„470-et adott és csak egy kicsit fojtogatott” –szegénységben élő nők a félperiféria és a centrum között.
"He Gave me 470 and Choked Me Just a Little Bit" – Women Living in Poverty Between the Semi-periphery and the Core.

Hungarian Women Selling Sex in Zürich

Summary/Abstract: My paper concentrates on women living in poverty originating from semi-periphery countries commuting to core countries to the sex industry. I analyse the phenomenon in the context of the theory of Claudia von Werlhof (2007), which is based on Wallerstein’s (1974) world-systems theory and focuses on the relation system of economy and sexuality. Through a case study, my aim is to point out the structures of oppression through which the countries located at core regions exploit women living in poverty originating from semi-peripheral regions, leading to women from semi-periphery countries ending up in the sex industry in core regions. My aim is to answer the following questions through ten 261 interviews conducted with Hungarian women who sell sex in Zürich: (1) how do these women end up selling sex illegally in a Western-European city where prostitution is decriminalized? (2) What are the economic and power constraints that lead to these women sell sex in a Western-European city? (3) How does the feminization of poverty encourage women’s migration, and a form of commuting where the aim is not to settle down in the host country, but to maintain a life at the country of origin? My further goal is to make the experiences of Hungarian women living in prostitution visible based on feminist empiricism.

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