doi:10.

1093/bjc/azx028 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL.  (2018) 58, 255–272

Advance Access publication 10 May 2017

LEAVING NO STONE UNTURNED: THE BORDERS AND

ORDERS OF TRANSNATIONAL PROSTITUTION
Synnøve Jahnsen and May-Len Skilbrei*

Criminologists are increasingly turning their attention to the intersections between immigra-
tion and crime control. In this article, we describe and discuss four regulatory practices whereby
Norwegian police combine criminal law and immigration law in different ways vis-à-vis migrant
women involved in prostitution. These practices target sex workers with exclusionary measures,
even though the sale of sex is legal. These regulatory practices illustrate how Norwegian anti-pros-
titution policies are combined with an anti-trafficking agenda, something which creates a policing
regime dependent on extensive forms of surveillance and control over sex workers’ lives and mobil-
ity, and on partnerships and networks of governance.
Keywords: borders, crimmigration, human trafficking, migration control, prostitution

Introduction
Increasingly, discussions about prostitution policy focus on how it can combat human
trafficking, but it is commonly studied within a nation-state context, ignoring the trans-
national character of the commercial market for sex, and the policies and forces that
form and regulate it. Equally, trafficking policies are often studied without sensitivity
to their broader context, in the sense that other policy domains and their develop-
ments are not taken into consideration. This article attempts to bridge these divides by
arguing that the policy domains of prostitution and trafficking need to be understood
in terms of how they interact with each other and, separately and together, with other
domains. We further argue that this helps shed light on broader criminological con-
cerns to do with a delegation of government that makes us all responsible for prevent-
ing crime. We look particularly at how prostitution policy and initiatives to prevent and
prosecute trafficking interact with the policy domain of migration.
In this article, we aim to offer a critical analysis of the regulation of prostitution
in Norway by focusing on how enforcement (punishment of clients, traffickers and
pimps) hinges on a multi-agency approach that produces exclusionary outcomes for
foreign women. By highlighting the continuities between traditional and new forms of
prostitution policy, we challenge the argument put forward by Roger Matthews (2005),
who praised the multi-agency approach as a new direction that moved on from a pre-
vious regime of criminalization. We also add to Jane Scoular and Maggie O’Neill’s
(2007) observation that there is a move towards expansive forms of control, often
masked as rehabilitative efforts based on inclusion, partnership and active citizenship.
We expand Sharon Pickering and Julie Ham’s (2014) analysis of the micro-politics of
border control as integral to managing prostitution. By exploring how three sets of

Synnøve Jahnsen, The Norwegian Police University College, PO Box 5027, Majorstuen, 0130 Oslo, Norway; *May-Len
Skilbrei, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, PO Box 6706, St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway;
m.l.skilbrei@jus.uio.no.

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 JAHNSEN AND SKILBREI

policy domains—prostitution, trafficking and migration—are combined in an effort

to achieve particular goals, we examine how exclusionary and inclusionary strategies
produce a multi-layered paradox: an increasingly harsh, and an increasingly generous
approach to prostitution.
We seek to advance the understanding of prostitution policy more generally, bearing
in mind that certain aspects of it are related to international developments, while oth-
ers are informed by moral concerns that are often locally oriented. We believe that the
combination of prostitution law, trafficking law and immigration law that we explore
illuminates wider contemporary concerns over mobility and security. This article thus
not only contributes to literature on the mobility of women involved in, or suspected to
be involved in, prostitution (Agustín 2008; Sanders 2009; Sanders and Campbell 2011;
Pickering and Ham 2014; Sanchez 2014), but also to a growing body of research explor-
ing the border as a critical site for criminology and policing research (Stumpf 2006;
Segrave 2009; Weber 2013; Aas and Gundhus 2015; Pickering and Ham 2014).
Empirical studies of prostitution and trafficking policies have tended to focus on
the experiences and narratives of victims of trafficking (Brunovskis and Surtees 2013;
Houge et al. 2015). Such accounts have undoubtedly enriched scholarly understanding
of the factors that shape the experiences of those targeted by policy makers. However,
this literature remains incomplete, since it lacks an examination of the factors that
shape institutional responses (Lofthus 2015). Recent ethnographic accounts of the
practices of the EU border agency Frontex (Aas and Gundhus 2015), the Australian
border force (Pickering and Ham 2014) and the UK Border Force (Hadjimatheou and
Lynch 2016) point out that border crossings are important sites for identifying and pro-
tecting victims of trafficking (Pickering and Ham 2014). They are also sites which give
border control officers new roles as ‘humanitarian first responders’ (Hadjimatheou
and Lynch 2016). Although the literature acknowledges the importance of border con-
trol in anti-trafficking interventions, no study has critically engaged with how border
control policies have become part of wider efforts to regulate and control domestic
prostitution markets, and how this creates a situation where—for particular groups—
the border, to an exceptional degree, is everywhere (Lyon 2005; Weber 2006), while
domestic sex workers, to some extent, operate with increased freedom from policing.
In this article, we aim to examine how prostitution and trafficking policies, together
with territorial control within the border, are intertwined with control outside, and at,
the border. It does not seek to evidence how the policing of cross-border prostitution
usually takes place, but rather to identify practices where the policing of prostitution
operates at points where several different policy domains meet. The article is analytical
in its approach, drawing on research projects conducted over a period of more than ten
years. The authors have undertaken research on how migrants involved in prostitution
in Norway are met as sex workers and migrants, and as possible victims of trafficking
(for more information about this research, see Brunovskis and Skilbrei 2016; Jahnsen
2008; 2014a; 2014b; Skilbrei 2010). Our research involves observation, media discourse
analysis and interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, including sex workers, victims
of trafficking, police investigators, rank and file officers, public prosecutors, lawyers,
politicians, feminist and sex worker activists, bureaucrats, municipal case handlers,
councillors, social outreach workers and health personnel, as well as a range of NGO
representatives. In addition to being granted the rare opportunity to observe police
officers and investigators, we have also attended and facilitated forums and meetings
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 THE BORDERS AND ORDERS OF TRANSNATIONAL PROSTITUTION

