During the past twenty years, the entrance, on a large scale, of migrant women in the various circuits of the European commercial sex industry has led several scholars and researchers to focus on the characteristics of migratory trends which nourish this market, exploitation modalities adopted by pimps and exploiters, management approaches used within the various prostitution sectors as well as national and international policies adopted in order to contrast and/or regulate the phenomenon. These studies have also underlined the need to understand sexual-economic exchanges within the globalization processes which have invested economy, culture, politics, labour relationships and, last but not least, gender relations both in the origin as well as in the destination countries. However, in line with the need to overcome a reductionist approach toward the prostitution phenomenon seen as a mere economic issue, this essay aims at shedding some light on the subjective dimension of some of its main actors: prostitutes and clients. In particular, it focuses on the dimension of radical otherness – physic and symbolic – associated with prostituted bodies and, in particular, the bodies of “other” women: migrant female prostitutes. Prostitution’s stories gathered from the direct voice of some protagonists suggest the presence of domination and inferiorization practices which seem to originate from the incapacity to relate to the other, acknowledged as our similar. If racism and sexism, from one side, seem to represent a sort of compensative reaction to an indubitable process of female emancipation, from the other suggest that also in our societies gender relations still tend to reproduce themselves trough symbolic violence and domination. Thus, the body of the other, undressed from any rights and excluded from the citizenship dimension, retained from freely moving in the agora, is absolutely denied.

Corpi in transito: prostituzione migrante, relazioni di genere e modelli culturali / Massari, Monica. - (2013), pp. 107-119.

Corpi in transito: prostituzione migrante, relazioni di genere e modelli culturali

MASSARI, MONICA
2013

Abstract

During the past twenty years, the entrance, on a large scale, of migrant women in the various circuits of the European commercial sex industry has led several scholars and researchers to focus on the characteristics of migratory trends which nourish this market, exploitation modalities adopted by pimps and exploiters, management approaches used within the various prostitution sectors as well as national and international policies adopted in order to contrast and/or regulate the phenomenon. These studies have also underlined the need to understand sexual-economic exchanges within the globalization processes which have invested economy, culture, politics, labour relationships and, last but not least, gender relations both in the origin as well as in the destination countries. However, in line with the need to overcome a reductionist approach toward the prostitution phenomenon seen as a mere economic issue, this essay aims at shedding some light on the subjective dimension of some of its main actors: prostitutes and clients. In particular, it focuses on the dimension of radical otherness – physic and symbolic – associated with prostituted bodies and, in particular, the bodies of “other” women: migrant female prostitutes. Prostitution’s stories gathered from the direct voice of some protagonists suggest the presence of domination and inferiorization practices which seem to originate from the incapacity to relate to the other, acknowledged as our similar. If racism and sexism, from one side, seem to represent a sort of compensative reaction to an indubitable process of female emancipation, from the other suggest that also in our societies gender relations still tend to reproduce themselves trough symbolic violence and domination. Thus, the body of the other, undressed from any rights and excluded from the citizenship dimension, retained from freely moving in the agora, is absolutely denied.
2013
9788849838916
Corpi in transito: prostituzione migrante, relazioni di genere e modelli culturali / Massari, Monica. - (2013), pp. 107-119.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11588/561443
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