Introduction

Right in the heart of Amsterdam lies its famous Red-Light District, the Wallen — a place with a rich history that is inextricably intertwined with the city’s identity and its people. However, while the district is renowned for its window prostitution, the discourse around Amsterdam as the ultimate bastion of sexual freedom is evolving. In truth, one may question if this portrayal has ever been accurate. Sex work has been a contentious topic in the Netherlands for over 750 years, with the country’s approach to regulation fluctuating between legalization and criminalization. Arguments for or against these approaches have centered around three main concerns: (1) the protection of women’s health, (2) the regulation of the industry and its associated nuisance caused by criminal activity, and (3) the prevention of exploitation, particularly in relation to human trafficking.

These three arguments that have historically informed debates on prostitution in the Netherlands also played a key role in the development of Project 1012,Footnote 1 one of Amsterdam’s most recent and ambitious policies to redesign the city. The municipality introduced this initiative in 2007 under the administration of counselor Lodewijk Asscher, a social democrat, to revitalize the area of the Wallen and its reputation, which, according to the brief’s initiators, had fallen into disrepair. Two years later, the policy went into effect and continued until March 2018, resulting in the closure of 112 windows. This shift in policy marked a clear departure from the country’s formerly progressive and labor-oriented stance on the issue of prostitution, wherein sex work was discursively viewed and regulated as a ‘normal job’ (Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017).

By critically analyzing the policy documents that were produced in the beginning, during, and after the implementation of Project 1012, this research aims to show how this discourse is formed through a selective rendition of what policymakers claim to be “the truth” of sex work in Amsterdam and its historical connections to the city, its people, and their problems. It will reveal that the documents evoke certain narratives to support the reduction of the sex work industry, while omitting other information about the origins and history of the social issues experienced in the Red-Light District. We argue that these policy documents function as “folded objects” (cf. Latour, 2010; M’Charek, 2014; Serres & Latour, 1995; Van Oorschot, 2018) with deontic powers that enable them to recreate the futures of the city and its citizens (cf. Searle, 1995; Smith, 2014). This has had a significant impact on the lives and work conditions of a considerable number of sex workers, who have been compelled into the invisible sex work industry (Aalbers & Sabat, 2012; Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017; see also Berry & Frazer, 2021 for a comparable case).

Placing Project 1012 and Sex Work in Amsterdam in Its Historical Context

To fully understand how this happened, it is necessary to place the discourse surrounding sex work in Amsterdam in its historical context. Sex work in the Netherlands, particularly in its capital city, has a complex history that has oscillated between legalization and criminalization. Broadly defined, sex work includes “the exchange of sexual services, performances, or products for material compensation,” which can encompass visible and invisible prostitution, stripping, and working in sex shops (Weitzer, 2000: 1). However, this article focuses primarily on window prostitution. The Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule in the seventeenth century saw prostitution become illegal, and sex workers were forced into underground workspaces (De Wildt & Arnoldussen, 2002). But, in the eighteenth century, the demand for brothels increased when a central place for this type of sex work was desired by wealthy men. Sex work was legalized in 1811 to allow for better regulation of health checks (Ditmore, 2006). However, resistance against the legality of sex work rose again in the twentieth century, this time led by Christian organizations. In 1911, the government introduced a brothel ban that made holding brothels a crime in the Netherlands. Nevertheless, practicing sex work was not prohibited (Atria, 2016), and prostitution behind windows was tolerated in some places, leading to a boom in the industry in the city center of Amsterdam.

Starting in the 1980s, the public debate surrounding the regulation of sex work in the Netherlands, and particularly Amsterdam, shifted once again. Organizations advocating for prostitutes, women’s rights, as well as social and medical workers began pushing for the complete legalization of the industry and demanded that the position of sex workers, most of whom were women, be changed. Their goal was to create better working conditions and to reduce exploitation and human trafficking (Staring, 2012), which had become a prominent topic in international political negotiations and treaties in the 20 years leading up to the UN Palermo Protocols. Despite prostitution still being technically illegal, the public in the Netherlands began to realize that the brothel ban legislation did not eliminate sex work but rather drove it underground, making it difficult to regulate (Post & Vols, 2018; Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017). The brothel ban was finally abolished in October 2000, marking a new era in the regulation and normalization of sex work in Amsterdam and the Netherlands.

It is worth noting that the decision to abandon the brothel ban had multiple motives, some of which conspicuously aligned with a liberal feminist perspective that aimed to protect the rights and improve the working conditions of sex workers (Mathieson et al., 2016). According to the Explanatory Memorandum of Minister Sorgdrager from July 1, 1997, the reasons presented by the Dutch government included “protecting the position of prostitutes, combating the exploitation of involuntary prostitution, control, and regulation of the exploitation of prostitution”. These justifications are important because they have been used repeatedly for opposing purposes. Indeed, similar arguments were employed in the past to justify the brothel ban but were now used to abandon it. Yet, almost 10 years later, without much explanation or new evidence, they resurfaced to reduce window prostitution within Amsterdam’s now famous Red-Light District.

