The Control of “Wandering Women
The Legacy of Vagrancy Laws in the Contemporary Governance of Migrant Sex Work
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6051903 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Niina Vuolajärvi (0000-0002-4948-7214, London School of Economics and Political Science, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 531-546 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1205-8629 • E-ISSN: 1572-9877 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10612-024-09803-2 |
| OpenAlex | W4406589170 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 25 |
This paper traces the contemporary governance of migrant sex work to early vagrancy laws aimed at controlling poor mobile populations and people not engaging in ‘honest’ labor. The paper argues that these notions of dishonest labor are still visible in the contemporary crimmigration controls. It uses a legal analysis of the development of prostitution and immigration laws together with ethnographic research in the Nordic region as a case study to develop an argument on the bifurcated regulation of domestic and foreign sex work and its roots in the vagrancy laws. It makes the case that with the influx of migrants into the sex trade since the 1990s the governance of commercial sex has shifted from prostitution policies to immigration controls
Corporate governance · Criminalization · Criminology · Deportation · Economics · Ethnography · Immigration · Political science · Same sex · Sex work · Social control · Sociology · Vagrancy · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Sex work and related issues
We, the People of Europe?
Of Vice and Women
Selling Sex in the City
Defining Human Trafficking and Identifying Its Victims
Us and Them
Governing in the Name of Caring—the Nordic Model of Prostitution and its Punitive Consequences for Migrants Who Sell Sex
Eugenics, politics and the state
Prostitution as non-labour leading to forced labour. Vagrancy and Gender in Sweden and Stockholm, 1919–1939
Introduction
Special rights within universal welfare
Continuity and Durability of Violent Border Policies and Practices Directed at Undesirable Migrants in Britain and Australia
Precarious intimacies – Europeanised border regime and migrant sex work
The discipline of hope
Anthropology of Policy
Scandinavian Approaches to Begging as a Policy Problem and the Double Insider/Outsider Status of Marginalized Intra-EU Migrants
| Citations per year | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |