Between Protection and Criminality: How Swedish Parliamentary Debates on Prostitution shape Migration Policies

Abstract

This study examines how Swedish parliamentary interpellation debates between 2021 and 2026 negotiate the framing of prostitution, sex trafficking, and migration in a political climate increasingly shaped by a broader right-wing political shift. As migration is progressively framed as a matter of security and control, connected issues, such as prostitution and trafficking, are drawn into similar narratives and increasingly discussed in terms of morality, cultural difference, and societal threat. Within these narratives, “the migrant woman” emerges as a recurring discursive figure, often portrayed as vulnerable and passive, a representation problematized within postcolonial feminist theory. Drawing on a governmentality perspective, postcolonial feminist thought, and using Bacchi’s WPR approach as the analytical framework, this thesis shows how political rationalities, governing technologies, and processes of subjectification intersect with constructions of vulnerability and cultural otherness to legitimize and justify certain governance decisions and interventions.