In 2007, the municipality of Amsterdam presented Project 1012, named after the postal code of the area where the majority of the city’s window prostitution is concentrated (Court of Audit, 2018). The policy was launched in 2009 with the aim of breaking down criminal infrastructures, changing the “one-sided” economic structure, and reducing the nuisance experienced by local residents, such as noise, litter, and other negative impacts associated with the Red-Light District (Amsterdam Municipality, 2007). Between 2009 and 2018, this led to the closure of 112 prostitution windows. However, according to local researchers (Aalbers & Sabat, 2012), the policy has not been effective in reducing criminal and abusive activities or enhancing sex workers’ rights. Furthermore, despite the closure of many visible windows, the number of sex workers did not decrease. Instead, a significant number of sex workers were coerced into the clandestine sex work sector, which is known for poorer working conditions and less regulatory oversight (Aalbers & Deinema, 2012), prompting demonstrations from members of the community.

In April 2015, more than 200 sex workers led by PROUD, a lobby and advocacy organization that defends the interests of sex workers in the workplace, policies, the media, and wider society, marched through Amsterdam’s city center to protest against the closure of their workspaces and the demonization of the sex industry (Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017: 1577). The livelihoods of this already vulnerable group were uprooted, but it is unclear how this could have happened considering that bureaucrats working for the municipality were reciting the same reasons that had previously been used to decriminalize prostitution. To understand this, we need to understand the deontic power of documents as recorders of history and preservers of institutional memory.

The Power of Documents

Nowadays in social studies, there is a growing emphasis on the influence of documents on our social realities. Not only are sociologists investigating the interconnected networks of actors and information associated with specific documents, such as policy briefs, and their impact on existing structures and interactions. They are also exploring how policymakers can conceal or shape narratives while transforming past occurrences into documents (Ferraris, 2013; M’Charek, 2014; Van Oorschot, 2014). This is especially important in the case of policy documents, as they are important means of preserving institutional memory, providing a written record of the policy decisions and actions taken by policymakers over time. They provide a historical record of how policy decisions were made, the assumptions underlying them, and their outcomes (Smith, 1974). This institutional memory is crucial for understanding the evolution of policy responses to social issues and informing future policy decisions.

Ferraris (2013) argues that the process of transforming the past into a document creates a new reality, which he calls “documentality”. This transformation has significant social and institutional power, as it can shape our understanding of history and the present, can bind certain people, organizations, and other entities together, and create binding obligations, entitlements, privileges, and immunities (Smith, 2014). According to Searle (1995), documents like policy briefs possess deontic powers, as they are employed by individuals and organizations to generate various social outcomes, conferring them with significant social and institutional weight. They have these powers because they are continuant entities that exist for longer periods of time than speech acts, produce information that can be remembered, brought to bear upon other documents, be interacted with later, questioned, made subject to political, social, and legal scrutiny, and more. Indeed, they can lead lives independent of, and survive the death of their creators (Smith, 2001, 2014).

This ability to exist independently from their creators sometimes leads people to view documents as impartial record-keepers. Yet, the reality is that documents have a significant capacity for shaping narratives. As M’Charek (2014) argues, documents have agency because they reflect the biases and perspectives of their creators, who select and shape information according to their own interests and political agendas. In this way, documents are not passive records of history but actively produce and shape it. History itself is “gathered together and folded in objects” within written documents, argues M’Charek (2014: 31), creating one or more narratives that link events that may have occurred at different times and places (see also Cubides Kovacsics et al., 2022). Serres and Latour (1995: 60) explain this visually:

“If you take a handkerchief and spread it out in order to iron it, you can see in it certain fixed distances and proximities. If you sketch a circle in one area, you can mark out nearby points and measure far off distances. Then take the same handkerchief and crumple it, by putting it in your pocket. Two distant points are suddenly close, even superimposed.” (Serres & Latour, 1995: 60)

What results is a “documentary reality” (Smith, 1974), in which the agency of documents lies not only in what is written and what points, people, organizations, or other social institutes are connected, but also in what is left out, and the ways in which information is presented and framed (M’Charek, 2014; Van Oorschot, 2018).

While documents play a crucial role in shaping our understanding of history and the present, they can selectively fix moments in time while leaving out other events that are not recorded. As Van Oorschot (2018) notes, legal files, research reports, or regeneration plans like Project 1012 can be used as tools to hide certain narratives while making other narratives visible as “truths”. This selectivity creates a discourse that may not represent the entire historical context and can impact a larger societal discourse. Consequently, these documents articulate a particular political understanding that may have significant effects on how people perceive and interact with their social realities (M’Charek, 2014). For instance, if visible sex work is consistently presented as a precarious profession, involving exploitation and human trafficking, it can lead to a perception of illegitimacy and fuel public demands for change.

Yet, the thing about discourse is that it tends to hide that it is shaped by social influence and is not a universal, established matter. And with that, it conceals that it is formed from political and historical context (Foucault, 1972; Gill, 1995). As Foucault has forcefully argued, discourse “masks its construction” and the way it produces general knowledge. Through this “discourse claims an irrefutable a-historicity” (Adams, 2020: 9).

