Att arbeta mellan politik och praktik : En diskursiv analys av Länsstyrelsernas arbete mot prostitution och människohandel för sexuella ändamål

Background: Since Sweden was the first country to adopt a legislation on prostitution criminalizing the buyer but not the seller, the Swedish prostitution politics has been internationally disseminated. The legislation has been motivated by a gender equality discourse with the goal to protect women from gender-based abuse by sex buying men. In 2015 some of the well-known civil rights organizations started to question the legislation and promoted a decriminalization. Through the different discursive interpretations of prostitution my purpose is to investigate how prostitution is presented and understood in the work between politics and practice. This thesis investigates the County Administrative Boards' work by looking into the following questions: How is prostitution understood as a political problem? Which approaches are excluded by the presented understanding? How do the employees position their work in relation to this understanding? Have there been discursive changes that can be deduced from the employees' experiences and perceptions? By using the method semi-structured focus groups interviews with seven employees working with prostitution and human trafficking, I have analyzed the interviews through the What’s-the-problem-approach, basing on theories concerning intersectionality, the charmed circle and discourse theory and came to the conclusions that the employees mainly understand prostitution as based on unequal gender relations and a part of gender-based violence. Although the employees argues that the professional way of working on the matter differs, they all more or less commit to what is constructed as the hegemonic discourse and relates to the more liberal discourse as part of the periphery. They also recognize several difficulties concerning their position as an authority, between the government and the civil society. The study shows that the prevailing political discourse and governmental work excludes criticism from other possible positions, but also results in stigmatization of women in prostitution in general