Tag: criminalization

“Criminalisation will not save us”: Policy Brief

by the CrimScapes Research Team

This policy brief stems from our three-year research project called CrimScapes: Navigating Citizenship through European Landscapes of Criminalisation (2020–
2024).

Many strands of our research explored the social life of criminal law: its widespread,
unforeseen effects, not only individual stigmatisation, but also the ways it limits communities’ abilities to participate in democratic processes or seek social justice.
Hence, the conclusions from our research analyses have been condensed into an accessible, concise form for this policy brief.

We hope our insights from fieldwork and policy recommendations can bring clarity
and inspiration to further advance critical research, bring about a much-needed
change in the employed policies, and, ultimately, strengthen social justice.

Criminalisation represents an expanding form of governance, where an increasing
array of identities, behaviours, communities, and aspects of daily life fall under
the purview of criminal law, often at the expense of principles of social justice.
Social issues are increasingly viewed through the lens of criminalisation, framing them as threats rather than challenges to be addressed through social policies
such as public health initiatives, access to rights, or support-oriented or educational
interventions. For instance, the criminalisation of practices like HIV transmission or drug use shifts the focus from public health concerns to punitive measures.

This approach, which portrays social problems as imminent threats necessitating
enhanced efforts to protect an alleged vulnerable society, can fuel authoritarianism and populism while limiting personal freedoms. By creating dichotomies
of “good” versus “bad”, and attributing responsibility for structural issues to individuals or communities, criminalisation exacerbates societal tensions and marginalises already disenfranchised communities.

Moreover, the pervasive reach of criminal law into everyday life has worrying social
implications. Instances where individuals hesitate to seek necessary assistance
due to fear of legal repercussions, such as medical care for drug overdoses or protection and justice in the case of violence, illustrate the chilling effect of criminalisation. Similarly, criminalising survival strategies like migration or sex work further marginalises already vulnerabilised individuals and perpetuates inequalities.

Stigmatisation, social isolation, and barriers to organising or accessing essential services are among the detrimental effects of criminalisation. Despite its purported aim to protect the most vulnerable, criminalisation often increases their susceptibility to harm and perpetuates cycles of disadvantage. Furthermore, the wide-ranging and sometimes unforeseeable social consequences
of criminalisation, such as homelessness or increased poverty, highlight the complexities and drawbacks of this approach.

Recommendations:

  • Tackle social issues through comprehensive social policies, including initiatives designed to enhance access to rights, healthcare, and education.
  • Advocate for decriminalisation in areas such as abortion, HIV, sex work, drug use, and poverty-related crime, with practical examples demonstrating positive outcomes.
  • Safeguard the right of criminalised and disenfranchised communities to self-organise and establish networks of support.
  • Engage criminalised and disenfranchised communities in policy-making processes.
  • Implement harm reduction strategies with proven effectiveness, illustrated by many successful case studies.

Read and download full version here:

CrimScapes_PolicyBriefDownload

CrimScapes: Brief Overview of Research Key Findings

by CrimScapes Research Team

Summary

  1. Based on the observation that politics of criminalization have grown in importance globally, CrimScapes investigates ethnographically the specific manifestations across a variety of fields such as hate speech, women’s imprisonment, abortion, drug use, the spread of HIV/AIDS, search and rescue activities and sex work while looking at a specific European region for each. 
  2. In general, politics of criminalisation can be employed in two distinct ways: On the one hand it aims at supporting citizen rights and protecting vulnerable groups – e.g. when intensifying anti-hate speech laws to protect victims of hate -, on the other hand, it targets people, who are conceived as thread to public security and/or moral orders – e.g. when drug use, abortion or sex work is restricted or fully banned. 
  3. Understood broadly as the application of and increasing reliance on criminal law, crime control measures and imaginaries of (il)legality, politics of criminalisation come at the expense of – or entangled with – other forms of democratic governance, such as social justice, welfare and humanitarianism. 
  4. Politics of criminalization usually don’t go unquestioned. They play out and become enacted and negotiated locally in specific “landscapes of criminalisation.” In view of developments across European regions, it becomes obvious that these ever-changing “crimscapes” are often characterized by a legal ambiguity, creating “hostile environments” for those who have to navigate them as addressees of these politics. 
  5. Politics of criminalisation have effects on and contribute to a wide range of social phenomena, such as the creation of individual and group subjectivities, the ways in which social movements organise today, as shaping state-citizen relations and informing transnational regimes of participation, mobility, emotions and notions of “in/justice”. 
  6. Hence, politics of criminalisation present dilemmas to democratic governance. For example, criminalisation and juridification may hinder processes of collectivisation and solidarization. As criminalization “expands”, it might also involve the proliferation of non-state, and thus not-elected, actors. It unfolds threatening effects on everyday lifeworlds through subtle and manifold mechanisms beyond criminalisation, and is key to understanding the social order in Europe today. 