“[T]hrough its reiteration in society, the rules of discourse fix the meaning of statements or text to be conducive to the political rationality that underlies its production. Yet at the same time, the discourse hides both its capacity to fix meaning and its political intentions. It is as such that discourse can mask itself as a-historical, universal, and scientific – that is, objective and stable” (Adams, 2019).

Discourse is a powerful force that shapes our perception of reality, as noted by Judith Butler (1993). It operates through a process of iterability, where norms and values are regularly and consistently repeated by lawyers, researchers, and bureaucrats in the municipality. Such discourse can define what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior in terms of work and citizenship, but also affect the power dynamics between different groups in society, reinforce stereotypes, and stigmatize certain communities.

According to Ferraris’ (2013) work on documentality, documents create social objects and identities, as they are simultaneously protecting and inspecting us. He gives the example of being “sans papier” (without papers) and how this affects one’s identity (as it may mean we become “illegal” in certain contexts). Butler explains this by focusing on the performativity of traditional gender roles, where taboos and norms in documents create the identity of men and women. When someone does not confine themselves to the norms of these identities, this can become a problem since social structures and people still expect them to behave in certain ways (Butler, 1993). In a similar way, when reading about sex work and its association with social problems, people who do not experience these issues can still recognize repeated norms and values about the industry, such as shame and connection to illegal practices.

Policy documents thus play a crucial role in shaping the identity of phenomena by contributing to their construction and influencing how the public perceives their value, as well as how stakeholders can act upon them. However, this process often obscures the role of policy in shaping that identity, leading us to believe that it existed long before the policy was formulated. In the context of Project 1012, our focus is on how sex work is problematized in this policy. Following Carol Bacchi’s approach, we view policy not as a mere problem-solving tool for bureaucrats, but as an entity that produces problems affecting “what gets done and not done and how people live their lives” (Bacchi, 2012: 22). By uncovering the origins of sex work’s identity as detrimental to Amsterdam’s city center within policy discourse, we can gain a deeper understanding of the power dynamics at play and how they shape consecutive policies that affect sex workers. To accomplish this, we must trace the history of sex work and the narratives that have been constructed around it in Project 1012. Fortunately, documents have the capacity to endure and be stored, creating a historical record of the changes that have taken place both within the documents themselves and in the social reality they have influenced.

Analyzing Project 1012

Our approach to these documents follows the principles of critical discourse analysis, which emphasizes the power of language in constructing social objects by selectively including or excluding information, connecting certain events or people while marginalizing others (Bryman, 2016; Epstein, 2018; Fairclough, 2013; Given, 2008). Specifically, we combined elements of Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework, to uncover power dynamics and ideologies embedded in language, with Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the problem represented to be?” (WPR) approach, to uncover how sex work is represented as a problem in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District and the presuppositions, assumptions, and effects that underlie this representation (cf. Bacchi, 2012). To achieve this, we employed the “following the documents” method to trace the narratives and histories presented in the documents and understand how they have shaped the policies that followed. By examining the words, structures, and networks of meaning produced in these documents, we can better understand the power of documents in shaping the identities and truths surrounding window prostitution in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District.

We did this concretely by following Bacchi’s six questions in discerning “what the problem is represented to be” (Bacchi, 2012: 21):

  1. 1.

    What is the problem of window prostitution in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District represented to be in the various policy briefs that surround Project 1012?

  2. 2.

    What presuppositions or assumptions underpin this representation?

  3. 3.

    How has this representation come about?

  4. 4.

    What is left unproblematic in this representation?

  5. 5.

    What effects are produced by this representation?

  6. 6.

    Where has this representation been produced, disseminated, defended, questioned, disrupted, and replaced?

Using these questions, we analyzed policy documents, policy reports, and reports of council meetings that occurred before, during, and following the introduction of Project 1012. These policy documents are created by the municipality and are public property with online access. We started by reading the first initiative to reduce the Red-Light District that instigated Project 1012, the report: ‘Limits to Enforcement’ (2007). We looked for phrases, categorizations, and value judgments connected to window prostitution in Amsterdam within this document and traced back where the use of this language might have come from. Subsequently, we followed these phrases further and tried to discover whether they influenced or were reproduced in other documents and what that did to the discourse around sex work. In this process, we also looked for the emergence of topics and phrases that were indicative of newer descriptions of what the problem of window prostitution in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District was represented to be.

The research finally identified and homed in on four different periods of policy discourse around sex work in Amsterdam:

  1. 1.

    The period from 2007 to 2009, the first 3 years Project 1012 was initiated and planned, 153 pages.

  2. 2.

    The second period from 2012 to 2018, where policy changes were implemented, and the first developments were visible, 132 pages.

  3. 3.

    The third period from 2009 to 2011, the 2 years directly after the presentation and implementation of Project 1012, 304 pages. We later added this analysis, to better understand the shift in discourse between the first two analyses.

  4. 4.

    And finally, the period from 2018 to 2019, where we added the administrative report on how the initial policy plan performed according to the Dutch Court of Audit, 61 pages.

