Abolitionist feminism as patriarchal control: Swedish understandings of prostitution and trafficking

Sweden’s abolitionist discourse and law: Effects on the dynamics of Swedish sex work and on the lives of Sweden’s sex workers

“…The bulk of raw empirical data will take the form of quotations from interviews conducted by Levy, with Jakobsson's recently co-conducted survey serving to augment these data. Jay Levy's experience that informs this article stems predominantly from fieldwork, undertaken in Sweden between 2008 and 2012 for the purposes of an ESRC-funded PhD (Levy, 2012; this research and these findings on Swedish sex work are discussed fully in Levy (2014), and elements of it in , which are both referred to in this article). Though the PhD investigated the outcomes of Sweden's sex work abolitionism and drug use prohibitionism, the latter is omitted here as it is beyond the scope of this special issue.…”

“…Respondent quotations used throughout this article are verbatim (interviews that are quoted from were conducted in English), and themes discussed here were drawn from the research and interviews using a Grounded Theory categorization of data (Glaser andStrauss, 1967 in, for example, Marks andYardley, 2003). Quotations are used here illustratively due to constraints in word limits (see Levy, 2014 for a full presentation of quotations and research).…”

“…A thorough overview of methodological considerations in terms of this research is presented in Levy (2014).…”

“…Where mobile phones and internet usage also became widespread in Sweden at around the same time the sex purchase law was introduced (Levy, 2014;Östergren and Dodillet, 2011), it is likely that both this and the sex purchase law played a role in spatial displacement; we are both aware of individuals who moved indoors in response to the sexköpslagen taking effect, though we would not be so bold as to estimate a number, given the above-mentioned difficulties in accurately estimating population sizes: I think I stopped work there when the sex law came… I mean first of all you were still able to get clients after (the law). But you had to stand that much longer.…”

“…Unit -one of three government-sponsored organizations tasked with reducing levels of sex work through social work interventions -expressed concern over the impacts of lengthening the custodial penalty of the sexköpslagen, their response to the political consultation was altered by their management before it was allowed to be submitted (email correspondence between Levy and the Malmö Unit in Levy, 2014). Furthermore, sex workers who are not cisgender women have been excluded from a construction of prostitution as a form of violence against women.…”