CrimScapes Key Findings 

The CrimScapes research project has undertaken a comprehensive examination of the proliferating influences of criminal law, crime control measures, and the imaginations surrounding (il)legality. The ethnographic research works to analytically grasp the motivations behind, and challenges and implications of, criminalisation for a variety of actors and practices that (re-)shape entangled landscapes of criminalisation, “crimscapes.”
While encompassing a diverse array of themes, including abortion, sex work, incarcerated women, hate speech, sea rescue, infectious diseases, and drug use, the research contributes to the international debates on a punitive turn in the penitentiary system.
It shows that this global trend does not go unchallenged and is articulated very differently locally – an endeavor that’s captured by the original concept of “CrimScapes – (shifting) Landscapes of Criminalization”.
Our original material has allowed for two things: 1. The research has, in part, explored “new terrains”. Therefore, its social impact has consisted in bringing a hitherto scientific and social blind spot into the public eye to some extent. 2. The cross-case analysis has revealed the pervasive impacts of criminalization on citizenship and democratic governance, prompting a critical reflection on citizenship that goes beyond narrow legal interpretations. In sum, the research shows the impact on the creation of individual and group subjectivities, and the ways in which social movements organise today, as shaping state-citizen relations and informing transnational regimes of mobility, emotions and notions of “in/justice.” This expanded understanding considers responsibilities, subjectivities, and the dynamics regulating access to rights.

More precisely, the project’s key findings, including examples from our research fields, are: 

  1. Politics of criminalisation are a growing and driving, yet mostly overlooked, policy trend across the world and in Europe. These politics encompass the growing mobilisation of criminal law, crime control measures and imaginaries of (il)legality as both responses to, and producers of, the politics of threat and uncertainty that are currently expanding across the European region.
  2. This “punitive trend”, a policy trend which has widely been described with regards to the anglo-saxon world, plays out and becomes enacted and contested locally across “landscapes of criminalisation” in Europe. It thus can be best understood through multi-sited ethnography in different fields of criminalisation across the region, focusing not solely on top-down processes, but particularly on the lived realities and how people “navigate” these environments.
  3. These crimscapes are often characterized by a legal ambiguity, creating “hostile environments”. We have been discussing the original concepts of  “institutional abandonment”(A. Dziuban) and “criminalisation machine” (J. Struzik) to grasp the mechanisms, contradictions and continuities, as well as unpredicted consequences of criminalisation.
    One of the most compelling and horrifying examples certainly is the effect of the legal ambiguity of the de-facto abortion ban in Poland, leading medical staff to refrain from providing assistance in cases of life-threatening miscarriages – accounting for the tragic death of several pregnant people within the past months.
  4. Politics of criminalisation can generally be employed in two distinct ways: On the one hand it can describe the mobilization of citizen rights – e.g. when intensifying anti-hate speech laws to protect victims of hate – , on the other hand, it can point to a challenge of participatory and transparent democratic processes – e.g. when public funds are given to police over community development.
  5. Politics of criminalisation don’t always go unquestioned. At times, they are contested and even disrupted by a turn to rehabilitative and non-punitive measures.
    In Germany, for example, the current government claims to turn away from prior penal policy and works to legalize a number of offenses and crimes. However, these developments don’t (yet) seem to establish substantial counter-practices of the general punitive turn. As shows the analysis of criminal law reform in Germany in 2023, trends towards legalising certain offences don’t necessarily call into question punitive logics at their core. 
  1. Politics of criminalisation can be understood as contributing to a wide range of current social phenomena, such as the creation of individual and group subjectivities, and the ways in which social movements organise today, as shaping state-citizen relations and informing transnational regimes of mobility, emotions and notions of “in/justice”. More precisely, we have identified the following core themes:
    • Criminalisation, (Historical) Figurations and Social Justice