By examining the four distinct time periods in the evolution of Amsterdam’s sex work policy since the implementation of Project 1012, we gained valuable insights into the changes that have taken place over time. Before delving into the specifics of these changes, it is important to acknowledge our positionality towards Project 1012 and the potential impact it may have had on our analysis and interpretation. While we have strived for objectivity in our research, we recognize that complete neutrality is impossible, and our own perspectives and biases may have influenced our findings.

Positionality of the Researchers

As researchers investigating the influence of policy on the construction and perception of sex work, we must be aware of our own histories and socio-political positions that shape our views on the topic. Being raised in the city of Amsterdam and born in the city center, the first author of this research was surrounded by sex work, considering it part of the city’s culture and identity. When Project 1012 was introduced, she was critical of the way the Red-Light District was curtailed into an even smaller area catering only to tourism. She felt that reducing the district’s footprint within the city center could negatively affect the livelihood and working conditions of the sex workers without enhancing their position as a respected part of Amsterdam (see also Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017). The first author also felt uneasy about not having this marginalized group be part of the conversation to make sense of the problems that were discussed in Project 1012.

The second author brings a different perspective to our research, as she is not from Amsterdam and has no first-hand knowledge of the effects of Project 1012. However, her own history is closely linked to another major attempt at city regeneration related to sex work, which took place in Rotterdam in September 2005. At that time, the municipality closed the notorious street prostitution zone on the Keileweg, and the majority of sex workers who worked there, many of whom were women who struggled with addiction, were brought to a safe house where they were met by the second author’s husband, a social worker. He witnessed first-hand the various forms of misogynist abuse these women endured while doing their job. He blamed the city’s governing bodies for having turned a blind eye to this abuse and for facilitating it through institutionalized prostitution zones. As a result, later proposals by the Rotterdam municipality to open new windows for sex workers were met with hostility within the second author’s household.

Both authors acknowledge that the issue of regulating sex work by municipalities and government agencies is complex and can involve conflicting viewpoints on whether closing or opening windows is beneficial. We also recognize that there is no single “objective” truth about sex work and its relationship to the social issues experienced in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District. However, it is evident that Project 1012 has linked these issues with sex work. Therefore, our aim is to scrutinize the unexamined assumptions and conceptual frameworks that underlie this association, to trace what sort of identity this creates for the industry, its link to the city, and how this has evolved over time.

Results

Period 1: Introducing Sex Work as a Criminogenic Industry

We started our analysis by focusing on “what the problem of window prostitution in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District is represented to be” by the municipality in the first three briefs: Limits to Enforcement: New Ambitions for the Wallen (2007), Strategy note Project 1012 (2008), and Explanatory Report Regulation Law (2009).Footnote 2 These documents proposed the closure of 112 windows in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District, citing several themes that were discursively linked to the identity of sex work in the area.

The first of these was formed by a curious parallelization between sex work and coffee (or cannabis) shopsFootnote 3 in the area, both of which were classified as “crime-sensitive industries” that attract people from all over the world to the Red-Light District. According to the policymakers, this resulted “[i]n a small area, [where] many criminogenic functions have been compressed, causing nuisance and crime” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2007: 3). In all three of these first documents, the municipality classified both sex work and coffee shops as “criminogenic” industries, which exist in a legal grey area and are associated with nuisance and crime in the Red-Light District. For coffee shops, this occurs as they occupy a strange position where they are legal at the front, yet illegal at the back. They sell marihuana legally to customers yet purchasing and stocking this product is illegal in the Netherlands but is not actively policed (something the Dutch call ‘gedoogd’). As a result, this business is inherently connected to illegal practices.

Sex work, however, is not as directly related to illegal conduct, as the service provided by sex workers does not inherently involve illegal goods or practices under Dutch law. However, the association that is created in these policy briefs between window prostitution and coffee shops as “criminogenic” industries creates the implication of a connection to illegal behavior. This perception contributes to an overall negative image of sex work as a “low-quality” industry with links to criminal activity. In ‘Limits to Enforcement’ (2007: 3), the municipality creates this image within its first sentences, by stating that:

“This memorandum takes a critical look at the infrastructure of criminogenic sectors such as prostitution and coffee shops, which is currently being maintained. An impetus is also given to formulating principles for a different approach to the area in favor of higher-quality functions” (our emphases).

The documents clarify the term “criminogenic” by linking prostitution businesses to illegal money laundering and forced prostitution resulting from human trafficking. In the addition to the ‘Regulation Law’ (2009: 7), the policymakers mention:

“The sex industry is sensitive to crime: it is a criminogenic industry. The relationship with (organized) crime manifests itself in two aspects. Firstly, criminals invest in the industry to launder money, secondly, they engage in forced prostitution (human trafficking). The consequences are noticeable locally because criminals use legal economic and legal infrastructures in various industries to carry out criminal acts, conceal them or invest criminal money.”

As previously discussed, advocacy groups and the Dutch government have addressed the problem of forced prostitution by advocating for decriminalization and de-stigmatization, aiming to regulate the industry and prevent exploitation and involuntary sex work. However, while the municipality occasionally suggests that improving the position of sex workers is one of the objectives of Project 1012, the historical case for such an approach is not emphasized in these documents.

