Germany has been infamously dubbed the "Brothel of Europe," but how does legalized prostitution actually work? Is it empowering or victimizing, realistic or dangerous? In Legalized Prostitution in Germany, Annegret D. Staiger's ethnography engages historical, cultural, and legal contexts to reframe the brothel as a place of longing and belonging, of affective entanglements between unlikely partners, and of new beginnings across borders, while also acknowledging the increasingly exploitative labor practices. By sharing the stories of sex workers, clients, and managers within the larger legal system—meant to provide dignity and safety through regulation—Staiger skillfully frames the economic aspects of commercial sex work and addresses important questions about sexual labor, intimacy, and relationships. Weaving insightful scholarship with beautiful storytelling, Legalized Prostitution in Germany provides readers with a deeper understanding of the complexities of legalized prostitution.

Human trafficking is an extreme example of social injustice, perpetuated by dominant/subordinate attitudes that condone violence, resulting in significant suffering for individuals and harm to societies. This book is a comprehensive study of the challenges facing service providers who work with trafficked victims of sexual exploitation in northern Germany. The results are discussed from the perspective of the Relational Cultural Theory, as well as from the Sexual-Racial Contract Theory. The insights offer a vital gateway to sustainable social change and social justice to help end human trafficking. (Series: Gender Discussion / Gender-Diskussion - Vol. 15)

While sex work has long been controversial, it has become even more contested over the past decade as laws, policies, and enforcement practices have become more repressive in many nations, partly as a result of the ascendancy of interest groups committed to the total abolition of the sex industry. At the same time, however, several other nations have recently decriminalized prostitution. Legalizing Prostitution maps out the current terrain. Using America as a backdrop, Weitzer draws on extensive field research in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany to illustrate alternatives to American-style criminalization of sex workers. These cases are then used to develop a roster of “best practices” that can serve as a model for other nations considering legalization. Legalizing Prostitution provides a theoretically grounded comparative analysis of political dynamics, policy outcomes, and red-light landscapes in nations where prostitution has been legalized and regulated by the government, presenting a rich and novel portrait of the multifaceted world of legal sex for sale.

This comprehensive volume analyzes dual markets for regulated substances and services, and aims to provide a framework for their effective regulation. A “dual market” refers to the existence of both a legal and an illegal market for a regulated product or service (for example, prescription drugs). These regulations exist in various countries for a mix of public health, historical, political and cultural reasons. Allowing the legal market to thrive, while trying to eliminate the illegal market, provides a unique challenge for governments and law enforcement. Broken down into nine main sections, the book studies comparative international policies for regulating these “dual markets” from a historical, legal, and cultural perspective. It includes an analysis of the markets for psychoactive substances that are illegal in most countries (such as marijuana, cocaine, opiods and amphetimines), psychoactive substances which are legal in most countries and where consumption is widespread (such as alcohol and tobacco), and services that are generally regulated or illegal (such as sports betting, the sex trade, and gambling). For each of these nine types of markets, contributions focus on the relationship between regulation, the emerging illegal market, and the resulting overall access to these services. This work aims to provide a comprehensive framework from a historical, cultural, and comparative international perspective. It will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, particularly with an interest in organized crime, as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, international relations, and public health.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND license. This book offers a theory of trafficking and modern slavery with implications for policy. Despite economic development, modern slavery persists all around the world. The issue is not only one of crime but the regulation of the economy, better welfare, and social protections. Going beyond polarized debates on the sex trade, an original empirical analysis shows the importance of profit-taking. Although individual experience matters, the root causes lie in intersecting regimes of inequality of gender regimes, capitalism, and the legacies of colonialism. This book shows the importance of coercion and the societal complexities that perpetuate modern slavery.

The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform traces case studies of four European Union countries to reveal the way anxieties over globalization translates into policies to recognize sex workers in some countries, punish prostitutes' clients in others, and protect victims of human trafficking in them all.

Based on extensive interviews with forty women working as prostitutes, Red Light, Blue Light examines a variety of personal developmental experiences and socio-situational factors that can combine to make prostitution neither an inevitable nor inescapable circumstance but a rational occupational choice. This book attempts to analyze why women enter the world of prostitution, how the skills and values of the business are transmitted and how the individuals themselves subjectively define, perceive and rationalise their activity. As opposed to the traditional stereotypical depiction of prostitutes as hopeless, downtrodden victims of male exploitation living lives of poverty, misery and wretchedness, the picture that emerges in this study is of an independent occupational group organizing and controlling the business in which they work. The book also presents a profile of clients of prostitutes and discusses the role of the police. Written in accessible style, the resulting monograph presents a fascinating, unique and comprehensive account of street prostitution in a northern city.