Amsterdam Red Light District Research Articles

The Myth of Formality in the Global North: Informality-as-Innovation in Dutch Governance.

Why has urban informality in the global North received so little attention? We suggest that this neglect can be explained in part by the tendency of scholarship to reproduce the myth of Northern formality: the widely held belief that informality occurs only in corrupt and clientelist ‘developing countries’. This myth has allowed activities and connections that would generally be framed as clientelist or corrupt in the global South to be rebranded as policy innovation in Western Europe and North America. In this brief paper, we challenge the myth of Northern formality by focusing on two empirical cases of informality in Dutch governance that demonstrate how the state frames the toleration and deliberate use of informality as policy innovations. Specifically, we focus on strategic, uncodified and non‐transparent deviation from legal procedure in order to achieve compliance and/or effectiveness. Relying on ethnographic methods and secondary sources, we discuss firstly the governance of Amsterdam's red light district and secondly participatory infrastructure projects in the surrounding province of North Holland. The first case highlights the strategic non‐enforcement or non‐application of laws, while the second case points to the use of personalized relationships and non‐transparency in participatory governance.

Touring the immoral. Affective geographies of visitors to the Amsterdam Red-Light district

The Amsterdam Red-Light district is a globalised mass-entertainment place for sex consumption. But the visitors touring the Red-Light district are far more diverse than sex tourists: men, women, gay, straight, stag or cultural tourists tour this place to feel the thrill of desire and disgust. The paper documents this process of commodification by these visitors, engaging with their lived experiences through ethnographic research and in-depth interviews. The paper shows the diversity of the consumption practices and representations of the spectacle of commodified sex, explaining how the emotions experienced by those touring the sex district draw on intersectional belongings (gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity). Intertwining affective and moral geographies, it concludes by arguing that the symbolic consumption of the Red-Light district cannot necessarily be predicted by virtue of standard categories of belonging, with identity formation and the consumption of sex being shaped by a complex dynamic of looks and gazes.

Tour guides as information filters in urban heterotopias: Evidence from the Amsterdam Red Light District

An unconventional urban environment often acts as an attraction for tourists. This is exemplified by the old city centre of Amsterdam, through its urban gentrification which offers a unique tourist experience through an interplay of contradicting concepts: legal and illegal, or moral and immoral. Based on Foucault's heterotopias of informational deviance and the informational role of tour guides, the aim of this paper is to show the critical influence of the tour guide's contribution to the tourist experience of visiting these often morally contradicting concepts. Tour guides operate in this context as ‘information filters’, based on the tourist guides' personalities and background. To analyse this information sensitivity, five tours were examined in the Red Light District, three related to prostitution and two to Coffee Shops. Through systematic participant observation, descriptive results were obtained, which highlight the importance of the guides' personal profile in interpreting this experience to tourists.

Multi-agency approaches in ‘criminogenic’ settings: the case of the Amsterdam Red Light District

This paper assesses the empirical evidence on multi-agency collaboration to reduce crime, uphold justice and improve safety in the so-called ‘Red Light District’ in the city center of Amsterdam, which has been a high crime area for decades. Three periods are analyzed: crime on the streets (1980s–1996); organized crime behind the front doors (1996–2007); and reconquering the Red Light District (2007–2011). The paper analyzes shifts in the definition and framing of central crime problems, causal assumptions, policy assumptions, and evidence on multi-agency collaboration and outcomes. Alongside positive outcomes, all three periods contain evidence on how difficult it is to forge and sustain alliances between government agencies; and to coordinate a shared focus on a single area and on a single topic. Furthermore, the final outcomes of these efforts are hard to measure with the exception of visible street crime. Finally, the paper contributes to the literature on Third Party Policing and multi-agency collaboration by looking beyond the police as the central actor and by widening the predominant instrumental focus to normative and political issues such as changing norms, priorities, and increasing and decreasing internal and external support for certain policy lines and actions.

The fight against human trafficking in the Amsterdam Red Light District

The Amsterdam Red Light District is famous for its sex-oriented businesses. Although prostitution was legalized in 2000, this did not end some of its criminal side effects, particularly the trafficking in women. In an effort to combat human trafficking in the district, the local authorities launched the Emergo project in 2007. The core of the project is a multi-agency approach in which the municipality, the police, the public prosecution service and the Tax and Customs Administration cooperate closely. In addition to improving the effectiveness of repressive action against criminal infrastructures, additional legislation such as the criminalization of clients is also considered necessary to compensate for the shortcomings of regulatory measures.