What the documents do mention is that sex work in the Wallen area is linked to a growing experience of nuisance by residents and by the municipality. However, what is not made explicit is that the research backing these documents does not actually support the idea that this nuisance is caused by those who work in the industry. Rather, researchers attribute the nuisance to the increasing numbers of tourists and the decrease in local cohesion. These factors are suggested as reasons for a “hardening” image of the Wallen. Yet, within these first policy briefs on the restructuring of Amsterdam’s city center, these reasons are not described as problems of similar magnitude to the issues of window prostitution and coffee shops. In Project 1012, the municipality states that “the deterioration visible within certain parts of the 1012 area is [only] partly caused by a lack of social cohesion and engaged entrepreneurship”. In addition, they mention that:

“In the last 20 to 30 years, the influence of women has decreased and that of men has increased. The prostitution climate has hardened. The industry became ‘more professional’, larger-scale, more criminal, and above all more international” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2008: 9).

This seems to suggest that the deterioration of the Red-Light District is due to internationalization, professionalization, and an economy of scale, which are all major forces that are beyond the control of sex workers and their workplaces. The Dutch government has actively promoted these developments — also through Project 1012, which was introduced to gentrify the Wallen and attract more international investors and promote professionalism. That is why one could question the solution of closing windows to combat the hardening environment, as the windows existed before the current situation. However, in the discourse presented by Project 1012, the presence of the windows and the deterioration of the area are portrayed as interconnected. These documents conflate the issues and fold them together, ignoring the complexity of the situation and disregarding the agency of the sex workers.

The third common theme in the discourse surrounding Project 1012 is the idea that prostitution and the Wallen are an integral part of “the real Amsterdam” that should be cherished and appreciated rather than completely demolished through displacement. In 2008, the municipality wrote: “Prostitution and coffee shop policy is internationally known, is used in the image as a metaphor for the tolerant society that is mainly represented by Amsterdam and its specific regulations” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2008: 28). While this text (of Project 1012) does reiterate the idea of window prostitution attracting a lot of unwanted nuisances, it also mentions that: “The proposed partial reorganization [under Project 1012] can distort that picture [of Amsterdam as a bastion of tolerance]. That’s not what we’re after. What we do want, as stated, is to significantly reduce the criminogenic functions and strengthen the position of the sex worker” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2008: 28).

In addition, the documents suggest that the Wallen area has lost its value to the point where no “Amsterdammers” (local people) live or work there anymore (Amsterdam Municipality, 2008: 35).

“It is not without reason that we use the motto ‘Give the area back to the Amsterdammer’. For the individual resident, we aim to reduce the enormous pressure on the life and living environment while respecting the existing qualities of the area.”

However, it is not clear what these qualities are or what the “real historical” Amsterdam should look like. The documents present a contradictory narrative: on the one hand, sex work is allowed in the city center to maintain the free and liberal image of Amsterdam, but on the other hand, sex workers are portrayed as low-valued and responsible for the area’s bad reputation, which calls for change. The imagined identity of what constitutes a “real Amsterdammer” is also left undefined in these documents.

Instead, the negative aspects of sex work are presented, such as its connections to money laundering, nuisance, and forced labor, leading the reader to assume that these issues were never a part of Amsterdam’s “real history” in connection to its Red-Light District. In essence, the municipality is utilizing pre-existing negative stereotypes about sex work, such as its association with human trafficking and the oppression of women, to portray the industry as detrimental to the neighborhood. However, these narratives conceal the fact that these same worries were once used to make a case for decriminalizing prostitution and having sex workers perform their trade in public sight.

Considering the theory from Butler about performativity, we can understand that by failing to acknowledge the complex history of sex work and instead relying on vague references to criminal activity and misogyny, policy and public discourse create a negative identity of window prostitution that perpetuates stigma and reinforces sex work as something outside of normality (Butler, 2003). In this discourse, sex work is there only to reaffirm the claim of tolerance by the city and its residents. This is reproduced with phrases such as: “while sex work is considered normal as a phenomenon, this does not apply to the profession of a sex worker” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2007: 7). This connects directly to the final narrative that emerged within these documents, which circulates the idea that sex work is a tabooed industry operating under the guise of stigmatization (see also Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017). In 2009, the municipality wrote:

“Working in prostitution is still a taboo in society. The government is aware of this sensitivity but emphasizes that this should not be an argument for not laying down further rules here. After all, it is a legal profession in which many cases of abuse nevertheless occur. One of the means that the government considers essential to combating these abuses is registration. The government does not see how registration would put a stigma on a sex worker that does not already exist. In light of the existing taboo on sex work, the government naturally understands the desire for anonymity and protection of the sex worker’s privacy.” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2009: 16)

Here we see how these documents create sex work as a devalued social object, through the process of wanting to protect and inspect sex workers (cf. Ferraris, 2013). Again, it is argued that the profession is not considered a normal phenomenon in society. On multiple occasions, the municipality criticizes sex workers for not wanting to lose their anonymity, by explaining that they would gain social security if only they revealed who they are. Yet, at the same time, the documents actively devalue their work and materialize these taboos to be true, making it impossible to think of sex work without considering that the identity of sex workers should always be something connected with stigma.