      Notions of justice are inherent to politics of criminalisation. These notions are shifting and contested, and notions of social and criminal justice are far from being conjunt. Crucial for these contestations of in/justice and the shifting politics of criminalisation are emergent social figures of crime and criminalisation, vulnerability and protection.
      For example, figures such as “the criminal hero”, “the hater”, “the irregular migrant”, “the female offender as victim” and many more are important in the un/making of notions of justice and within the both, persistent and shifting governing logics of criminalisation.
    • Criminalisation, Citizenship and the Politics of In/Visibility
      The politics of visibility play a central role in various fields of criminalization, where the perception of being seen or unseen impacts regulation, representation and vulnerability. Through our analysis, visibility emerges as a regime of governance that varyingly shapes the ways in which people understand themselves, each other, and the common good.
      For example, imprisoned women shift between making themselves seen and unseen by the state/prison. Whereas the condition of the modern women’s prison can be conceptualised through the notion of carceral care,  prisoners’ citizenship is enacted within a permanent movement between longing for the state´s care and welfare, and hiding from its control.
    • Criminalisation and the Politics of Emotions
      Our research points to the ways in which emotions, criminalization, and citizenship intersect, especially as social movements form and respond to the challenging socio-political environments of criminalisation.
      For example, emotional dimensions underpin the medical-legal construction of HIV/AIDS in the courtroom. In harm reduction centers, we can witness how emotions such as refusal and shutting down help navigate criminalized fields. Finally, numerous social movements such as the pro-abortion movement transform their crimscapes by redefining hope and turning disappointments into productive catalysts for a more radical, embodied activism.
    • Criminalisation and Care: Criminalisation OF and AS Care and Radical Wellbeing as Mode of Navigation
      The research came to understand that contemporary landscapes of criminalization are characterized by the close entanglement of regimes of control and regimes of care. The notion of carceral care proved to be able to capture the simultaneousness of these seemingly oppositional regimes.
      For example, research from the fields of drug use, sex work and women’s prisons show, that In order to navigate their everyday life, affected communities try to anticipate, and subsequently live up to regimes of carceral care. But while they try to live up to the therapeutic and rehabilitative caring regime their affords are often thwarted by custodial measures of security and control.
    • Criminalisation, production of crises and chronicity
      Our research has documented how the lives of persons impacted by criminalisation are marked by what we have come to call, building on others, conditions of chronic crises. Criminalization not only restricts individual freedoms, but it can also deepen social inequalities, limiting access to citizenship rights and opportunities for affected groups. The relationship between criminalization and citizenship becomes particularly pronounced when state institutions target specific communities, often leading to a primary perception of the state as threat to well-being or survival rather than source of care and protection.
      For sex workers or people who use drugs in Poland, for example, citizenship rights are compromised due to police targeting, social and self-stigmatisation, and seemingly insurmountable legal and medical constraints.
  1. As inclined above, politics of criminalization hence present dilemmas to democratic governance. These dilemmas entail, but are not limited to:
    • Either in the name of protection and empowerment or of containment and punishment, criminalisation needs to be understood in relation to the general tendency toward juridification of social problems. 
    • The individualizing effects that result from the negotiation of social problems and the pursuit of social justice within a legal framework. Criminalisation and juridification hinder processes of collectivisation and solidarization.
    • Nevertheless, for some criminalized populations, criminalisation has provoked, perhaps paradoxically, the construction of political identities, communities and modes of participation, that are crucial to understanding the social order in Europe today. 
    • A foundation of democracy is that people (demos) have influence on political processes, often through the election of decision-making officials. However, our research indicates that criminalization “expands”, and it might also involve the proliferation of non-state, and thus not-elected, actors, such as non-governmental not-for-profit or for-profit organizations and corporations. 