Relationships Between Suspects and Victims of Sex Trafficking. Exploitation of Prostitutes and Domestic Violence Parallels in Dutch Trafficking Cases

This article centres on the hypothesis that human trafficking for sexual exploitation is not only an organised crime activity, but a crime of relational nature as well. Therefore this study explores the relationships that exist between suspects and victims of sex trafficking, and examines to what extent the nature of sex trafficking has parallels with domestic violence. The study is based on an analysis of 12 police investigations into sex trafficking related to window prostitution in the Amsterdam red-light district in the period 2006–2010. The findings suggest that there are intimate relationships between traffickers and victims, and that these relationships display various characteristics of domestic violence. Aside from intimidation, control and violence, factors such as affection and attachment contribute to the persistency of these relationships. This empirical study shows the theoretical and practical importance of focusing on the relational aspects of sex trafficking and the use of domestic violence knowledge to help identify trafficking situations, as well as for the prosecution of cases and to provide assistance to victims.

XTC Production and Trafficking in Women for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation: Crime Problems and Multi-Agency Approaches in the Netherlands

This paper addresses two types of organized crime in the Netherlands: ecstasy production and trafficking, and the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation in the Amsterdam Red Light District. These illegal activities are particularly interesting because the police, the public prosecution service, the Tax and Customs Administration and the administrative authorities have developed multi-agency approaches in response. The different agencies exchange information and intelligence including personal data based on a framework agreement. They discuss and execute coordinated responses by applying criminal law, fiscal law and administrative law to tackle both the perpetrators and the legitimate infrastructure they use to commit crimes.

Between Sound and Sight: Framing the Exotic in Roysten Abel's The Manganiyar Seduction

Roysten Abel's The Manganiyar Seduction is perhaps the most popular performance of Indian folk music on the global festival market today. This performance of Rajasthani folk music is an apt exemplification of an auto-exoticism framed as cultural commodity. Its mise en scène of musicians framed, literally, by illuminated red square boxes ‘theatricalizes’ Rajasthan's folk culture of orality and gives the performance a quality of strangeness that borders on theatre and music, contemporary and traditional. The ‘dazzling’ union of the Manganiyars' music and the scenography of Amsterdam's red-light district engendered an exotic seduction that garnered rave reviews on its global tour. This paper examines the production's performative interstices: the in-betweenness of sound and sight where aural tradition is ‘spectacularized’. It will also analyse the shifting convergences of tradition and cultural consumption and further interrogates the role of reception in the construction of such ‘exotic’ spectacles.

Governmentality in Amsterdam's Red Light District

On 1 October 2000, the ban on brothels was lifted in the Netherlands, marking an intervention in the nature and structure of the country's prostitution industry by legalising sex work. Various perspectives contributed to the debates and deliberations that resulted in the Netherlands' prostitution policy, while dominant discourses accounted for the primacy of sex workers' rights and the security of the sex industry. Less than 10 years later, policymakers and municipal authorities in Amsterdam began casting doubts on the country's approaches towards prostitution, and discourses have shifted away from the situations of sex workers and the security of their industry. Prostitution has become increasingly considered in terms of its contextualisation in the city. The situation or subjectivities of the prostitutes is undermined by the socio-cultural significance and quality that is attributed to the spaces of sex work. This paper introduces Foucault's concept of governmentality along with scholarship that develops and critiques his ideas in relation to space and subjectivity. The current situation in Amsterdam's Red Light District illustrates how governmentality is productive for analysing contemporary cultural policies and industries that redefine the concept and significance of culture through its relationships to the social life and space of the city.

Re-making a Landscape of Prostitution: the Amsterdam Red Light District

The Amsterdam Red Light District is locally and internationally significant as one of the oldest venues for visible and legal urban prostitution. Internationally it is perceived as a free-for-all zone of entertainment, a kind of ‘theme park’ for adult fun. Locally the Red Light District is a controversial place that stirs debates on Dutch ‘progressive’ policies, the impact of cultural globalization and importantly, whether or not prostitution should be allowed to exist in this kind of visible format in Amsterdam's center. Recent urban planning changes in the area, instigated by City authorities, show the Red Light District is directly implicated in municipal gentrifying efforts, efforts that put at risk historic margins like the Red Light District. The paper introduces themes that will be discussed in depth by the special feature contributors: the red light district as a ‘moral region’, historical and legislative perspectives, political understanding and enactment of ‘liberal’ policies and municipal use of these concepts to self-brand, commercial and aesthetic character of the zone in view of the global sex industry, and the role of artists as cultural producers and marginal gentrifiers. This introductory paper to the special feature on the Red Light District of Amsterdam offers an overview of key perspectives on red light zones and specifically addresses how the Amsterdam Red Light District both fits, and is an exception to visible urban zones of prostitution.

