Browsing by Author "Pajuvuo, Sanna"

This thesis analyses the sex work debates in Polish media from March 2017 to March 2018. In the context of Europe, Poland is remarkable both as a country of origin as well as a transit country for migrant sex workers, so unsurprisingly a public debate about sex work exists there. Additionally, Catholicism has a great influence on the Polish society, so a religious dimension is expected to be present in the discussion. Through the published interviews of three Polish women in the sex industry, two of whom live abroad, and the discussion inspired by them, attitudes and perspectives towards sex work in the public debate in Poland are scrutinised. Combining politics of the body, subject-in-process, and intersectional feminism as a theoretic framework, and critical discourse analysis as the method, the agendas and power structures found in the debate are brought to light. For categorising the attitudes found in the material, a framework of different perspectives towards sex work is applied. According to the material, all of the interviewed women see themselves as independent agents who have knowingly chosen their jobs or lifestyles. However, the commentary from other people seeks to discredit the women. Some see them as mentally unstable, while others think that through publicity they are trying to lure other women into the sex business. It can be seen in the debate that the dominant discourses of sex workers as victims or evildoers are resisting the struggles for power of competing discourses. These new discourses are using the tactic of presenting an essentialist sex worker subject with a demand for worker’s rights. While this stable subject is deployed to gain recognition for the sex worker cause, the sex worker identity is often fluid and temporary, and many sex workers keep their activities secret instead of giving public interviews.