Isabel Crowhurst | University of Essex (original) (raw)
Papers by Isabel Crowhurst
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research
Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology
This article unites the co-authors’ years of empirical research with women in policed, stigmatize... more This article unites the co-authors’ years of empirical research with women in policed, stigmatized, and low-autonomy sex industry sectors in Brazil, China, Italy, and the United States to identify six prevalent forms of exclusion: economic, intersectional, health, safety, public vilification, and policing. We analyze the distinct manifestations of these exclusionary forces in all four sites to introduce criminal creep as theoretical shorthand for the global seepage of ideological, structural, and interpersonal exclusionary forces into social life, professional practice, and socio-legal procedures that marginalize women in the sex industry as victim-criminals in need of rehabilitation. Uniting and building upon literature on feminist engagement with and critiques of citizenship, conceptual uses of “creep”, carcerality and crimmigration, and critical anti-trafficking studies, we argue that criminal creep facilitates a perfect storm of exclusion that promotes sex workers’ de facto and ...
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research, 2018
This thesis examines discourses, policies and practices underpinning the response to, and governa... more This thesis examines discourses, policies and practices underpinning the response to, and governance of, prostitution-related migrations of women in contemporary Italy. It analyzes how Italian socio-political factors, such as national identity construction and political opportunism, and normative values and cultural practices (including historical stigmatization of prostitutes, racialization of the 'ethnic Other' and inferiorization of women) contribute to different understandings of, and responses to, the new presence of migrant women operating in the sex industry in Italy. The study adopts a feminist qualitative research methodology and is primarily based on in-depth interviews and participant observation with a number of diverse third sector organizations that operate in the provision of support services to migrant women in the Italian sex industry, as well as on the investigation of relevant documentary sources. Taking as one of its focal points the analysis of the legal...
Drawing on a European cross-national biographical-narrative study of intimate life, this article ... more Drawing on a European cross-national biographical-narrative study of intimate life, this article discusses the complexity of experiences of ‘togetherness’ and ‘apartness’ amongst people in living apart relationships. We explore the five main ways in which interviewees spoke about and understood their current living apart relationships (as: chosen; temporary; transitional; undecided; and unrecognisable), which we argue shows the need for a broader conceptualisation of this form of intimate relationship than is suggested by the established notion of ‘living apart together’. The article points to interviewees’ varying experiences of receiving or being denied recognition and acceptance by others as belonging to a couple, as well as to their differing degrees of desire for, or rebellion against, expectations that living apart relationships should ‘progress’ towards cohabitation.
Sexuality Research and Social Policy
... 181 economic globalization, 21 economic mobility of overseas Filipino workers study, 98, 1 1 ... more ... 181 economic globalization, 21 economic mobility of overseas Filipino workers study, 98, 1 1 In2 economic sabotage, 102 economic strategy of the Philippine government, 98, 11 In4 EMPOWER, 196 ... Sec i!/.. c mail order bride and marriage agencies framework for cooperation. ...
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2013
Journal of Political Power, 2019
This paper explores changes in the emotional and affective repertoires mobilized by the Northern ... more This paper explores changes in the emotional and affective repertoires mobilized by the Northern League, a radical right-wing populist party in Italy, to justify its recent prostitution policy proposal. Having dispensed to alarge extent with the punitive and fearful rhetoric against migrant prostitution that characterized its previous campaigns, under its new leader the Northern League has been calling for the regulation of prostitution and for its profitable taxation. The measures proposed, far from being non-moralistic and ideologically neutral, as they are presented, reinforce awell-established normative dichotomy between potentially dangerous individuals and the supposedly wholesome family.
Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2019
This article explores the understudied and undertheorized role that fiscal policies play in shapi... more This article explores the understudied and undertheorized role that fiscal policies play in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers. It highlights the importance of looking at tax policy and its implementation to understand how inequality is reinforced against sexually marginalized populations. Drawing on the Italian case, it explores the ways in which ambiguous taxation arrangements operate to penalize sex workers, excluding them from the status of full taxpayer citizenship, and demonizing them as individuals who exploit the fiscal system at the expense of “good” tax-paying citizens. Fiscal policies, I argue, need to be considered in the context of the governance of prostitution as social mechanisms that have the potential to contribute to the sexual and economic citizenship of this marginalized population, but which, when unequal and ambiguous, reinforce the social and political liminality of sex workers as lesser citizens, and add to the stigma, damaging stereotypes and violence already waged against them. The complex ways in which inequality against sex workers is maintained is revealed as a dynamic process that reflects the ever-shifting interplay of economics and morality.