between cooperative agencies in several police districts that seek to unite and train
representatives of a wider range of agencies functioning at a national level. We have
observed interactions between police and sex workers, and have also followed numer-
ous court cases involving prostitution and trafficking in various ways. These diverse
materials offer a unique insight into the contemporary regulation of migration-related
prostitution in the nexus between prostitution, trafficking and migration.
The article is organized as follows: The next section offers a description of contem-
porary national policies on prostitution and trafficking. After that we offer an analysis of
four examples of the way penal and administrative practices vis-à-vis cross-border prosti-
tution have been combined with the expressed intention of regulating prostitution mar-
kets and preventing trafficking. The first example shows how criminal and immigration
law are brought together in attempts to prevent and detect exploitation in cross-border
prostitution, in the form of trafficking, and to help the police to curb the prostitution
market itself, via what is referred to as ‘Operation Houseless’. We will demonstrate that
this innovative police practice and a particular interpretation of the law have led to
increased surveillance of particular groups of sex workers. The second practice we
describe is the use of immigration law in targeting and regulating visible street prosti-
tution in certain areas of the city. This can be understood as a zoning policy whereby
the police seek to respond to visible street prostitution in certain areas. Prostitution
has taken place in these areas for the last 100 years, but there is less tolerance for the
sex workers now walking the streets than there was when they were exclusively Nordic
women. The third practice we describe is the combination of repressive and protect-
ive measures in immigration law to identify victims, and motivate them to cooperate
with the police. The essence of this practice is that Norwegian police seek to uncover
violations of immigration or criminal law, to use as a starting point for conversations
with ‘suspected victims’ who might serve as witnesses against traffickers. By providing
valuable information to the police, assumed victims may get temporary residence per-
mits, and by testifying in a court case they may also qualify for permanent residency in
Norway. While Norwegian politicians have defended this as ‘best practice’ for fighting
trafficking, we show how it has costs as regards the rule of law and the safety and welfare
of victims of trafficking. We also point out the complicated and secretive legal terrain
the police operate in, once potential victims of crime are given the roles of witnesses
and informants for organized crime units within the police. The fourth practice is the
legitimization by anti-trafficking policies of exclusion at the border—the expulsion of
women believed to sell sex—or the denial of visas to women seen as vulnerable to traf-
ficking. The mobility of these women is not hindered to help uncover trafficking, as is
the case with the third practice above, but in an effort to return them to their last port
of call. The aim here is to prevent trafficking: that is, to stop others (rather than the
migrant herself) from violating the Penal Code, and to prevent the purchase of sex—
which is likewise the violation of the Penal Code by others. We present the four practices
thematically by focussing on (1) background, content and form; (2) their development
and extension and (3) their practical application and potential effects. The article ends
with a discussion of the meaning of these regulatory practices, and their possible conse-
quences. We argue that the fight against trafficking, along with the introduction of the
Sex Purchase Act, and an increased willingness to use immigration law to regulate pros-
titution, have altered the relationship between public and private organizations respon-
sible for the policing of prostitution and provision of welfare services.
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 JAHNSEN AND SKILBREI

Towards a Punitive Response to Prostitution

Historically Norwegian authorities have tolerated prostitution if it has not infringed
upon common understandings of law and order, or constituted a nuisance for neigh-
bours and local authorities. Sex workers have been policed by a combination of crim-
inal and vagrancy law, homeless and alcoholic people being prohibited to sell sex until
the year 2000, while others could do so within the law. Selling sex has thus been regu-
lated by a combination of penal law regulation of third-party involvement, administra-
tive powers, ordinances and by-laws, rather than being penalized itself. Contemporary
Norwegian law does not use terms such as ‘sex worker’ or ‘prostitute’ and selling sex
is now fully decriminalized. As we will demonstrate below, however, those selling sex,
or suspected of doing so, are still faced with governmental measures that have exclu-
sionary consequences. Throughout most of the 20th century, the Vagrancy Act and
the Penal Code meant the police were able to exclude people whose prostitution was
considered especially problematic as a public nuisance, while contemporary forms of
policing have become increasingly contingent upon administrative powers available
in the Aliens Act. While the Vagrancy Act is important from a historical perspective,
contemporary forms of policing of prostitution largely depend on provisions in the
Aliens Act, where several regulations are used in tandem with penal law regulations
to exercise identity and territorial control, along with zoning policies involving banish-
ment from certain areas, and the deportation of irregular migrants—practices we will
describe later. We argue that the contemporary combination of criminal and immigra-
tion law, and the simultaneous hybridization of penal and administrative purposes,
often referred to as ‘crimmigration’ by criminologists (Stumpf 2006), can be seen as a
continuation of a regulatory regime, now adapted to changes in Norwegian prostitu-
tion markets brought about by globalization. Seen this way, there is nothing new about
recent developments.
What does break with previous approaches to prostitution in formal law is the intro-
duction of new laws directly relating to prostitution, especially the 2009 prohibition
of buying sex: the Sex Purchase Act. Buying sex, and the attempt to do so, is punish-
able with fines or prison. This does not prohibit only acts taking place in Norway: it is
extra-territorial. It makes it illegal for Norwegians to purchase sex abroad, regardless
of the law in the country where the purchase takes place. The act also prohibits foreign
citizens from purchasing sexual services while visiting or residing in Norway. The inten-
tion is to abolish prostitution and combat the trafficking of women. The obvious dif-
ficulty of policing the act abroad was foreseen before it was implemented, but behind
the law is the belief that legal prohibitions have the power to shape attitudes, whether
the law is enforced by the police or not. Public debate will nonetheless often centre on
the ability of the police to enforce the law, which puts pressure on them to enforce it. If
the person selling sex is considered a consenting adult, the legal response will usually
be a fine of between 15,000 and 25,000 NOK (1,600–2,700 EUR) or up to six months in
prison. If the person selling sex is a minor, or there are aggravating circumstances, the
penalty can be up to three years’ imprisonment.
The argument for the Sex Purchase Act was built on a feminist redefinition of pros-
titution as sexual exploitation of women and violence against them, which should
be addressed by targeting the demand for commercial sexual services. But the Act is
clearly also a response to international obligations to prevent trafficking, via Norway’s

