Between Visibility and Invisibility: Sex Workers and Informal Services in Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

This study examines informal services within the sex industry in the Red Light District of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and how these affect the autonomy of sex workers. Data were obtained from the police files of twelve criminal investigations into human trafficking in Amsterdam between 2006 and 2010. The empirical data show that sex workers are intermeshed in a network of people who intercede with them and their work: pimps, bodyguards, errand boys, drivers, brothel owners, and accountants. While these informal players offer services to facilitate sex work, they simultaneously create a network of control around the sex workers and profit from the latters’ earnings. The existence of this informal network and its activities both supports sex workers, but also undermines the autonomy of self-employed sex workers in the studied cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Sex work
• informal economy
• human trafficking

JEL Codes:

• B54
• J4
• Z1

Notes

1 All personal information that would allow the identification of any person(s) described in this study has been removed.

2 According to Donna Hughes (2004), legalization would mean the regulation of prostitution with laws regarding where, when, and how prostitution could take place. Decriminalization eliminates all laws and prohibits the state and law enforcement officials from intervening in any prostitution-related activities or transactions, unless other laws apply. Unlike legalization, a decriminalized system does not have special laws aimed solely at sex workers or sex-work-related activity (Alexandra Lutnick and Deborah Cohan 2009).

3 The UN Palermo Protocol defines sex trafficking as “[t]he recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs. The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation shall be irrelevant” (UN 2000: 2).

4 In addition to the old center of Amsterdam, there are two other areas in the city where window prostitution takes place, comprising another 117 windows.

5 The term “pimp” is used for this kind of activity, including possibly living off of the earnings of one or more sex workers; this study uses the term in this sense.

6 This and other quotes are translated from Dutch by the authors.

7 Sex workers in the windows usually charge between 35 and 70 euros. The price for a visit of around twenty minutes with “a blow job and fucking” is usually 50 euros (van Wijk et al. 2010: 48). Van Wijk et al. quote a brothel owner who says that “a beautiful woman gets 50 euros and others do it for 30 euros” (2010: 48). The price for a room or window is around 100 euros during the daytime and 130 to 150 euros at night. According to several respondents, a sex worker “must have an average of four customers to take out all costs and three extra to make a little profit” (van Wijk et al. 2010: 48).

8 It is not illegal to carry 7,000 euros in cash, but obviously this person did not want others to know that he was carrying that large sum, possibly because he did not have a formal job or he received social security benefits.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maite Verhoeven

Maite Verhoeven works as a researcher at the Research and Documentation Center (WODC) in the Netherlands. She is an anthropologist and works in the field of human trafficking, law enforcement, and several (organized) crime themes. She is working toward a dissertation on human trafficking.

Barbra van Gestel

Barbra van Gestel studied sociology and criminology at the University of Amsterdam and wrote her dissertation on the interplay between local media and law enforcement. She currently works as a researcher at the Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) in the field of law enforcement and organized crime.