Period 2: Rewriting the History of Nuisance in the Wallen

In the second analysis, we looked at how this representation of the problem of sex work in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District was translated into a Re-zoning Report (2013), two ‘Progress Reports’ (from 2015 and 2017) and the ‘Transition project 1012’ (2018). These were also written by the municipality, yet they included a noticeably different discourse about window prostitution in Amsterdam’s city center. Most visibly, the description of sex work as a “criminogenic business” (together with coffee shops), was abandoned in these reports and replaced by a description of sex work as part of a “monoculture” of “over-represented” and (again) “low-valued” activities within the area. This was used to legitimize the municipality’s desire to close another 37 windows, on top of the 75 that had already been closed in the early years of the policy.

“Postcode area 1012 is characterized by a large concentration of window brothels and coffee shops. In addition, there is a monoculture of other low-value and over-represented functions” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2015: 5).

The negative portrayal of prostitution in the documents evolved to connect it no longer directly with criminal activity. However, the discourse also underwent a transformation in terms of its depiction of the Wallen’s identity and its problems. This shift occurred as the blame for the area’s nuisance was redirected toward the tourists who were inundating the city.

Whereas in the first three policy briefs around Project 1012, tourists were mentioned as a relatively small “part” of the problem, the final reports identified them as a main cause of nuisance. While the windows and coffee shops continued to be portrayed as the primary attractions drawing tourists to the area, they were now recognized not to be the only culprits creating a nuisance for residents. The following quote indicates this shift:

“Amsterdam has undergone a new development. Due to its appeal, the city has continued to grow for day trips of people, tourists, and companies, the crowds are increasing faster than expected. This leads to rubbish on the street and in some neighborhoods (especially in the center) the quality of life is under pressure. To keep the crowds on the right track, the municipality has implemented various measures” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2015: 5).

What is interesting about this new narrative is that while it shifts blame away from the sex work industry, it is conspicuously written as if these problems have just arrived in the last couple of years (“a new development” the city has undergone). Although these problems may have increased, this characterization is not entirely accurate. The same problems had been mentioned in the early policy briefs around Project 1012 but were allocated a much smaller role at the time. Yet, this is not something that is recalled in these later documents. As a result, the historical context of issues related to Amsterdam’s Red-Light District is overlooked, and the narrative is framed as if these problems have recently emerged.

The problems are presented in the documents as having been raised by residents of the neighborhood, as seen in the ‘Progress Project 2017’ report:

“One of the open questions asks what the municipality should tackle first. Although this question was answered differently per neighborhood, the top 3 are as follows: Crowds and tourism; Cycling (parking and lack of space); Traffic nuisance (taxi nuisance, dangerous traffic situations, loading and unloading, parking incorrectly)” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2017: 9).

Despite the fact that these issues and conversations with the neighborhood were also mentioned in the early documents initiating Project 1012, these concerns were nuanced in these reports next to the immense problems window prostitution and coffee shops were said to present. In these later documents, however, the nuance is taken away, and these problems are stated as main priorities, connected to the “lack of cohesion” in the area.

As a result, in our opinion, the identity of prostitution is portrayed much less negatively than within the first documents. Yet, while the negative parts are less obviously stated, these later policy documents still fold negative connotations in themselves by assuming the same characteristics (particularly the connection between sex work and abuse of women and the industry’s legal status for criminal activity). This folded image is then assumed as the truth since multiple documents repeat this. What is, however, not repeated is the fact that tourism and a lack of social cohesion were already identified as causes for nuisance in the city – albeit partial causes — in the first documents around Project 1012. The history of these problems is concealed in these later documents, which write about both as if these are new problems that have emerged on top of the problems caused by sex work in the area. What is also not revealed, is that through earlier policy initiatives (see below) the municipality has actively worked on getting more tourists into the area — and that, in fact, making the city center more attractive (also for tourists) has been one of the partial objectives of Project 1012.

Excluding these historical facts has had significant implications for the future of sex workers and their industry in the Wallen, as it perpetuated the notion that reducing the number of windows could address some of the nuisances. This, in turn, could be used to justify the municipality’s decision to proceed with the closure of windows and even to use expropriation as a means of coercion if business owners refused to comply. The municipality records this in its second Progress Report (2017: 7):

“During the review of project 1012 in December 2015, it was agreed that of the remaining 83 windows at the time, 46 windows could still be left open. Implementation of this Decree has meanwhile been taken up by the Municipal Preferential Rights Act to cancel the windows that may remain open. In addition to the 46 windows that can remain open, there are another 37 windows that still have to be closed. The municipality is in talks with the owners to purchase the properties amicably. […] If it is not possible to reach an agreement before the summer of 2017, the municipality will still acquire the buildings using expropriation.”

