Neighbors’ anxieties against prostitutes’ fears: Ambivalence and repression in the policing of street prostitution in France

At the end of the 1990s, prostitution became a renewed political issue in France with the arrival of migrant women supposedly under the grip of organized criminal networks. Neighbors of new prostitution zones expressed ambivalent feelings, mixing compassion toward victims of human trafficking with fear of the threat created by people belonging to a criminal underworld. Authorities have adopted ambiguous policies as well, first and foremost with a law that pretends to rescue prostitutes while making soliciting an offense. These policies aim to make prostitutes disappear from the urban space by forcing them to return underground. Since then, prostitutes live in fear of being assaulted, harassed, and, for those who are illegal migrants, expelled from France. Mobilizations have been unable to challenge these policies, as prostitutes’ supporters are divided between those who define prostitution as sex work and those who think it is modern slavery. Prostitutes’ fears is the price they are paying for responding to neighbors’ anxieties, and the political use of these feelings is based on class, ethnic and gender inequalities.