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signing of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,

Especially Women and Children, commonly referred to as the Palermo Protocol. The
link between this piece of legislation on prostitution, and the fight against trafficking,
is illustrated by how the debates leading up to the vote for the law referred almost exclu-
sively to trafficking and cross-border prostitution (Jahnsen 2008). There are several
reasons for this, one being the development of Norwegian prostitution markets, which
have gone from being populated mostly by Norwegian citizens in the late 1990s, to now
consisting mainly of migrants. Reports from private and public welfare providers to
this group indicate that they are mostly migrants; in the last ten years, Nigerians have
been the largest groups in the more visible forms of prostitution (e.g. Pro Sentret 2015).
The Norwegian response to trafficking not only affected the legal status of sex pur-
chase, but also altered the way pimping and exploitation are defined and penalized.
When Norway ratified the UN Trafficking Protocol in 2003, it at the same time crim-
inalized trafficking in a wide range of economic sectors, including prostitution. To
ensure that this did not overlap with the existing prohibition in the Penal Code of
pimping (hallikparagrafen in Norwegian), the Norwegian Government at the same time
changed the Pimping Act so that exploitation or profit was no longer preconditions.
This means that the reach of the Pimping Act was significantly extended, and Norway
currently prohibits all third-party involvement (Skilbrei 2010). Further, from 1995, the
Pimping Act also criminalized the renting of premises for use in prostitution, including
when it is a result of negligence. While an overlap of these acts may have been prevented
by the 2003 revision, Norwegian trafficking policies from the outset were strongly
linked to prostitution and migration, not only in how they were formulated as a politi-
cal problem, but also in the way policy instruments were directed towards preventing
and combatting trafficking through controlling prostitution and migration. There are
currently four acts in the Norwegian Penal Code that deal directly with prostitution.
The first is the ban against pimping/procuring, which took its current form in 2003,
the second is often referred to as the Sex Purchase Act implemented on 1 January 2009,
the third is the ban against purchasing sex from minors, which has been in place since
2000, and the fourth, the Trafficking Act was introduced in 2003, as a consequence of
international agreements, and criminalizes trafficking for prostitution, together with
other forms of human trafficking. With the law reform of 2009 and the introduction
of the ban against purchasing sexual services, it was underlined that the sale of sex is
not illegal and therefore not a punishable act. However, as we will demonstrate in this
section, this will on a practical level only apply to persons who are able to operate inde-
pendently and receive no form of help from third parties or co-workers. Purchasing
sex, promoting, facilitating, benefiting from someone else’s commercial activities or
exploiting a person through prostitution are punishable acts by law, by fines or impris-
onment. Taken together, these legal provisions arm the Norwegian police with broad
powers to target a range of actors in the market, and also legitimize the use of methods
that are reserved for serious and organized crimes. These include the use of so-called
‘preventive’ and ‘pre-emptive’ measures and of intelligence-led policing, which relies on
surveillance, recruitment of police informants, and tacit or undercover forms of polic-
ing. Because the regulation of such methods occurs outside procedural law, and is not
visible to the public, the implication of implementing the Palermo Protocol is that parts
of what we can define as prostitution and trafficking policies have been moved beyond
the scope of publicly available knowledge. In fact, revealing too much information to
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 JAHNSEN AND SKILBREI

the public about police methods is seen as a violation of professional secrecy, and can
be punished (Bjørgo and Myhrer 2015). As a consequence, both researchers and their
police informants have less freedom to speak about certain aspects of how contempo-
rary prostitution policies are enacted, an alarming development that compels research-
ers to take great care when unpacking how policing takes place.
If a person is identified, or comes forward, as a victim of trafficking or as a crucial
witness in a trafficking case, this person can be granted certain rights, including the
right to a temporary or permanent residence permit, legal assistance and social and
economic welfare. Based on provisions in the Aliens Act, there are several available resi-
dency schemes for victims of trafficking. The first of these is a low-threshold ‘reflection
period’ of six months, granted to ‘assumed’ victims by the Directorate of Immigration
if s/he can tell a sufficiently credible story of exploitation, and demonstrate willingness
to accept support. After completing the six-month reflection period, the assumed vic-
tim can apply for a one-year temporary residence permit, which depends on the police
assessing the person as being needed in Norway for investigative purposes. After this,
there is the possibility of a third residency permit: people who appear as witnesses in
their own or others’ trafficking or pimping/procuring case can claim permanent resi-
dency in Norway, and be granted protection on humanitarian grounds.
There are several additional provisions available to the police vis-à-vis those involved
in prostitution: they can intervene if prostitution is considered a public nuisance, or if
it infringes on other people’s civil liberties—e.g. if a member of the public complains,
or if a house-owner, wants to evict a person selling sex from his or her property. The
authorities can also subject sex workers to taxation on their income and value-added
tax (VAT) on their services, as all income-generating activity falls under the general
rules pertaining to taxation. The definition of prostitution as a sexual act, rather than
work, is partly the result of legal reforms at the end of the 1990s, and partly the out-
come of a 1999 Supreme Court decision that ruled in favour of a Brazilian citizen who
had been threatened with deportation due to the lack of a work permit. Since then,
foreign nationals have been allowed to sell sex in Norway without a work permit, and
there are no other provisions in the Aliens Act relating to prostitution.
In what follows, we will describe and discuss four regulatory practices that we have
observed vis-à-vis cross-border prostitution. Our description will focus on how these
practices combine criminal law and the regulation of migration in various ways.

