Purity or danger? The establishment of sex trafficking as a social problem in Sweden
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370818794876 |
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370818794876
European Journal of Criminology
2020, Vol. 17(4) 420 –440
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370818794876
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Purity or danger? The
establishment of sex trafficking
as a social problem in Sweden
Anita Heber
Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
Sex trafficking has become established as one of the most significant (crime) problems in the
Western world. This article provides a greater understanding of how the work of certain actors,
that is claims-makers, established sex trafficking as a prominent problem on the political and media
agendas in Sweden during the 2000s. It can help us understand how certain crimes can achieve
the position of social problems. The study analyses political texts and debates, newspaper articles
and reports published by the Swedish police. The sex-trafficking discourses that were particularly
dominant in the material were: ‘The ideal sex slave Lilya’ (referring to the film Lilya 4-ever), ‘The
foreign threat from the East’ and ‘Hidden but well-established organized crime’. By defining sex
trafficking as an important problem, with the aid of these three discourses, a large number of
claims-makers were given the opportunity to emphasize threatening and racialized discourses
about ‘sex slaves’, immigration and organized crime. These discourses on sex trafficking create
moral borders between innocence and guilt, between belonging and unbelonging, and between
purity and danger.
Keywords
Media, politics, sex trafficking, social problems, Sweden
Introduction
Sex trafficking is often referred to as a growing epidemic of social evil. This is a view held
by politicians, the media, organizations and activists, and also by many academics. Weitzer
(2007, 2014) has criticized the sex-trafficking debate and described it as a moral crusade
based on scare stories and questionable statistics. Critical researchers argue that the sex-
trafficking rhetoric is to a large extent based on gendered and racialized stereotypes. Rather
Corresponding author:
Anita Heber, Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 106 91, Sweden.
Email: anita.heber@criminology.su.se
794876EUC0010.1177/1477370818794876European Journal of CriminologyHeber
research-article2018
Article
Heber 421
than presenting a nuanced and well-substantiated problem, the sex-trafficking debate
instead serves as a channel for our concerns over migration and the independence and sexu-
ality of women (Doezema, 2010; Pickering and Ham, 2014; Segrave et al., 2009).
Borg Jansson (2016) argues that we must challenge the stereotypical images we hold
of sex trafficking and of its victims and perpetrators. Our preconceptions otherwise risk
leading to negative consequences, not least for the victims of sex trafficking, when cases
come to court. However, the problem with established discourses is that they are
extremely difficult to modify once they have achieved ‘uptake’ (Snajdr, 2013).
Descriptions of crime that gain a prominent position on the political and media agendas
increase news sales, influence legislation and the electoral support for politicians, and
may result in the police being given more resources. People’s perceptions of crime are
also affected as well as their fear of crime (Edwards and Gill 2002).
Whereas no attention at all was focused on sex trafficking in Sweden during the
1990s, the issue attracted a great deal of political, media and police attention during the
2000s, despite the fact that only around 20 suspected sex-trafficking cases were reported
to the police each year, leading to a handful of convictions (Brå, 2011). This study
focuses on this latter, intensive period, in the 2000s, when the sex trafficking was popu-
larized as an engaging problem in Sweden. By revisiting Spector and Kitsuse’s (1977)
understanding of social problems, this article focuses both on the content of the sex-
trafficking debate and on how the issue became established. This study can help us
understand why and how certain crimes can successfully achieve a position on the public
agenda as important social problems.
Introducing Sweden
Sweden has been described as the welfare state ‘par excellence’ (Schall, 2016: 22). The
Swedish welfare state is built on egalitarian beliefs and has low levels of inequality between
classes and gender. However, neo-liberal reforms and large-scale immigration have changed
both the political debate and policy in Sweden (Garland, 2017). In the Swedish public debate
of the 1990s and 2000s, migration flows came increasingly to be viewed more in terms of a
security risk and less in terms of a human rights phenomenon. This shift towards viewing
migration as a risk was further cemented following the events of 9/11 (Abiri, 2000, 2003).
Another central topic in the public debate is organized crime, which is framed in both poli-
tics and the media as constituting a major threat to Sweden (Tham, 2015).
When crime in general is discussed in the Swedish political debate, the crime victim
has been the focal point of the debate and this has clearly had an effect on Swedish leg-
islation. Men’s violence against women constitutes a central theme in the crime victim
discourse (Tham et al., 2011). Violence against women is generally understood as being
the consequence of a social power structure in which women are subordinate to men.
Prostitution has also been framed in terms of gender inequality, which leaves little room
for a debate on the issue of sex work. This led to a criminalization of the purchase, but
not the sale, of sexual services in 1999. Sex trafficking has also become an increasingly
central question in the crime policy debate, and the issue has largely become merged
with the debate on prostitution (Brå, 2011; Dodillet and Östergren, 2011; Skilbrei and
Holmström, 2011).
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