Period 3: Identifying Criminal Infrastructures

Given the significant temporal and discursive gap between the policy briefs that initiated and concluded Project 1012, we conducted an analysis of documents produced during the intervening period to shed light on potential reasons for this shift in approach. One such document, ‘Project Emergo’ (2011), stipulated a “joint approach to serious (organized) crime in the heart of Amsterdam” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2011). We found that this document introduced yet another discourse on the issues in the Red-Light District, distinct from those presented in the earlier and later policy briefs.

The description of sex work as a “criminogenic industry” was already abandoned in this document for a description of a larger criminal infrastructure existing in the heart of the city, of which window prostitution was considered to be a part and a victim. This was referred to as follows:

“In the Red-Light District and part of the Damrak [famous street in the center of Amsterdam], money laundering in real estate and companies and the involvement of organized crime in sectors such as prostitution […] is a cause for concern” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2011).

As a result, the sex work industry was no longer solely blamed for criminality, and the focus shifted towards other actors that had previously been considered “high-quality” by the municipality in the early documents that initiated Project 1012. This particularly involved the real estate industry, which was singled out as a major factor in creating an illegal infrastructure:

“Remarkably, legal or regular actors play a crucial role in most forms of this illegal infrastructure, including brokers, notaries, appraisers, auctioneers, and brokerage firms. In other words, this illegal infrastructure is highly embedded in the normal structure of the real estate industry. […] The fact that real estate as such forms an important logistical basis for their illegal activities can of course be deduced from several examples in this study.” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2011: 69)

Ironically, the municipality had actually invested in attracting more of these “legal”, and “higher-quality functions” into the city center through Project 1012. This was also the goal of its predecessor, ‘TopCity Amsterdam’,Footnote 4 another policy that had as its aim to attract more business to the city to make the city more appealing to tourists, so Amsterdam would emerge back into the top five most popular European cities. The identity of the Red-Light District was allocated a significant role in achieving this goal as it was supposed to serve as an “entranceway into the city”, giving it its tolerant and attractive edge (Amsterdam Municipality, 2006; Bontje, 2006). To achieve this, however, the municipality believed that the sex industry needed to change into a more desirable form of prostitution, described in Project Emergo as the “humanized Wallen”.

According to this document the “humanized Wallen”:

“must become a more mixed area, with a greater combination of shops and business premises for business services, ICT companies, media companies, fashion companies, and other forms of creative industry. (…) the area should acquire a much more international profile and resemble city centers such as the Latin Quarter in Paris and Westend/Soho in London. In this vision, the ‘red light district’—with sex and erotic entertainment, but ‘humanized’—is pushed back to the central part of the Oudezijds Achterburgwal.” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2011: 45)

In terms of redefining the meaning and history of sex work in Amsterdam, this future identity of the Wallen, holds a remarkable resemblance to, what is described in this same document as, its past; of sex work “operated on a small scale — spread over a few buildings, cafes and hotels — and (…) largely interwoven with everyday socio-economic life in the area” (Amsterdam Municipality, 2011: 73). This can be referred to as the romanticized idea of how prostitution can exist in the way it existed in 1600, once the streets are “cleaned up”. This humanized description of the Red-Light District folds in the nostalgic idea of sex, and erotic entertainment while also existing next to high-end shops and big investors (Amsterdam Municipality, 2011: 27).

What this analysis has uncovered so far is that there have been various shifts in the representation of window prostitution as a problem in Amsterdam’s city center and its connection to the identity of the city and its residents. However, what these representations all have in common is that they are selective renditions of certain narratives that have been used to inform and legitimize the reduction of the industry.

Period 4: History Repeats

We completed our analysis by examining the final administrative report on the performance of Project 1012. This report was produced not by the Amsterdam municipality, but by the Dutch Court of Audit, and it included several noteworthy points that challenged the policy advanced in Project 1012. Firstly, the Court of Audit criticized Project 1012 for not achieving significant breakthroughs in dismantling the criminal infrastructures in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District. The report stated that “to get a grip on the neighborhood, an approach is necessary for which ambitions and efforts are more balanced [than presented by Project 1012] and can be sustained for a long time” (Court of Audit, 2018: 2). While the report acknowledged some improvements in the area, such as cleanliness and building enhancements, it noted that in Project 1012 solutions were not focused on long-term goals and argued that the closure of windows had a negative effect on the position of sex workers (Court of Audit, 2018: 2, 24).

This document stipulates that Project 1012 has made it more difficult and expensive for sex workers to work behind a window and has also resulted in unnecessary stigmatization by continuously repeating the alleged ties of the profession with forced labor and human trafficking. These conclusions are based on conversations with sex workers and brothel owners. As such, this final document is the first to include a narrative around their perspectives.

The lack of an unambiguous picture of the extent of human trafficking [in Project 1012] leads to criticism of the municipality: the picture that has been outlined that there are many cases of abuse in window prostitution is experienced as stigmatizing by brothel owners and sex workers and hinders them in their normal participation in society. (…) The stigma hinders them from running a business normally. For example, they indicate that it is still difficult or even impossible to obtain regular bank financing or take out insurance. The image that the municipality has painted of window prostitution would also be stigmatizing for sex workers. PROUD (interest group) field workers point out that this makes it difficult for sex workers to access normal facilities such as a business bank account or disability insurance (Court of Audit, 2018: 28).