Rarely addressed in academic scholarship, the puttan tour is a well-known form of entertainment i... more Rarely addressed in academic scholarship, the puttan tour is a well-known form of entertainment in Italy where young men drive around in small groups with the aim of spotting street sex workers. On some occasions, the participants will approach the sex workers to strike up a conversation. On others, they will shout out insults from their car then drive away. This article aims to advance a detailed analysis of this underexplored cultural practice drawing on a diverse body of scholarship exploring the intersection of masculinity, leisure, and homosociality. By analyzing stories of puttan tours gathered mostly online, including written accounts and YouTube videos, our aim is to explore the appeal of the puttan tour through an analysis of how homosociality, humor, and laughter operate in this example of gendered fun. To this end, we look at the multiple and often equivocal meanings of this homosocial male-bonding ritual, its emotional and affective dynamics, and the ways in which it reproduces structures of inequality while normalizing violence against sex workers.
In this contribution we reflect on our experiences of co-designing and coordinating two comparati... more In this contribution we reflect on our experiences of co-designing and coordinating two comparative projects on prostitution policies in Europe by focusing in particular on the epistemological workings underpinning their design and execution. We set out two main goals. The first is to shed light on what the epistemological and methodological issues we encountered reveal about the field of prostitution policy studies, an endeavor which can contribute to better comparative research in the field. The second goal is to relate the scope, developments, outcomes and expectations of the two projects to recent attempts to identify a “one-size-fits-all” model of prostitution regulation, and to interrogate whether transplanting it across Europe is a desirable outcome. Building on the lessons learned from the projects, we propose an approach to prostitution policy development that is reflective of the specific contexts within which the policies are meant to be applied.
Troubling unknowns and certainties in prostitution policy claims-making Isabel Crowhurst [A]... more Troubling unknowns and certainties in prostitution policy claims-making
Isabel Crowhurst
[A]s Foucault (1980) has reminded us, non-knowing about sex typically is accompanied not by silence but by a voluble proliferation of discourses (Epstein 2006:2).
Prostitution laws and policies, whether merely proposed or already implemented, are often based on matter-of-fact and unchallenged claims about the composition and organisation of the sex markets they aim to target, the motivations and conditions of those who operate within them, and the effects of the implementation of the regulatory norms they prescribe. In contrast, an increasing body of work in the expanding field of prostitution and sex work studies shows that empirical evidence pertaining to these very aspects is wanting or altogether lacking, and very difficult to gather. It is this incongruence that I am interested in exploring further in this chapter. Taking my cue from Esptein’s quote above, I discuss how non-knowing about prostitution is accompanied, in policy-making in particular, not by silence or acknowledgement of unknowns in the field, but by a voluble proliferation of absolute knowledge claims. My aim is to interrogate the ways in which such claims are deemed factual and authoritative, and what the consequences of this may be.
In an effort to grapple with these issues, in what follows I take as my point of departure recent developments in prostitution and sex work studies, outlining ways in which unknowns and knowledge limitations in the field are acknowledged, approached and made sense of. I then turn to briefly contextualising the almost ostentatious display of all-encompassing knowledge in prostitution policy making, and the concurrent ignorance of uncertainties and ambiguities, as manifestations of morality politics. Further, the chapter delves deeper into the exploration of these ambivalences by taking as a case study the analysis of prostitution law proposals submitted to the Italian Parliament since 2008; here I identify various typologies of claims and discuss how they contribute to the validation of an uncompromising and all-knowing picture of prostitution and its governance. In the concluding section, I advance some reflections on how ignorance and the awareness of ignorance can be mobilised to engender more responsible knowledge practices in the field.
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research
Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology
This article unites the co-authors’ years of empirical research with women in policed, stigmatize... more This article unites the co-authors’ years of empirical research with women in policed, stigmatized, and low-autonomy sex industry sectors in Brazil, China, Italy, and the United States to identify six prevalent forms of exclusion: economic, intersectional, health, safety, public vilification, and policing. We analyze the distinct manifestations of these exclusionary forces in all four sites to introduce criminal creep as theoretical shorthand for the global seepage of ideological, structural, and interpersonal exclusionary forces into social life, professional practice, and socio-legal procedures that marginalize women in the sex industry as victim-criminals in need of rehabilitation. Uniting and building upon literature on feminist engagement with and critiques of citizenship, conceptual uses of “creep”, carcerality and crimmigration, and critical anti-trafficking studies, we argue that criminal creep facilitates a perfect storm of exclusion that promotes sex workers’ de facto and ...