Reducing the Indoor Market as a Means to Prevent Trafficking

In 2007, Oslo police district started to actively seek out landlords and hotels renting out
premises for prostitution. This was undertaken by the newly established anti-trafficking
task force, STOP, organized as part of the organized crime department. The aim was
to unsettle the prostitution market and decrease its profitability, as an indirect way
to prevent trafficking. The operation was called Operation Houseless (In Norwegian
Operasjon Husløs), and was made possible by the broad legal definition of pimping
described above. This operation is explicitly mentioned in the government’s action
plan against trafficking, along with the aims of identifying and prosecuting cases of
trafficking and pimping, or prosecuting traffickers for other crimes and enforcing
the sex purchase law as a way to reduce the prostitution market and change attitudes
towards prostitution and even sexuality (Ministry of Justice and Public Security 2010).
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For a time, Operation Houseless activities were included in the targets of the Oslo
organized crime unit, which meant that the operation was measured and valued not
only by its ability to map the market and identify victims of trafficking, but became a
goal in itself. The overall intention was to include people and organizations renting
out premises for prostitution in the renewed effort to police the prostitution market, by
making them partners in the fight against prostitution and trafficking. A high ranking
officer in the organized crime unit explained to us that the strategy was also an out-
come of the way they organized the unit, and that from the start, they recruited police
officers trained in special operations targeting the drugs market, rather than employ-
ing personnel who only specialized in investigation and prosecution:
The point was that it gave us great results in the city, relatively speaking. Because then you have a
presence that just makes some environments disappear. (Police Superintendent, Oslo Police district
2011)

As we can see from the quote, the idea was to pre-empt trafficking by making it increas-
ingly difficult to earn money in the prostitution market. At the same time, Operation
Houseless can also be understood in the wider context of new management philoso-
phies in the police organization. The police will usually look for online advertisements
and then contact women directly, pretending to be customers wanting sex. After mak-
ing an appointment, the police will check out the premises, which are usually apart-
ments or hotels, to identify clients on their way to or from an appointment. The police
will often search the premises to secure forensic evidence, such as mobile phones and
photographs (of beds, towels, condoms, and so on). If there are several people sharing
the premises, the police usually deal with them separately on the spot, or take them
into the station for separate questioning. Because the women in the venues they seek
out are usually foreign citizens, identity checks are carried out, either directly on the
premises or by teams who specialize in passport residence permits. Once forensic evi-
dence, or a confession from a client and/or a sex worker, has been secured, the last step
of the operation is to contact the landlord or hotel owner to inform them that there
is prostitution going on in their property, and to urge them to terminate the tenancy,
warning them they could be indicted for pimping.1
The police will target particular groups based on ethnicity and/or suspicion of traf-
ficking, and the target groups will thus vary, depending on long-term and short-term
police goals, such as an investigation targeting members from a particular ethnic or
national group. While Eastern European, Asian and African women are likely targets,
Norwegian citizens are less often directly targeted by the police (Jahnsen 2014a). Which
nationalities are prioritized varies over time and between police districts, and partly
depends on overarching prioritizations within organized crime units, and on efforts to
reorganize the national police at large. In Oslo, operations would often coincide with
wider efforts to target organized crime and the drugs trade, while other police districts
would have other priorities (Jahnsen 2014a).
Since it was first coined in Oslo, the term ‘Operation Houseless’, referring to a
policing strategy designed to reduce the prostitution market, has spread across police

1
The letter from the police to landlords who rent out premises to someone using them for prostitution states: ‘You have an
obligation to ensure that this activity is terminated as soon as possible. Prostitution activities will normally give you grounds to
cancel the lease immediately’ (Swahn 2009, our translation).

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districts. On the official police homepage (www.politiet.no), there are currently reports
of the police forming partnerships with business owners and hotels in joint efforts to
prevent the purchase of sex, and curb the activities of what the police refers to as ‘travel-
ling prostitutes’ and potential victims of organized crime (Politiet.no 2010). The threat
of indictment for pimping has prompted some hotels to enter into partnership agree-
ments with the police, and led others to train their staff to monitor the local indoor
market via internet advertisements. According to a media report in Stavanger Aftenblad
(2010), several hotels in the Stavanger area have so-called ‘blacklists’ of women for
internal use, in order to avoid customers suspected of selling sex or perceived as being
‘difficult’. It is also reported that some hotels copy women’s passports, and contact the
police to check if a woman is registered in their databases. This practice reportedly
occurs, although its legality is questionable. In several instances, representatives from
the police and justice sectors, in their efforts to increase awareness about trafficking,
have encouraged the public to report activities that may indicate prostitution. It is,
therefore, not only the Norwegian police who look for signs of prostitution, but also
organizations, landlords and neighbours—practices that can be understood as part of
an overall trend towards a delegation of government, whereby we are all made respon-
sible for preventing trafficking (FitzGerald 2010: 285).
Scholars within policing studies have described how functions once monopolized by
the police are now shared between a wider varieties of security providers in what has
been called a ‘third-party policing paradigm’ (e.g. Ransley and Mazerolle 2009). As our
description of Operation Houseless illustrates, the boundaries between state and pri-
vate interests become blurred when hotels partner with the police in joint efforts against
human trafficking, and when the police use coercive powers to make private landlords
co-regulators of the prostitution market. When members of civil society are also being
asked to report anything suspicious to the police, the law functions to ‘authorize’ a
wider web of regulators, as it empowers ‘the little judges of conduct’ to ‘exercise their
petty powers of adjudication and enforcement’ (Rose and Valverde 1998: 546).
All in all, Operations Houseless can be described as not just a strategy employed by
the Oslo police district, but a national a strategy that links the prevention of traffick-
ing and pimping on the one hand, with efforts to control ‘travelling prostitutes’ and
irregular migration on the other. This entails a major escalation of police intervention
in the prostitution market and in the lives of those who sell sex. As a consequence, many
women have lost their homes and deposits, and have been subjected to widespread dis-
crimination, because hotels are afraid that renting out rooms to women who may be
selling sex will lead to problems with the police.