Sex Work under Conditions of War in Ukraine: Observations and Recommendations

By Agata Dziuban

[During the war] sex workers go through the same hardship and deprivation [as everyone else], only their burden is multiplied by criminalisation, economic and social vulnerability, legal insecurity, stigma and lack of state support. (Legalife-Ukraine)

This blog post consists of extracts from the “Regional Assessment of the Impact of the War in Ukraine on Sex-Workers and Sex-Worker-Led Organisations in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia” developed by CrimScapes team member Agata Dziuban with and for the Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network (SWAN). Analysing the impact of the war in Ukraine on sex worker communities, this policy brief builds on desk research, community research, and direct consultations with sex worker-led organisations in Ukraine and other countries of the CEECA region. Excerpts presented in this blog post focus, specifically, on how the war has affected the living and working conditions of sex workers in Ukraine contributing to various economic and work-related precarities. Additionally, this post explores the continuities and shifts in policing and law enforcement strategies sex workers in Ukraine are exposed to under conditions of war. Eventually, it looks into sex worker community-driven responses to the humanitarian, economic and socio- political crises caused by the war, and explores efforts undertaken by Legalife-Ukraine and individual sex workers with the aim to challenge criminalisation of sex work in Ukraine. The full version of the report can be found here.

Dziuban, A. (2023) Regional Assessment of the Impact of the War in Ukraine on Sex-Workers and Sex-Worker-Led Organisations in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. SWAN. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.32405.91363

The War in Ukraine – An Overview

The launch of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation on Ukraine on February 24th 2022 has heavily impacted the safety and security of Ukrainian citizens. As of October 9th 2023, 27,768 civilian casualties were recorded in the country, among them 9,806 killed and 17,962 injured – with the actual toll estimated to be higher.[1] In many cities, infrastructure facilities, residential buildings, and other institutions have been destroyed, and residents do not have access to food, running water, and heating; many have also lost their homes. The war has also forced many people to flee their homes in search of safety. An estimated 5.1 million Ukrainians are internally displaced and more than 6.2 million have crossed into neighbouring countries in the European Union and globally.[2]

The war has significantly impacted the overall economic situation in Ukraine, leading to a drastic deterioration of the living conditions of its citizens. In 2022 Ukrainian GDP declined by 29.2 per cent, with the poverty rate increasing from 5.5 to 24.2 per cent pushing 7.1 million more people into poverty.[3]  This contributed to the sharp rise of unemployment rates, up to 35 per cent at the end of 2022, leaving many people without livelihoods and means of survival. As reported by the UN, 17.6 million Ukrainians are in need of life-saving and life-sustaining humanitarian aid and protection.[4]  

The War’s impact on sex workers in Ukraine

Even before the outbreak of war, sex workers in Ukraine had been subjected to criminalisation, discrimination, and harsh policing.[5] The Ukrainian state penalises people providing sexual services and imposes criminal sanctions on third parties managing, organising and facilitating sex work.[6] Sex workers working online are also subject to prosecution under laws criminalising the production and distribution of pornographic content. These unfavourable policies and pervasive stigma compromise sex workers’ well-being and safety, health, and access to essential services. Criminalisation and exclusion from the state’s duty to care puts sex workers at disproportionate risk of abuse, violence, and harm, also on the part of law enforcement agencies.[7]

The humanitarian crisis caused by the full-scale Russian military attack on Ukraine exacerbated these pre-existing inequalities, greatly affecting marginalised and underserved communities, including sex workers. As reported by Legalife-Ukraine, the war has further increased the level of vulnerability among sex workers in Ukraine, exposing them to further violations and precarity. […]

Sex work under conditions of war

War hostilities have adversely affected the living and working realities of Ukrainian sex workers, as well as the overall situation in the sex industry. According to Legalife-Ukraine,[8] 71,5 per cent of sex workers surveyed in April 2022 did not stop providing services following the outbreak of war. Despite increased war-related dangers, sex workers reported huge economic pressure and greater reliance on income from sex work as the main factors that kept them at work. In turn, 19 per cent of surveyed sex workers left sex work in the first months of the war due to forced migration, war-related risks, decreasing income, and deteriorating working conditions. Many of them, however, resumed sex work later on. Simultaneously, conditions of war and the resulting economic situation have also contributed to an influx of women into the sex industry. As reported by Legalife-Ukraine, 9,5 and 11 per cent of respondents – in April 2022 and April 2023, respectively – declared they had taken up sex work after the outbreak of the war.[9] […]

Simultaneously, sex workers reported a significant worsening of their working conditions and a decrease in income:

There is less work, earnings have dropped, the risks are greater, it’s scary to go out to work. (respondent from Ukraine)

[…] Forced migration, rising unemployment, high inflation rates, and drastic increases in prices of food, housing, and other essential products and services, left many sex workers across Ukraine in destitution, without money to meet their basic needs and secure their livelihoods. As indicated by the Legalife-Ukraine survey report, 98 per cent of sex workers questioned in April 2023 reported a sharp deterioration of their financial situation,[10]and almost all sex workers interviewed for this study noted that their earning from sex work has decreased significantly due to reduced working hours, lower number of clients, and war-related challenges to the provision of sexual services.

Since the beginning of the war, the average income level in most sex workers’ families has fallen by 25-50 per cent. The economic pressure is particularly great for single mothers and those whose husbands or partners lost jobs or were drafted. Becoming the sole breadwinners and carers for their families, they are facing a heavier burden to provide for their children or elderly parents.

Deterioration of working conditions

Direct war hostilities, air strikes, shelling, and rocket attacks have exposed sex workers to imminent dangers at work:

Before the war, sex workers worked individually, looking for clients on the street, more often in the evening and at night. When rocket attacks, frequent air raids, and curfews began, the work became more dangerous and difficult to organise. (Legalife-Ukraine)

Additionally, since the introduction of martial law on February 24th 2022,[11] a night curfew has been in effect in most parts of the country. Depending on the region and the security situation, citizens are not allowed to be outside from 11 or 12 p.m. to 5 or 6 a.m., and public transport and other facilities do not operate at this time. As a result, many sex workers have been forced to change their working routines.

Sex workers who used to work outdoors cannot work anymore. They try to limit their work and not to move around during curfew, they try to finish work before curfew, irrespective whether they have had a client or earned anything. The same with sex workers working indoors, they try to finish work early, because otherwise they would be stuck in their workplace. That is why some sex workers try not to work at night, although previously they would choose working at night due to child care and other obligations. (Legalife-Ukraine)

The introduction of restrictions on movement has contributed to a decrease in sex workers’ mobility, making it more difficult to travel to other cities or regions of Ukraine to work and to travel to outcalls within their cities. This translates into shorter working hours, fewer clients and a drastic reduction in earnings.