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research
Routledge International Handbook of Sex Industry Research, 2018
This thesis examines discourses, policies and practices underpinning the response to, and governa... more This thesis examines discourses, policies and practices underpinning the response to, and governance of, prostitution-related migrations of women in contemporary Italy. It analyzes how Italian socio-political factors, such as national identity construction and political opportunism, and normative values and cultural practices (including historical stigmatization of prostitutes, racialization of the 'ethnic Other' and inferiorization of women) contribute to different understandings of, and responses to, the new presence of migrant women operating in the sex industry in Italy. The study adopts a feminist qualitative research methodology and is primarily based on in-depth interviews and participant observation with a number of diverse third sector organizations that operate in the provision of support services to migrant women in the Italian sex industry, as well as on the investigation of relevant documentary sources. Taking as one of its focal points the analysis of the legal...
Drawing on a European cross-national biographical-narrative study of intimate life, this article ... more Drawing on a European cross-national biographical-narrative study of intimate life, this article discusses the complexity of experiences of ‘togetherness’ and ‘apartness’ amongst people in living apart relationships. We explore the five main ways in which interviewees spoke about and understood their current living apart relationships (as: chosen; temporary; transitional; undecided; and unrecognisable), which we argue shows the need for a broader conceptualisation of this form of intimate relationship than is suggested by the established notion of ‘living apart together’. The article points to interviewees’ varying experiences of receiving or being denied recognition and acceptance by others as belonging to a couple, as well as to their differing degrees of desire for, or rebellion against, expectations that living apart relationships should ‘progress’ towards cohabitation.
Sexuality Research and Social Policy
... 181 economic globalization, 21 economic mobility of overseas Filipino workers study, 98, 1 1 ... more ... 181 economic globalization, 21 economic mobility of overseas Filipino workers study, 98, 1 1 In2 economic sabotage, 102 economic strategy of the Philippine government, 98, 11 In4 EMPOWER, 196 ... Sec i!/.. c mail order bride and marriage agencies framework for cooperation. ...
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2013
Journal of Political Power, 2019
This paper explores changes in the emotional and affective repertoires mobilized by the Northern ... more This paper explores changes in the emotional and affective repertoires mobilized by the Northern League, a radical right-wing populist party in Italy, to justify its recent prostitution policy proposal. Having dispensed to alarge extent with the punitive and fearful rhetoric against migrant prostitution that characterized its previous campaigns, under its new leader the Northern League has been calling for the regulation of prostitution and for its profitable taxation. The measures proposed, far from being non-moralistic and ideologically neutral, as they are presented, reinforce awell-established normative dichotomy between potentially dangerous individuals and the supposedly wholesome family.
Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 2019
This article explores the understudied and undertheorized role that fiscal policies play in shapi... more This article explores the understudied and undertheorized role that fiscal policies play in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers. It highlights the importance of looking at tax policy and its implementation to understand how inequality is reinforced against sexually marginalized populations. Drawing on the Italian case, it explores the ways in which ambiguous taxation arrangements operate to penalize sex workers, excluding them from the status of full taxpayer citizenship, and demonizing them as individuals who exploit the fiscal system at the expense of “good” tax-paying citizens. Fiscal policies, I argue, need to be considered in the context of the governance of prostitution as social mechanisms that have the potential to contribute to the sexual and economic citizenship of this marginalized population, but which, when unequal and ambiguous, reinforce the social and political liminality of sex workers as lesser citizens, and add to the stigma, damaging stereotypes and violence already waged against them. The complex ways in which inequality against sex workers is maintained is revealed as a dynamic process that reflects the ever-shifting interplay of economics and morality.
Rarely addressed in academic scholarship, the puttan tour is a well-known form of entertainment i... more Rarely addressed in academic scholarship, the puttan tour is a well-known form of entertainment in Italy where young men drive around in small groups with the aim of spotting street sex workers. On some occasions, the participants will approach the sex workers to strike up a conversation. On others, they will shout out insults from their car then drive away. This article aims to advance a detailed analysis of this underexplored cultural practice drawing on a diverse body of scholarship exploring the intersection of masculinity, leisure, and homosociality. By analyzing stories of puttan tours gathered mostly online, including written accounts and YouTube videos, our aim is to explore the appeal of the puttan tour through an analysis of how homosociality, humor, and laughter operate in this example of gendered fun. To this end, we look at the multiple and often equivocal meanings of this homosocial male-bonding ritual, its emotional and affective dynamics, and the ways in which it reproduces structures of inequality while normalizing violence against sex workers.