Using Immigration Law to Create Behavioural Change

Women who sell sex, or are suspected of doing so, in the indoor market are monitored,
even though selling sex is legal, and what happens in street prostitution is similar. Here
too, the police monitor women selling sex, to apprehend their clients, and carry out
document checks in order to detect and prevent trafficking (as described, for example,
in Berg and Kvithyld 2006). While, on paper, national prostitution policy focus upon
concerns around exploitation, at a local level, prostitution might still be formulated as
being about public nuisance.
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Nigerian women who sell sex on the streets in Oslo have attracted particular atten-
tion from the media and politicians, not only as potential victims of trafficking, but also
as a threat to public decency, because they are perceived as louder and rowdier than
other groups of women, and thus break the unwritten rules relating to how and where
prostitution is practised in Norway (Skilbrei 2009). In 2006, politicians from a wide
range of political parties expressed support for policies that would allow the police to
ban particular ways of selling sex, through an amendment to the Oslo police by-laws
(Skilbrei 2009). The bylaw was passed, but later overturned by the national police dir-
ectorate, which deemed them to be in conflict with national policy approaches. This
has not stopped the police enforcing immigration law as a form of zoning policy that
marks the boundaries of where prostitution is tolerated.
A police district on the west coast of Norway has drawn an unofficial line between the
areas of tolerance and of intolerance; patrol officers have been instructed to intervene
if they detect prostitution beyond a well-known landmark in a pedestrianized tourist
area. In Oslo, as illustrated in the quote below, immigration controls have been system-
atically used to regulate where and how prostitution takes place:
The aim was to clean up the streets, so that men would be able to walk peacefully on Karl Johan with-
out being accosted 10 to 15 times by prostitutes. Because that’s where the mainstream is, that’s where
people walk and enjoy themselves, and we got messages that people felt uncomfortable about being
approached by prostitutes. So we went at this from a public order perspective, not to catch prostitutes
or foreigners, but to regulate their behaviour on Karl Johan. That’s why we were very particular about
leaving them alone in Prinsens gate and Myntegata. But in Karl Johan they should expect to be con-
trolled by the police. And if there were grounds to arrest them, we did so, to create a behavioural
change among the prostitutes. (Police Superintendent, Oslo Police district 2015)

When the Police Superintendent quoted above refers to expectations of police control,
she is referring to identity checks to determine the legal status of immigrants, not ques-
tioning the legality of selling sex on the street. As we see from this quote, the aim of
police intervention is not always to identify victims of trafficking, to target prostitutes or
foreigners, or to meet targets, although these aims might coincide. Rather, as we have
seen, the police try to respond to local concerns over prostitution and to bring about
behavioural change from a public order perspective. As the quote evidences, there is
no distinction between territorial control and prostitution control when the targets are
foreign citizens (here Nigerians). Nor do we find any reluctance to use arrests to dis-
cipline this particular group of women. The quote illustrate that police practices might
result from unexpected interpretations of national policies: in this case, the need for
men to be protected from the offer of commercial sex, and the notion that regulating
prostitution helps prevent this.
Throughout history, women labelled as prostitutes have been subjected to interven-
tion, shaming and corporal punishment designed to discipline and educate them, and
society at large, as to where the gendered and racialized boundaries between decent
and indecent expressions of sexuality, and between respectable and disreputable ways of
making money, should be drawn. Several authors have written about how the category
‘prostitute’ was coined in the 19th century as a way to isolate the disease and immor-
ality associated with prostitution, and to mark it as something apart from the rest of
society (Walkowitz 1980; Telste 2003). In Norway, a regulatory regime was introduced
in three cities, which in Oslo lasted from 1844 to 1888. Women involved in prostitution
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were isolated in space and time, to prevent them from contaminating society at large,
disease being socially and symbolically associated with ‘the prostitute’, as she became
construed as someone without self-discipline and morality, and therefore a dangerous
figure (Koren 2007). The system not only involved compulsory health checks, but rules
that kept prostitution bound to forms that did not challenge norms of sexuality and
femininity. Prostitution could not take place in visible forms, or in parts of town where
‘decent citizens’ congregated, which can be understood as an expression of the need
for bourgeois women not to be mistaken to be ‘public women’ (Telste 2003). Bourgeois
women of the period were demanding the same civil rights as men, and one of the
issues addressed was access to public space. Because some women’s presence in public
space was considered problematic, other women’s struggle for rights suffered. As long
as the women who sold sex played by the rules, they and their actions were tolerated.
If they did not, they risked forced relocation or being sentenced to forced labour. Seen
from this historical perspective, police efforts to discipline migrant sex workers into
acceptable behaviour come as no surprise, as policing activities have always revolved
around access to space, either in particular premises, neighbourhoods, cities or coun-
tries. Similarly, the need to create boundaries has been central, whether geographical
(like the line between streets where prostitution is tolerated and those where it is not),
cultural (the line between acceptable soliciting and unacceptable) or social/moral (the
divide originating from fear of the ‘other’ and the contamination of ‘us’) (Sibley 1995).