As a result of the curfews and war hostilities, many sex workers interviewed had to change their work settings. Several women previously working in collective workplaces decided to work on their own, individually, in their flats or trusted venues (cafes/hotels/saunas) to avoid encounters with the police and to increase their safety. Some gave up outdoor work and started to arrange meetings with their clients indoors, primarily at their homes. For some, this decision has been motivated by the greater influx of women providing sexual services from other regions of Ukraine, in particular IDPs [internally displaced persons], and rising competition among sex workers. It has been reported that in some regions of Ukraine, the increase in the number of people selling sex has led to a decrease in the prices of sexual services.  Some sex workers previously working indoors or outdoors, have taken up online work, such as webcamming or posting content on dedicated websites. This allowed them to secure safer working conditions and combine work with care obligations:  

I went online, it’s safer, on my own territory, quiet, with fewer clients. Of course, my earnings have halved, but at least I can look after my mum and grandmother. (respondent from Ukraine)

However safe, online work proves challenging not only because of decreases in income but also due to power outages and blackouts that have become common in Ukraine since the outbreak of the war – a consequence of the targeted destruction of critical infrastructure by the Russian army. Moreover, sex workers working online risk criminal charges under laws banning the production and distribution of pornography, a provision actively challenged by the Ukrainian sex worker community.

While the demand for sexual services decreased due to the war hostilities and economic hardship, many sex workers reported an increased presence of soldiers and military personnel among their clients, particularly in the regions near the frontlines or stationing the army. Interviewed sex workers had varying opinions on working with soldiers and draftees. Some praised them for their sympathetic and caring attitudes, and for providing financial support to them and their families. Others pointed to challenges related to, in particular, mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, problematic alcohol use, tension and aggression among soldiers and other military personnel directly exposed to atrocities of war. To reduce risks, most sex workers spoke about undertaking various safety measures at work: they are more careful in choosing clients, do not accept clients on drugs or alcohol, negotiate details and prices in advance, and try not to use alcohol or drugs with clients and at work.

Policing in times of war

Even before the war, sex workers across Ukraine were subjected to harsh policing, penalties (usually in the form of monetary fines) and various abuses from law enforcement agencies. As noted by Legalife-Ukraine, the war did not have a significant impact on sex workers’ interactions with the police. While police presence in sex workers’ venues might have been reduced in some regions of the country, sex workers working in different parts of Ukraine declare being exposed to contact with the police on a daily basis. These interactions – following the “rules” established before the outbreak of the war – usually involve paying a fine/bribe for the provision of sexual services and receiving a receipt (in the form of a protocol) confirming that the payment has been made. One interviewee from Ukraine explained:

Most of them know us, they charge us 100-200 UAH per day for protocol. We do not fight with them, we use the protocol as a receipt, a proof that we paid today. When others [police officers or law enforcement agents] come, we show them these protocols as a proof that we have already paid to others today. (respondent from Ukraine)

Additionally, Legalife-Ukraine reported that police raids targeting third parties, such as venue owners, managers and others organising sexual labour, are continuously carried out in sex work venues, with a noticeable increase in the number of raids in some regions of the country. Police interventions push many sex workers to work individually and alone in fear of prosecution under third-party charges. As mentioned above, cases of pornography-related charges against sex workers working online have also been reported since the outbreak of the war.

One of the key issues highlighted by sex workers taking part in this study is the increased presence of military administrations in all regions of Ukraine. Established to implement martial law, military administrations are given special powers and prerogatives in providing defence and ensuring public safety and order. Many sex workers expressed uncertainty and fear about potential encounters with military personnel and administration, as their powers, as well as jurisdiction over sex workers, are not entirely clear and differ from those granted to the police:

Sex workers know how to engage with the police, because they have long-standing relations with them, but they don’t know how to engage with the military. They have slightly different jurisdiction, they have different entitlements than the police. They have different obligations and it is not quite clear what the military can do when they check your documents. Will they detain you to clarify who you are? Or will they do something to you? That is why people are saying that they are afraid of engaging with the military, because they don’t know what the consequences are. (Legalife-Ukraine)

As noted in the quote above, this is particularly relevant for sex workers lacking identification documents (national or international passports) that were lost, for instance, during forced displacement. Deprived of resources to restore their documents, sex workers fear going out, also during the day, as they might be stopped and interrogated by the military.

Trans women providing sexual services have another reason to fear encounters with military personnel, as they might be drafted due to wrong gender markers in their legal documents. As a result, they often try to avoid public places and working outdoors where they could be apprehended. Trans sex workers seeking refuge abroad also risk being stopped and drafted at border crossings if they have the wrong gender marker on their passports.   

