Under the "guise of protection". The construction of sex trafficked female prostitutes under the German prostitution policy

Abstract: Sex trafficking, as part of irregular migration, has caught worldwide attention in recent years and is affecting mainly women. This phenomenon is highly apparent in Germany where prostitution is legalised and is therefore often referred to as “brothel of Europe”. In 2017 the Prostitute Protection Act (ProstSchG) was introduced with the common goal to combat sex trafficking. Therefore, this study aims understanding how involuntary migrant prostitutes are constructed in the German prostitution policy, and how the sex trafficked women´s protection is determined. Considering the challenge of getting protection by the law, it is necessary to find out how discussing protection might affect their vulnerability caused by a gendered and racialised discursive background. The theoretical underpinnings, which incorporate the feminist poststructuralism and feminist security approach, provide a framework to analyse the policy document regarding gendered categorisations and the issue of protection. The study was conducted using Carol Bacchi´s WPR approach to policy analysis. This qualitative study is structured by four guiding questions of the WPR method analysing the represented problem and its deepseated presumptions in ProstSchG. Moreover, it shows what is left unproblematic in the law and which effect results from it. The results of this thesis presented various discrepancies in the construction of the sex trafficked female prostitutes. Accompanying with it, the protection provided by the law with the primary goal to combat trafficking, has a harming impact on sexually exploited female migrants instead.