On freedom, public space and women’s experiences of prostitution. The (in)visible world of the Bois de Vincennes in Paris.

Abstract

Prostitution constitutes a public problem, a moral controversy but also an urban and territorial issue. On the one hand, in public spaces diverse social groups, considered “undesirable” or “deviant”, experience prostitution by practicing their own forms of territorial appropriation but also of resistance and assertion of their rights. On the other hand, a public debate trapped in the ideological opposition abolitionists/pro-sex workers and, therefore, in the binary logic of forced/free prostitution, tends to invisibilize experiences that question what human freedom means in the face of the extreme situations of human rights violations taking place in cities. It was in the days of the Chicago School of Sociology that the urban and regional consequences of the moral crusades against prostitution were studied and the abolitionist model of care was questioned (Reckless, 1933) while the creative deviant young women’s ability to reinvent themselves dealing with different desires and impulses was highlighted (Thomas, 1923). Tarrius (2022) investigates the movements between the Balkans and Spain and the “moral spaces” traced by migrant women who reinvent themselves as prostitutes by adapting to different forms of cooperation between organized crime, migrant populations, illicit trafficking and local politics. Based on the provisional results of a pragmatist, ethnographic and participatory inquiry in progress, the article will focus on the Nigerian women’s experiences of prostitution in a public space, the Bois de Vincennes: (a) the largest green area in Paris, but also (b) area of Francophone street prostitution in caravans; (c) key territorial reference in international networks of Nigerian street prostitution. Attention will be given to the Bois de Vincennes as a “milieu of life” (Cefaï, 2019) where Nigerian women, dealing with moral, affective and cognitive troubles, as well as with concernments and problematic situations, try to keep the peace by practicing, in and outside networks of prostitution, different orders of transaction, cooperation and interdependence with human agents (e.g. “mamas”, “ cult ” groups, clients) - and non-human agents (e.g. money, caravans or institutional arrangements to exit prostitution). How do Nigerian women's experiences in the Bois de Vincennes change in the face of events of international significance such as the 2018 Oba of Benin pronouncement against human trafficking, the Covid-19 pandemic or the forthcoming 2024 Olympic Games? Or, in the face of local events such as the police raids or the violent acts perpetuated by clients? Or, again, because of changes in the legal regulation of prostitution such as the 2016 introduction of client criminalization? What are the networks - local, national and international - where Nigerian women live in? To what extent does the exit from prostitution translate into an expansion of their margins of freedom? Public space thus becomes for Nigerian women a “precarious habitat” that permanently exposes them to the risk of expulsion and extreme human rights violations but also an “in-between space” where women deal with the conflicting impulses, emotions and desires of their “multiple Self” (Proto, 2023). As the women of the Bois de Vincennes seem to suggest, public spaces help create just and inclusive cities only if they regain their political value: that is, when interdisciplinary policy approaches will assume that human freedom is rooted in people’s life histories, rather than treated as freedom of the will. Thus, it is connected to the people’s ability to deal with troubles and problematic situations, manage the forces of desires and integrate conflicting impulses, creatively transform attachments, envision life possibilities and cooperatively transform their environment. This sense of freedom, however, requires much more than the ideological opposition abolitionists/pro-sex workers on which the public debate on prostitution still relies.