Additionally, sex workers working outdoors or travelling for work at night risk being subjected to financial penalties for breaching curfew restrictions. While Ukrainian legislation does not impose legal liability for violating curfew, Legalife-Ukraine noted that some sex workers were subjected to financial punishment by the police or military personnel, and these penalties are much higher than fines for the provision of sexual services. […]

Community response to the war

Following the war’s outbreak, Legalife-Ukraine promptly mobilised to assist Ukraine’s sex worker community, assessing the immediate needs of sex workers and adapting their priorities to address the challenges posed by the conflict.

Their primary focus was ensuring sex workers’ survival during wartime and providing humanitarian aid. The United Front of Ukrainian Sex Workers was established early in the conflict, uniting the remaining community leaders and activists who had not fled Ukraine. By April 2022, the organisation had surveyed 12 regions, pinpointing the most critical needs of their communities. Consequently, they concentrated on distributing food, water, medicines, hygienic products, warm clothing, and essential resources.

Legalife-Ukraine  […] delivered 780 food kits, 780 hygienic product kits, and 370 essential medicine kits to sex workers. Those in war-affected regions received additional support, including power banks, generators, flashlights, heaters, sleeping bags, and water purification tablets. The organisation also secured temporary shelter and housing for displaced sex workers and covered transportation expenses for evacuation and healthcare access.

To assist sex workers in restoring legal documents and applying for state benefits, including child support and IDP support, Legalife-Ukraine offered financial and logistical support. They addressed the mental health needs of sex workers affected by the war, providing psychological consultations through a hotline and online chats. Local activists ensured access to healthcare, HIV services, harm reduction, OST programs, and legal aid.

Throughout the war, Legalife-Ukraine has supported internally displaced sex workers and those leaving Ukraine. They facilitated connections with sex worker-led organisations and service providers in neighbouring states, helping sex workers find housing, protected status, healthcare enrollment, and educational opportunities for their children.

The organisation has also been engaged in providing essential and up-to-date information to sex worker communities across the country via its website, social media and communicators. Legalife has been informing its constituencies about the social and political situation in Ukraine; legal security, rights and entitlements under wartime conditions; possibilities of obtaining humanitarian assistance (e.g. location of aid and distribution points, legal services and support schemes available to IDPs and victims of war); evacuation procedures on territories affected by the war hostilities or occupied; obtaining refugee status abroad, etc. […]

Advocacy and Decriminalisation Efforts in Ukraine

Members of the All-Ukrainian Union “the Council of Leaders of Sex Workers of Ukraine” actively contribute to advocacy and information strategies for decriminalising sex work in Ukraine. They collect data on sex worker needs and represent the community at local and national levels. They’ve developed an intervention plan for the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and collaborate with HIV/AIDS Coordination Councils and Country Coordination Mechanism to assess the Global Fund’s programs in the context of the Russian military aggression and post-war period.

Despite challenges due to the socio-political climate and the war, the organisation achieved success in repealing criminal sanctions against sex workers operating online. Previously, sex workers engaged in online activities faced criminal charges for producing and distributing pornography. Criticism of the Ukrainian pornography ban, particularly in light of the OnlyFans fundraiser for Ukrainian war efforts, played a pivotal role. In March 2023, sex workers initiated the “TerOnlyFans” (Territorial Defence OnlyFans) charity project, collecting approximately $800,000 in donations for Ukrainian defence forces and IDP support in exchange for nude photos and erotic content.[12] This initiative ignited public interest and mobilisation for decriminalising pornography in Ukraine.[13]

Over recent months, Legalife-Ukraine, alongside partner organisations like 100% LIFE NGO, Institute for Legislative Ideas, Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO), TerOnlyFans, DEJURE Foundation, and the Centre for Economic Strategy, actively challenged Ukraine’s pornography ban. They participated in policy meetings and public hearings aimed at revising the Penal Code. Their efforts bore fruit as a legislative proposal to remove provisions criminalising consensual provision and distribution of erotic content has been submitted to the Supreme Council of Ukraine, awaiting a vote in the near future. […]

Conclusions and recommendations

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the resulting cost-of-living crisis, have severely affected sex worker communities and organisations in Ukraine and other Central and Eastern European and Central Asian countries. As demonstrated by this report, sex workers across the region are facing dire poverty, deterioration of working conditions, rampant policing, and severe barriers to accessing essential services, including healthcare and existing support schemes. Subject to structural and institutional violence and abandoned by the state, sex worker communities across the region can often only count on support provided by sex worker-led organisations and dedicated service providers. All of the groups included in this research mobilised to provide humanitarian aid and all the necessary services to ensure sex workers’ survival in times of war-related crisis. However, sex worker-led initiatives and organisations themselves are facing significant political and funding challenges.