Using Offenders to Disclose Offenders: Immigration and Criminal Law in Tandem

Since the introduction of the 2003 Trafficking Act, the Norwegian police have increased
their ability to prosecute traffickers, and broadened the scope of cases presented to
court (Jahnsen 2014a). Successful cases include ones where women have been exploited
in prostitution, but more recently, there have also been more prosecutions for exploit-
ation in regulated workplaces (Jahnsen 2014b). In the early days of Norwegian anti-traf-
ficking measures, the major challenge to be overcome was the lack of victims willing
to testify against their traffickers in open court. Because of the way support to victims
of trafficking is organized, when a temporary permit is provided so that a victim can
reflect on whether or not to press charges, it may be a long time from when victim starts
getting support until the police are able to initiate an investigation (for more on this,
see Brunovskis and Skilbrei 2016). Sometimes, critical information, such as the address
of a suspect or a victim, will be out of date or untraceable by the time a victim contacts
the police. What might have been a ‘good’ case, likely to succeed in court, will turn into
a ‘bad’ one, if a testimony cannot be backed up because the police fail to secure other
types of evidence. Below, a leader of a special anti-trafficking unit explains why most
trafficking cases never reach the courts:
All cases become bad if they are left long enough. So, if you don’t prioritise, and use resources
straightaway, when information is good, then they too will go bad. (Police Superintendent, Oslo
Police district 2011)

To what extent the different police districts have been able to overcome this obstacle
and succeed in bringing cases to court varies (Jahnsen 2014a). While the Oslo task force
has prioritized operations seeking to prevent trafficking within a logic of situational
policing, the special unit in Hordaland, a much smaller police district, has prioritized
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crime investigation and the prosecution of trafficking cases, which could be called
traditional or reactive forms of policing. In Hordaland, leaders seek to recruit crime
investigators able to pick ‘good’ trafficking cases for investigation (not ‘bad’ ones, as
described above).
‘Good’ cases here are ones likely to succeed in a courtroom because victim testimony
can be backed up by other witnesses and forensic evidence. A critical part of the ability
to pick a ‘good’ case is sharing information and obtaining it by building partnerships
with agencies involved in the early processes of victim identification, which include bor-
der police and customs. In our research, we found that cooperation between the special
unit and the customs at Flesland Airport was considered a major reason for the fact that
the police investigated and won a number trafficking cases, which set them apart from
other police districts whose success rate at that time was much lower.
At the airport, the apprehension of a ‘suspicious traveller’ that might be a traffick-
ing victim might be prompted by ideas about risks and female vulnerabilities, as well
as the binary categories of victim of trafficking/unlawful migrant worker—not unlike
assessments that have already been described by Pickering and Ham (2014). A fellow
passenger whose suspicions are aroused by the interaction between a female passenger
and her travelling companion, assumed to be her male trafficker, might also trigger it.
In one case, the suspicion was reported to the flight personnel, who responded by alert-
ing customs and border control officials, who apprehended the suspected victim and
her fellow traveller, and called in the local organized crime unit and their prostitution
and trafficking special task force. The unit initiated an investigation that ended in the
conviction of a Nigerian man in 2010. In a somewhat similar case, an Eastern European
woman travelling alone caught the attention of the border guards. They alerted the
task force and let her cross the border in order to facilitate surveillance and an under-
cover investigation, on the assumption that the woman would lead the police to her
pimp, trafficker and/or clients.
While the police and customs officers are hesitant about providing full disclosure
about such operations, our research indicates that a number of factors are taken into
consideration when decisions are made at the border. Gender, nationality and ethni-
city are added to other co-existing factors, such as travelling from particular cities in
Europe, buying tickets suspiciously late, paying for them in a suspicious way and/or
from a suspicious travel agency, together with carrying a ‘suspicious’ passport. If a per-
son is stopped, this will usually be in a seemingly random way. The idea is to initiate
communication and clarify questions that usually pertain to the binary categories of
victim of trafficking/unlawful migrant worker. If there are more serious suspicions that
someone is a victim of trafficking, as in the case mentioned above, what starts out as a
seemingly random customs check, might turn into a penal law investigation.
However, uncovering trafficking by accessing information from suspected victims
does not occur only at the airport, as it is a familiar method for uncovering trafficking,
by picking ‘good’ cases and producing cooperative victims/witnesses. This is illustrated
in the police memo Madame Project – Nigerian street prostitution in Oslo, issued by Oslo
Police District (Berg and Kvithyld 2006: 10): ‘People who are not in possession of an
identity card shall be brought in and possibly arrested. It is in this group that trafficked
persons are most likely to be found’. Cooperating agencies such as the tax authorities
and labour inspectors refer to irregular migration as a pointer to fraudulent labour
relations, tax evasion, exploitation, forced labour and trafficking, which has led to the
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introduction of routine identity checks as part of their inspections, though not neces-
sarily to an increase in the number of those receiving support as identified victims
(Jahnsen 2014b).
As mentioned above, a person who comes forward as a victim of trafficking can access
support, and a temporary permit. The idea is to provide a basic level of security and
protection, and to motivate victims to come forward. This means that coming forward
as a victim not only gives migrants labelled irregular or illegal a route to becoming
regularized or legalized migrants, but also becomes an option for those seeking to
delay deportation or expulsion. One legal counsel for victims of trafficking said:
This creates a dangerous situation vis-à-vis the rule of law: If someone says they are a victim of human
trafficking, they are believed, even though the story is not coherent. I believe that there are cases
where one does not examine closely enough whether the story was told only to access rights, and that
cases that are not really trafficking cases, are classed as such. (Oslo, 2010)