In this document, sex work and other jobs in the area are mentioned as “attention areas” (Court of Audit, 2018: 4). By which the Dutch Court of Audit wants to recognize that it is not beneficial to keep mentioning the connection to criminal activities, but rather chooses to acknowledge that attention should be applied to this complex sector. This identification of the industry was conspicuously different from the first policy briefs around Project 1012, where sex work was boxed in with coffee shops as “criminogenic” low-valued jobs. This last document rather follows the description of an extensive criminal infrastructure found in Project Emergo, which the Court of Audit judges has not received the attention it deserved in shaping the policy and discourse around redesigning the Red-Light District.

It also criticizes that the livelihood of the sex workers was quite certainly not at the forefront of the agenda of Project 1012. By interviewing officials and administrators, the Dutch Court of Audit says that “because of the rules of the zoning plan, only spatial arguments could be used and that other considerations, such as which places are best for the industry and the sex workers, had no place in this”. The report also mentions that even during the “reassessment of Project 1012, when it was necessary to reconsider where window brothels would be closed, there was no place for arguments other than spatial” (Court of Audit, 2018: 30).

Taken together, the points in the final document make a renewed plea for the decriminalization and de-stigmatization of sex work. This echoes the position of political parties and organizations in the 1980s that sought to enhance the position of sex workers by arguing that decriminalization would improve working conditions and enable better regulation by government agencies. The document shifts the focus away from viewing sex work as the “problem” and instead highlights how Project 1012’s policies have contributed to social issues in the Red-Light District. Overall, this document underscores the importance of a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of sex work and the need for policies that center the voices and concerns of sex workers and their communities.

Discussion

This research presents a critical perspective on policy documents, which we conceptualize as “folded objects”. Drawing on the works of M’Charek and Serres & Latour, we argue that policy documents contain embedded assumptions and normalized truths that can shape discourse and obscure historical context. This can have significant implications for cities and their residents and their futures, as documents, like policy briefs, have deontic powers that can endure even after the policy itself has ended, because as preservers of institutional memory, they can continue to inform new policies, shape how the public at large think about a certain social issue, or how people in their daily lives can and cannot perform their work (Smith, 2001).

Through our study, we seek to contribute to this literature by exposing some of the choices made in Project 1012, which aimed to gentrify Amsterdam’s Red-Light District. Our article serves as a narrative tool to highlight the selective inclusion of certain histories and perspectives on sex work, which can have profound social and political consequences. Combining Fairclough’s three-dimensional CDA model (Fairclough, 2013) with Bacchi’s WPR approach (Bacchi, 2012), our aim was to critically scrutinize the discursive logics that lay behind the presentation of sex work as a “problem” for the city center of Amsterdam, what assumptions underpinned this presentation, what was included in it, and what was (sometimes conspicuously, sometimes subtly) left outside of the dominant narratives that overall led to a reduction of the industry. The latter, we showed, particularly included policymakers’ own roles in creating the social issues in Amsterdam’s city center, as well as the fact that the industry was reduced using similar arguments that were once made for de-criminalizing sex work.

When Project 1012 was initiated in 2007, its specific categorization of window prostitution as a “criminogenic” industry emphasized its ties to nuisance, exploitation, and unsafety of sex workers, particularly women. This created an image that policymakers needed legally and politically to close many of the windows and largely abolish sex work within Amsterdam’s city center. The municipality used already existing identities of sex work, such as its links to human trafficking, the oppression of women, and the non-autonomous lives they have, to convince relevant stakeholders, including its residents, that the industry is bad for the neighborhood (Benoit et al., 2021; Van Liempt & Chimienti, 2017). What was not mentioned in these documents is that the same arguments had been used earlier by organizations advocating for prostitutes, women’s rights, and social and medical workers as reasons for decriminalizing and legalizing sex work. They contended that having sex workers perform their trade in public view can help regulate the industry and improve working conditions, an argument that is supported by empirical evidence (Aantjes et al., 2021; Benoit et al., 2021; Cubides Kovacsics et al., 2022; Platt et al., 2018).

This research highlights the importance of being aware of the power and potential biases inherent in policy documents. Policymakers should strive to create policies that are based on accurate and comprehensive information and consider the voices of marginalized groups, such as sex workers, who are disproportionately affected by the policies. Policy renewal should foreground the complex and multifaceted history of sex work in Amsterdam and consider the livelihood of sex workers, brothel owners, their representative organizations, and other residents of Amsterdam’s city center over spatial arguments. The policy should actively engage with their voices and concerns, as other research has shown that collaborative governance can be a useful approach to improve the occupational health and safety of sex workers, while also improving local cohesion (Aroney, 2021; Blanchard et al., 2013; Kerrigan et al., 2015). Giving priority to the perspectives of sex workers and the community may potentially offer a more effective approach to achieving Project 1012’s and other city regeneration plans’ ostensible objectives of reducing crime and nuisance and enhancing living conditions for the people in Amsterdam.