The following recommendations have been developed by organisations contributing to this report. Their fulfilment would reduce sex workers’ vulnerability to the crisis caused by the war and war-related economic pressures, strengthening sex worker-led collectives in providing their communities with apt and lifesaving support:

For policymakers:

  • Decriminalise sex work and recognise sex work as work. Only full sex work decriminalisation can guarantee sex workers’ access to their human, civil and labour rights and can protect sex workers’ communities from rights violations, exploitation and violence.
  • Adequately address the vulnerability of women and girls to gender-based, war-related sexual violence and trafficking. Do not introduce legal measures that contribute to the criminalisation and policing of sex worker communities.
  • Remove all the harmful and discriminatory narcophobic, homophobic, transphobic and anti-migrant legal provisions that hinder rights access for the most vulnerable and marginalised communities. Secure functional human rights protective mechanisms against discrimination, violence and institutional exclusion. 
  • Remove all legal measures that target civil society organisations and restrict their ability to operate […]. Create a favourable environment for NGOs, service providers and community-led organisations providing services to vulnerable and marginalised communities.
  • Sex worker-led groups and organisations providing direct services to sex workers should be involved in the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of policies that affect sex worker communities, including humanitarian aid and war-related relief, prevention and support schemes.
  • Sex workers’ health, social, and economic vulnerabilities should be recognised and addressed in governmental relief programming, including war-related and economic crisis-related support schemes. Sex workers and other marginalised communities, including LGBTQIA communities, people who use drugs, people experiencing homelessness, and those operating in informal economies should be granted access to state support, benefits and protections.
  • Newly emerging trends in war-related migration and mobility should be monitored and adequately addressed. All people fleeing war and prosecution should be included in relief schemes and granted support regardless of their nationality, citizenship, and legal status. Undocumented persons have a right to cross borders and seek shelter and protection in case of war or other humanitarian crises.
  • All legal barriers and discriminatory provisions preventing refugees and both internal and international migrants from accessing healthcare and other support services should be removed. Both undocumented and documented migrants should be granted unconditional access to the same primary and secondary healthcare services available to all citizens.
  • Policing strategies should not single out marginalised communities, including sex workers, and ought not to be enacted in an arbitrary, discriminatory and  disproportionate manner. Police using unjustified and illegitimate violence based on profiling and prejudice should be held accountable and adequately prosecuted.  Police violence should be recognised as a structural issue and addressed by the state. […]

[1] https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Ukraine%20-%20civilian%20casualty%20update%20as%20of%208%20October%202023%20ENG.pdf

[2] https://www.unrefugees.org/emergencies/ukraine/; https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine

[3] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/ukraine/overview#3

[4] https://www.unocha.org/ukraine

[5] SWAN (2019), Sex Work Legal Frameworks in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Briefing paper. https://www.swannet.org/files/swannet/SWLegalFrameENG_web_0.pdf; SWAN (2015), FAILURES OF JUSTICE State and Non-State Violence Against Sex Workers and the Search for Safety and Redress, https://www.swannet.org/files/swannet/FailuresOfJusticeEng.pdf

[6] SWAN (2019), Sex Work Legal Frameworks in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Briefing paper. https://www.swannet.org/files/swannet/SWLegalFrameENG_web_0.pdf;

[7] Legalife-Ukraine (2018), Обнаружение барьеров в доступе и оценка качества услуг для секс-работников, изучение их потребностей с целью повышения эффективности программ уменьшения вреда, профилактики и лечения ВИЧ/СПИДа в Украине», 2017-2018гг., Аналитический центр «Социоконсалтинг», при поддержке AFEW Интернешнл).

[8] Legalife-Ukraine (2023), Aналітичний звіт За результатами оцінки потреб сп в умовах війни Та впливу проєктів з надання підтримки сп (в рамках реалізації проєкту за підтримки ACTIONAID).

[9]  Legalife-Ukraine (2023), Aналітичний звіт За результатами оцінки потреб сп в умовах війни Та впливу проєктів з надання підтримки сп (в рамках реалізації проєкту за підтримки ACTIONAID).

[10] Legalife-Ukraine (2023), Aналітичний звіт За результатами оцінки потреб сп в умовах війни Та впливу проєктів з надання підтримки сп (в рамках реалізації проєкту за підтримки ACTIONAID).

[11] https://ukraineinvest.gov.ua/en/response-to-war/helpdesk/martial-law/

[12] https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/05/nudes-for-war-effort-campaign-backs-ukrainian-parliaments-porn-legalisation-bill

[13] https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20650; https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/05/nudes-for-war-effort-campaign-backs-ukrainian-parliaments-porn-legalisation-bill; https://lgbti-consortium.org.ua/en/media/legalizatsiya-pornografiyi-v-ukrayini-shho-potribno-znaty/

On archives and the long shadow of the ‘vagrant’ in Finnish parliamentary debate  

By Juulia Kela

A screenshot from the Finnish Parliamentary Archives from 1932. 