If it is possible to cast doubt on their testimony, this has consequences for victims,
as it affects their chances of applying for permanent residency. The various residency
schemes involve a number of checks, partly introduced to ensure that witnesses are
credible. If a testimony appears weak or not credible (e.g. because a victim’s motives
are questionable) and a case is not investigated or taken to court, the victim loses the
right to apply for extended temporary residency or permanent residency. A precondi-
tion for receiving help is a commitment to adjusting to the existing support system and
its control mechanisms. The reflection period used to explicitly require the victim to
stop his or her involvement in prostitution, even though selling sex was legal, and some-
thing other people—whether citizens or not—were not punished for being involved
in. This prerequisite is now formulated as a willingness to receive support. This means,
for example, that one must be willing to stay in a shelter or house for victims of traf-
ficking. The important thing here is how, in accordance with the Aliens Act, residency
is dependent on whether the person is deemed a suitable witness for the prosecution.
The coupling of support and control is a continuation of a tradition in which, to
obtain justice, female victims of crime must satisfy particular expectations, and be will-
ing to be ‘rehabilitated’ into acceptable norms for female sexuality (Snider 1998). In
other words, there are not just ‘good’ and ‘bad’ trafficking cases, there are also ‘good’
and ‘bad’ victims. Ideal victims cooperate with the police to build a criminal case, they
quit prostitution and enter rehabilitating processes. Non-ideal victims will, for various
reasons, not cooperate with the police, not want to receive support, and continue to sell
sex. Participation in schemes of ‘enforced welfare’ becomes a prerequisite for sexual
citizenship: by being willing to quit prostitution and submit to rehabilitation women
can again, or for the first time, be counted as deserving, decent women (Sanders 2009).
Put simply, the system is not built for those who continue to sell sex. This places sex
workers outside what we will call ‘the borders of protection’.

Stopping Migrants to Prevent the Crimes of Others

There have been several instances of foreign women being denied entry because bor-
der controllers believed that they would become involved in prostitution in Norway
(Skilbrei et al. 2006). In a newspaper interview (Moss avis 2011), a Police Chief Inspector
explained the practice:
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As I have already said, it is not illegal to be a prostitute, but by prostituting themselves, they turn
others into criminals, and we do not want that. Furthermore, we suspect that there is a great deal of
organized crime involved, with traffickers earning the largest sums.

This particular form of exclusionary practice is seen as warranted in two ways. Firstly,
it is argued that prostitutes involve others in criminality, and therefore share a respon-
sibility for crime in Norway, even though selling sex is legal. Secondly, they are seen as
involved in organized crime, and as potential victims of human trafficking. Foreign
women are stopped at airports around the country for both these reasons.
Entry restrictions do not affect everyone who sells sex to the same extent. Nigerian
women seem to be particularly vulnerable to being rejected at the border, which may be
due to how prostitution and trafficking have been associated with this group in public
discourse (Skilbrei 2009). It is not only in Norway that Nigerians are especially vulner-
able to being turned away at the border: it happens in many European countries (e.g.
Bhabha 2007).
The legal basis for expulsion from Norwegian territory is the Aliens Act §17, that
lists preconditions in terms of available funds for subsistence during a person’s stay, or
a credible reason for entry to Norway. This is something that can be made use of as a
pragmatic way to stop women who have come to sell sex. That victims should be kept
out to prevent crime in Norway can be understood as an expression of the idea that
the threat comes from the outside, and that the goal is to protect Norway from traf-
ficking, by preventing ‘our’ men from purchasing sex, illustrated in this quote from a
police investigator in the anti-trafficking unit: ‘It is simple. It is like a shopping centre.
If you take away the merchandise, people will stop coming to the shop. We want empty
shelves.’ (Hordaland police district 2010). Although there are important variations
between the districts we have researched, the market discourse seems to prevail at a
national level. In the quote below, the idea of eliminating the market for commercial
sex is taken to its extreme when a representative from the police toys with the idea of
also criminalizing the sale of sex as an indirect way of targeting traffickers and creating
support for the Sex Purchase Act:
If you criminalize the goods, the goods will be punished. When the goods are punished, it leads
to confiscation, fines or prison, and expulsion, which leads to costs for the potential owners of the
goods. I am cynical enough to say that (the market) would be empty in Norway. (…) What would
happen if the whole of Europe criminalised sex sale for example? It would remove the possibility of
selling people in Europe. No one would be discussing whether or not it is wrong to criminalise sex
purchase because we end up punishing victims. Rather it would be seen as the European way to pro-
tect everyone from exploitation here. (Police Superintendent, Oslo Police district 2010)

This quote demonstrates that police practices are creative not only in the sense that
they often contain an element of the ad hoc, as pragmatic solutions to sporadic prob-
lems, but that they might also be the outcome of rather creative interpretations of
national policies, one of which is the idea that Norwegian men need to be protected
from foreign women selling sex. It also shows that studying a county’s penal code
will not tell us all we need to know about prostitution policy. Other laws and policy
instruments are often so important that it is reasonable to wonder if it is at all useful
to study prostitution legislation to understand how a society approaches it (Scoular
2010; Jahnsen 2014a).

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The idea that one can prevent crime by targeting suspected victims is also institu-
tionalized. In 2011, the Council of the Baltic Sea States issued a trafficking manual
for employees of embassies and consulates. Norway has been central in Baltic region
cooperation efforts, as well as in those to combat trafficking, and the manual is intended
to provide guidelines for Foreign Ministry staff in Norwegian embassies. The handbook
gives advice on how they, as representatives of Norway, can identify cases of trafficking
and deal with a victim. It states (Council of the Baltic Sea States 2011: 29): ‘You should
not issue a visa if you think that the person may be at risk of becoming a victim of human
trafficking’.
Today, travel restrictions for women, or particular groups of women, are partly justi-
fied by an alleged desire to protect them. Feminists have fought to establish a focus
on women’s vulnerability. However, the success of this struggle has a possible down-
side, as it opens up new forms of control that restrict both women’s freedom and their
rights (Brunovskis and Surtees 2008; Andrijasevic 2010). The jump from a search for
vulnerabilities, and potential victims of trafficking, to efforts to fight organized crime
by deterring migration, also mirrors an international development whereby anti-traf-
ficking initiatives may lead to a severe restriction of freedoms and rights (Campbell
and O’Neill 2006; Pickering and Ham 2014). Rather than preventing trafficking, these
initiatives can increase vulnerabilities by driving women to using illegal intermediaries
and migrating irregularly (Demleiter 2001; Andrijasevic 2010).
In Norway, border-crossing prostitution is hotly debated, while domestic prosti-
tution is barely even treated as a political issue. Instead, we see the emergence of
a new understanding of inside and outside, where Norwegian nationals involved
in prostitution are morally ‘rehabilitated’ and discursively included in the national
‘us’ through a shared understanding that prostitution by foreign women is the main
problem. Public attention to victims of trafficking, and the desire to offer them pro-
tection, can be interpreted as part of broader concerns around organized crime
and unauthorized migration (Scoular 2010: 16). This explains why trafficking is
mainly met with penal measures and increased migration control (Berman 2003:
41). Preventing the migration from their home countries of women with experience
of prostitution is seen as a way to prevent the violation of both the victims and the
state. The focus on exit strategies in the form of deportation can also be seen as a
way to ‘repair’ the violation of both the victim and the border, and thereby to restore
social order (Berman 2003).