From red light to black light

Looking at a 1960s image of the Amsterdam Red Light District and an image of it today means looking at two different places. Post-World War II images of the zone and photographs of the interiors of windows today show a spatial transformation during the last half-century. Prostitutes sitting inside living rooms by red lampshades have been replaced with sex workers standing in body-sized glass doorways, lit-up from behind in red and black light. On the outside, the red light window is a glowing advertisement with an aesthetic common globally among lower-end establishments of the sex industry. On the inside, the interior adheres to the new legislative health and safety standards. The Amsterdam Red Light District has become a monitored, adult mass entertainment zone that caters to the ranging desires of its international visitors and adheres to global standards of sex consumerism. This paper analyzes the infrastructural and aesthetic changes in the Red Light District, specifically the interior of red light windows. It argues that local legislation and changes in the sex industry are altering the way that sex is sold and consumed in this red light zone and that this change is resulting in an internal homogenization of spaces and bodies.

Placing prostitution

Amsterdam's red-light district is the paradigmatic case of window prostitution, but it is not a stable case: both the regulatory context of prostitution in the Netherlands and the socio-spatial dynamics of the district have changed throughout the years. This paper advances our understanding of ‘prostitution and the city’ in at least two ways. The first refers to the evolution of prostitution in the last two centuries and the often-paradoxical effects of changing regulation, in particular the 1911 morality laws and the 2000 legalization of window prostitution. In both cases, prostitution, in parallel to the civilizing of other manners, is relegated to increasingly confined spaces and as such banned from ‘normal’ social life. While reducing the visibility of prostitution in ‘normal’ life, it increases the visibility in these spatially confined zones known as red-light districts. The second involves contemporary policies that aim to remake the red-light district. The recent ‘Plan 1012’ of the City of Amsterdam concentrates brothels in an ever-smaller red-light district. Paradoxically, formal regulation also pushes part of the commodified sexual activities out of the red-light district and into informal circuits that are far less spatially bound. The plan is promoted as one that favours women's rights, but it is first and foremost the City's way of maintaining and furthering the public–private growth coalition that aims to improve the conditions for safe investment by turning a notorious red-light district into an extension of the highly expensive city centre—in other words, state-assisted or ‘third wave’ gentrification.

Robots, men and sex tourism

In 2050, Amsterdam's red light district will all be about android prostitutes who are clean of sexual transmitted infections (STIs), not smuggled in from Eastern Europe and forced into slavery, the city council will have direct control over android sex workers controlling prices, hours of operations and sexual services. This paper presents a futuristic scenario about sex tourism, discusses the drivers of change and the implications for the future. The paper pushes plausibility to the limit as boundaries of science fiction and fact become blurred in the ever increasing world of technology, consumption and humanity, a paradigm known as liminality.

Loverboys in the Amsterdam Red Light District: A realist approach to the study of a moral panic

In the Netherlands the English word ‘loverboys’ describes pimps who use their seductive skills to exploit young girls as prostitutes. Public interest and concern has been enormous. But no images of or interviews with loverboys have appeared in the media. This article examines the 10-year-long history of the phenomenon as a classic moral panic constructed by the media, social workers and politicians. Our analysis also seeks to get behind the media representations, using discovery research methods from urban ethnography to show that a subculture has grown in the world of prostitution where this recruiting method is used. Our dual track investigatory approach demonstrates that both developments – the rise of a moral panic and the emergence of a new type of prostitution – are inexorably intertwined.

Human trafficking and criminal investigation strategies in the Amsterdam Red Light District

The subject of human trafficking has recently received a lot of attention from society and the world of politics. The criminal-law approach to human trafficking has also been placed high on the agenda of law enforcers. Human trafficking is, however, a complex crime with several specific characteristics. For example, there is often a complex relationship between victims and perpetrators of human trafficking and victims are often too afraid to file a report. How do the police and the judicial authorities work in the investigation of human trafficking in view of the specific characteristics of human trafficking? What choices are made in practice and what different police investigative strategies can be distinguished? What opportunities and risks are inherent in the choices made? In this article we answer these questions on the basis of four large scale police investigations into human trafficking that we studied closely. The four criminal cases all focused on violent groups of human traffickers that operated in the Amsterdam window prostitution. All criminal cases have since been concluded (in first instance). It turned out that in each of the four investigations the relevant police team applied a different investigative strategy: one investigation focused primarily on the victim statements, one investigation focused on public nuisance, one investigation focused on the evidence against the criminal organisation and one investigation focused on the offences (evidence concerning the exploitation of prostitutes). In this article we compare the four strategies applied and consider the consequences of each strategy for the course of the investigation and the criminal prosecution and what dilemma’s are faced in each strategy. Although the various investigations cannot be easily compared and a uniform ‘best’ strategy cannot be designated, the comparison does show that some choices or decisions entail great opportunities or great risks as regards the successful investigation and prosecution of human trafficking. It concerns, for example, the choice of involving local investigative services (district police) or the choice for short-term or, as the case may be, longer-running investigations.