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

Sammanfattning

This study examines how Swedish parliamentary interpellation debates between 2021 and2026 negotiate the framing of prostitution, sex trafficking, and migration in a political climateincreasingly shaped by a broader right-wing political shift. As migration is progressivelyframed as a matter of security and control, connected issues, such as prostitution andtrafficking, are drawn into similar narratives and increasingly discussed in terms of morality,cultural difference, and societal threat. Within these narratives, “the migrant woman” emergesas a recurring discursive figure, often portrayed as vulnerable and passive, a representationproblematized within postcolonial feminist theory. Drawing on a governmentalityperspective, postcolonial feminist thought, and using Bacchi’s WPR approach as theanalytical framework, this thesis shows how political rationalities, governing technologies,and processes of subjectification intersect with constructions of vulnerability and culturalotherness to legitimize and justify certain governance decisions and interventions.