In conducting archival research for the CrimScapes project’s first phase on genealogies of different figures of crime, I tried to keep in mind something I once read in an interview from the phenomenal Marcus Rediker, who writes “histories from below” of slave rebellions, pirates, and abolition. I recall reading that Rediker ended up writing an entire book on a previously less known abolitionist ally, Quaker dwarf Benjamin Lay, by keeping hold of fascinating archival details that he found while working on an altogether different piece of historical research.  

So, while piecing together a genealogy of the ‘infectious criminal’ through Finnish parliamentary archives (scouring through parliamentary discussions on sex work, vagrancy, and prison camps to find where, how, and who was punished for transmitting diseases, especially sexually transmitted ones), I kept a folder of tangential archival traces. The above screenshot is one such trace. It is a section of a parliamentary debate from 1932 on the Vagrancy Act, in which the speaker argues that:  

“We cannot afford to waste the nation’s strength or to see how crime is increasing precisely through this army of vagrants. Current vagrancy laws are far too complicated, long and inefficient. That is why I believe it is important that the concept of vagrancy should be expanded and that all necessary measures be taken before this crowd of vagrants has grown so large that it in fact terrorises the whole of society and the state.”   

I suspect that this little passage casts a long shadow into current parliamentary and similar official political discourses of the Other in Finland. In this passage alone, we see a glimpse of the creation and casting out of vagrancy from ‘society’. We see in action the official narration of both the acceptable citizen – the docile wage labourer – and the figure of the vagrant, whom the former is at threat of being ‘terrorised’ by.  

I never used this passage in the paper on the ‘infectious criminal’ I ended up writing (to be published alongside some of my CrimScapes colleagues’ and affiliates later this year in a Special Issue)  – but more than once, I have found myself returning to it while discussing nationalism with my friends and acquaintances. Contemporarily, delineations of belonging and non-belonging are visibly harsh yet often unacknowledged in Finnish public, parliamentary, and media spheres. The state is clearly benevolent towards those narrated and defined as belonging to it, but (according to this narrative, obscurely) punitive towards those deviating from a productive, docile, white Nordic-ness. This phenomenon has been written about as the ‘Janus face’ of Nordic regimes of punishment by sociologist Vanessa Barker.  

In the above parliamentary debate, with the language that is used, we see how vagrancy hands itself as one of the genealogical nodes of many current forms of the Other in Finland – be it sex workers, racialised migrants (which extends itself to how the genocide in Gaza, Palestine and Palestinians have been portrayed in Finnish media since last fall), people who use drugs, or the unemployed. This archived piece of debate is fascinating – it brings us to genealogies which break the fiction of a unified Finnish past. 

“Born illegal”: criminalising LGBTQ+ refugees in Türkiye

Hybrid Lecture, Feb 5th, 10-11:30 CET/ 11-12:30 EET, University of Helsinki and Online (Zoom)

Türkiye hosts the largest number of refugees worldwide, nearly four million, including 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Since 2018, the country has experienced one of the worst economic crises in its history, with hyperinflation, unemployment, and chronic hopelessness widespread. Both the country’s authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and its major opposition parties have sought to blame the country’s economic woes on refugees, migrants, and other minorities, who face widespread daily discrimination from both the authorities and local communities. 

This increasingly hostile and often outright violent atmosphere is most acutely felt by LGBTQ+ refugees in Türkiye, who suffer from rising xenophobic and racist sentiment as well as deeply ingrained and publicly endorsed prejudice against LGBTQ+ people. Both of these trends are actively weaponised by the Turkish authorities to harass and target the LGBTQ+ refugee community.  

This talk will discuss the historical and political context that has led to the rise of anti-refugee and anti-LGBTQ+ politics in Türkiye; the legal environment in which this takes place and explore both the issues LGBTQ+ refugees face as well as the networks of solidarity and mutual aid that they are organising. The talk will also feature a Q&A with the speakers.  

We kindly request you to register your intention to attend online or on-site at the University of Helsinki: https://forms.gle/msS7TR59zp8KuEvw7 

Aws Jubair is a refugee advocate, humanitarian worker and LGBTQ+ activist from Baghdad, Iraq, living and working in Türkiye since 2011. For the past 8 years Aws has been working to serve vulnerable communities. He is co-founder and co-director of four humanitarian projects: The Aman Project which focuses on supporting LGBTQ refugees and advocating for LGBTQ rights in the MENA region; the De-otherize Dialogue Project; United Hands for Refugees, and the Common Sense Initiative.  

Sarı is an activist who has worked on human rights in the MENA region for nearly ten years, focusing on Iran and the Persian Gulf. He is advising and assisting on The Aman Project’s advocacy work.