered in Brussels to take part in an event to advocate sex workers rights. Over the two days, delegates took part in the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration during which they discussed and worked on two documents, a Declaration on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe and the Sex Workers in Europe Manifesto. On the 17 October, they presented the Declaration and a set of Recommendations on sex work for policy makers in the European Parliament (EP), where they were invited by Monica Frassoni, an Italian MEP. The declaration was endorsed by the Italian MEP, Vittorio Agnoletto. The session at the EP was followed of by a manifestation in the streets of Brussels, where the delegates displayed red umbrellas which since then have become the symbol used at various marches to make visible sex workers’ presence and demands.
The declaration, the manifesto and the recommendations are the result of a six-month long consultation process among sex workers and allies across Europe. The process was set in place in order to gather information on what issues and concerns are the most pressing for sex workers. The declaration contains thirdly articles, it is structured in twelve different sections covering issues such as life, liberty and security, privacy and family life, freedom of movement, and work and working conditions, just to give a few examples. It is a unique document of this sort that works with existing formal rights in order to bring attention to the violations of sex workers rights. At the same time, it also functions as a legal tool that enables sex workers to claim rights to which they are entitled under existing United Nations, International Labour Organisation and EU treaties and conventions.
The manifesto is a slightly different type of document from the declaration. It formulates a series of demands for rights that exist in a restricted form or do not exist as yet in international law. In that sense, it represents a ‘utopian’ moment as it makes claims to the rights of freedom of movement, residency, and labour that are not ratified by EU states such as the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and their Families. For example, under the heading ‘the right to travel, to migrate, and seek asylum’ the document states the following demand:
‘We demand that all people have the right to move within and between countries for personal and financial reason, including seeking gainful employment and residence in the area of their choice’.
Finally, the recommendations target the EU policy makers and suggest ways in which to promote major inclusion of sex workers in the society, reduce the stigma surrounding sex work, and make sex workers less vulnerable to labour exploitation or other forms of violence. Taken together, the declaration, the manifesto and the recommendations are interventions that make an important intellectual and political contribution to current debates on sex work, labour rights, and migration in Europe.
Please read the following excerpts from ‘Unexpected Citizens: Sex Work, Mobility, Europe’ by Rutvica Andrijasevic, Claudia Aradau, Jef Huysmans, and Vicki Squire.
The full text of the report is available here.
Unexpected Citizens: Sex Work, Mobility, Europe
Activity 1
Reflect on the following points and make notes.
- A collective subject is not already there. Individuals and groups have various interests and rights and are positioned differently in the society depending on their gender, race, class and nationality. These categories separate various groups and allocate them different rights. When individuals belonging to those groups practice those rights, they engage in active citizenship.
- As the excerpt above shows, there is another way of ‘doing’ citizenship. This is by challenging the existing social categories and the regimes of rights attached to those. To do so is an arduous political process of working on acknowledging and levelling differences between those groups in order to facilitate coming together on a new collective subject.
- This new collective subject does not fit into the existing categories of our dominant way of understanding citizenship as membership. It is comprised of people with different rights claiming the rights that they are entitled to but also the rights they are not entitled to because of being stigmatised as sex workers or discriminated as non-EU nationals. It is by giving life to this new collective subject and by claiming rights that exceed the institutionally allocated rights that they challenge the European citizenship regime and engage in activist citizenship.
Let us discuss some of these issues with Claudia Aradau.
OpenLearn - Enacting European Citizenship (ENACT)
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