Final Discussion
The unusual aspect of the trend we highlight is that the primary target of the strategies
we describe is not the perpetrator, but rather the potential victim, and that control is
exerted not only by explicitly punitive measures, but also by exclusion from welfare,
as an increasing number of services are based on victim status and are conditional on
willingness to provide information to the police, and to comply with the demands of
the immigration authorities. We conclude that the coupling of control and welfare is
not uncommon for female victims of crime; at various times and in various places, it
has been necessary for victims to be willing to be ‘rehabilitated’ and to comply with
contemporary standards of responsible victimhood, in order to be able to access sup-
port (Snider 1998). Participation in ‘enforced welfare’ thus becomes a prerequisite
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for sexual citizenship: by being willing to quit prostitution and submit to rehabilita-
tion women can again, or for the first time, be regarded as deserving, decent women
(Sanders 2009).
Women are also controlled as migrants, as these measures restrict access to Norwegian
territory and restrain them from selling sex without repercussions by the use of watch-
ful immigration control and rigid interpretations of the Aliens Act conditions for legal
stay. This means that while, unlike Denmark, Finland and Sweden, Norway has no pro-
hibition in its Aliens Act against foreigners earning money from ‘dishonest’ means, it
still uses the border to combat both prostitution and human trafficking in a similar way
to these neighbouring countries.
The ‘pairing up’ of administrative and punitive forms of intervention is nothing new:
there are several examples of how laws are combined on a practical level. In the last
150 years, the Norwegian authorities have combined penal regulation of prostitution
with other laws and regulations that work together with, or in opposition to, the Penal
Code, including various laws, ordinances and by-laws. Throughout the 19th century, in
Norway as in other European countries, prostitution was defined as a problem to do
with public health, because of fears over women who sold sex being possible carriers of
disease to the general population. Simultaneously, prostitution was seen as an effect of,
and affecting, individual and societal immorality. These understandings served to jus-
tify the introduction and maintenance of restrictions on the civil rights of women sell-
ing, or suspected of selling, sex (Jansdotter and Svanström 2007). Throughout most of
the 20th century, prostitution in Norway was perceived as a problem involving vagrant
women earning their livings in ‘illicit’ ways, which points to prostitution as being under-
stood as a problem to do with who and what belongs in public spaces. More specifically,
these definitions created possibilities for particular combinations of law. The fact that
the prostitution of certain women is prevented by a combination of laws is not new, but
this particular combination is made possible by contemporary discourses on migrant
women’s prostitution as possible trafficking.
Our findings correspond with observations made by other scholars, on the existence
of ambivalence towards people who sell sex, and a continuation of various local control
practices, seemingly regardless of how the nation state chooses to regulate prostitution
formally through criminal law (Agustín 2008; Scoular 2010). As our examples illustrate,
the aim to protect women from trafficking seems to legitimize their constant exposure
to surveillance and intervention. This way of linking the prevention of trafficking and
pimping on the one hand, and controlling ‘travelling prostitutes’ and irregular migra-
tion on the other, entails a major escalation of police intervention in the prostitution
market and in the lives of those who sell sex, and for many this has meant that they have
lost their homes and deposits, and have been subjected to widespread discrimination
by landlords and hotels.
The aim of this article has been to unpack four forms of regulatory practices where
penal and administrative laws work in tandem. We have demonstrated that this link
is key to understanding the hybrid nature of prostitution and trafficking policy, yet
researchers and politicians active in debates about prostitution policy often ignore
how domestic prostitution policy is increasingly governed by a restrictive immigration
regime and border control practises. The way the police work against pimping, traffick-
ing and the purchase of sex has created a situation where women who sell sex, whether
they work indoors or on the street, are susceptible to police enforcement in a different
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way from the rest of the population, as well as from other parts of the population who
are potential victims of crime. Yet, as we have demonstrated, sex workers are also treated
differently depending on their national origins and ability to adapt their practices to
local norms governing what forms of prostitution are tolerated, and where.
Today ‘the prostitute’ as a social threat and destabilizing agent is connected to ‘her’
status as a migrant and potential victim of organized crime. This means that Norwegian
citizens engaging in prostitution are not perceived and policed as possible threats to the
same extent as previously, while migrants are controlled and disciplined (at the border
and within Norway) in a way demonstrating that ‘the border is everywhere’ for foreign
women selling sex (Lyon 2005; Weber 2006). National belonging, origin and territorial
borders become relevant to how prostitution is policed, but the policing of prostitu-
tion also contributes to maintaining national identity and borders. Thus, the practices
we observe become a testimony to the paradoxically inclusive and exclusive forces of
Norwegian society, forces that, in Jock Young’s (2007) words, can be seen as the mani-
festation of a bulimic society, one that both absorbs and rejects in its effort to become a
‘good society’, and one where exclusion becomes a testimony to a national sense of self.

Funding
This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway grant number 238170 and
grant number 213986 and by a European Research Council Starting Grant (StG 2010).

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