In this contribution we reflect on our experiences of co-designing and coordinating two comparati... more In this contribution we reflect on our experiences of co-designing and coordinating two comparative projects on prostitution policies in Europe by focusing in particular on the epistemological workings underpinning their design and execution. We set out two main goals. The first is to shed light on what the epistemological and methodological issues we encountered reveal about the field of prostitution policy studies, an endeavor which can contribute to better comparative research in the field. The second goal is to relate the scope, developments, outcomes and expectations of the two projects to recent attempts to identify a “one-size-fits-all” model of prostitution regulation, and to interrogate whether transplanting it across Europe is a desirable outcome. Building on the lessons learned from the projects, we propose an approach to prostitution policy development that is reflective of the specific contexts within which the policies are meant to be applied.
Troubling unknowns and certainties in prostitution policy claims-making Isabel Crowhurst [A]... more Troubling unknowns and certainties in prostitution policy claims-making
Isabel Crowhurst
[A]s Foucault (1980) has reminded us, non-knowing about sex typically is accompanied not by silence but by a voluble proliferation of discourses (Epstein 2006:2).
Prostitution laws and policies, whether merely proposed or already implemented, are often based on matter-of-fact and unchallenged claims about the composition and organisation of the sex markets they aim to target, the motivations and conditions of those who operate within them, and the effects of the implementation of the regulatory norms they prescribe. In contrast, an increasing body of work in the expanding field of prostitution and sex work studies shows that empirical evidence pertaining to these very aspects is wanting or altogether lacking, and very difficult to gather. It is this incongruence that I am interested in exploring further in this chapter. Taking my cue from Esptein’s quote above, I discuss how non-knowing about prostitution is accompanied, in policy-making in particular, not by silence or acknowledgement of unknowns in the field, but by a voluble proliferation of absolute knowledge claims. My aim is to interrogate the ways in which such claims are deemed factual and authoritative, and what the consequences of this may be.
In an effort to grapple with these issues, in what follows I take as my point of departure recent developments in prostitution and sex work studies, outlining ways in which unknowns and knowledge limitations in the field are acknowledged, approached and made sense of. I then turn to briefly contextualising the almost ostentatious display of all-encompassing knowledge in prostitution policy making, and the concurrent ignorance of uncertainties and ambiguities, as manifestations of morality politics. Further, the chapter delves deeper into the exploration of these ambivalences by taking as a case study the analysis of prostitution law proposals submitted to the Italian Parliament since 2008; here I identify various typologies of claims and discuss how they contribute to the validation of an uncompromising and all-knowing picture of prostitution and its governance. In the concluding section, I advance some reflections on how ignorance and the awareness of ignorance can be mobilised to engender more responsible knowledge practices in the field.
Having started in 2017 with some support from COST Action IS1209 Prospol (Comparing Prostitution ... more Having started in 2017 with some support from COST Action IS1209 Prospol (Comparing Prostitution Policies in Europe), this ongoing project seeks to explore and make sense of the differential status and development of prostitution and sex work studies, with a focus on Europe. We investigate the conditions that make it possible (or not) to pursue research on sex work and prostitution, the type of knowledge produced and circulated in academia (and beyond), the effects of the knowledge produced on broader understanding of the phenomenon and its regulation, and the impact of doing this research on the professional, personal, and political life of those who engage in it.
We presented preliminary results of our work at two conferences, at the ’Displacing sex for sale’ Prospol conference in Copenhagen (March 2017) and at the ESA Sexuality Research Network Mid-Term conference (February 2019). We are currently collecting more data and also preparing publications emerging from the project.
This project explores the under-studied and under-theorized nexus between taxation and prostituti... more This project explores the under-studied and under-theorized nexus between taxation and prostitution, and sheds light on the role of fiscal policies in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers. Drawing on critical fiscal studies, we explore taxation as a social practice which has a key role in shaping the citizenship status of those who operate in the sex industry. Their political, economic and social inclusion/exclusion are influenced by fiscal policies which need to be looked at in the context of the governance of prostitution. The project will explore these dynamics by comparing three European countries which vary in prostitution and fiscal
policies: Italy, Portugal and Switzerland. We will investigate laws, policies, jurisprudence, criminal justice measures and practical fiscal arrangements that address the taxation of prostitution in the three countries, as well as political and public debates around these issues and their media representation, where at all present. Moreover, we are particularly concerned with how these legal measures are experienced by those whom they target. Drawing on the concept of legal consciousness the researchers will employ biographical interview methods to explore how prostitution taxation and their socio-cultural implications are understood, negotiated
and responded to by sex workers.
To mark the end of its four-year activities, COST Action Prospol ('Comparing European Prostitutio... more To mark the end of its four-year activities, COST Action Prospol ('Comparing European Prostitution Policies: Understanding Scales and Cultures of Governance' www.prospol.eu) will host an international conference in Copenhagen on Displacing Sex for Sale.
The conference will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark on March 29th, 30th and 31st 2017.
The deadline for the Call for Papers is September 15th 2016