Women Who Cross Borders - Black Magic?

In Norway there has, since the end of the 1990''s,
been reported an increased number of foreign women
in prostitution. The increase has led to changes
within the local prostitution scene, due to the fact
that Norwegian women who support their drug abuse by
prostitution has left the market or become less
visible. The Norwegian media repeatedly describe the
phenomenon by using words such as explosions,
invasions and floods of foreign prostitutes. It has
especially been the Nigerian group of women who have
received massive media attention, as media could
report an increase from two Nigerian women in 2003,
to approximately four hundred within 2006. Nigerian
women were,in the period studied, described as more
visible, not only because of their ethnicity, but
also because they behaved differently from other
groups of women. The public outcry especially
escalated when the prostitution scene became an
increasingly visible element in Oslo s parade street
Karl Johan. Nigerian women were in the public eye
presented, in every way possible, as being a matter
out of place , and as doing the wrong things in the
wrong places.

Autorentext

Synnøve Jahnsen is a Norwegian sociologist at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) at the University of Bergen. Jahnsen is currently working with her PhD-dissertation and is part of the project "Thought as Action: Gender, Democracy, Freedom" (SKOK).

Klappentext

In Norway there has, since the end of the 1990's, been reported an increased number of foreign women in prostitution. The increase has led to changes within the local prostitution scene, due to the fact that Norwegian women who support their drug abuse by prostitution has left the market or become less visible. The Norwegian media repeatedly describe the phenomenon by using words such as explosions, invasions and floods of foreign prostitutes. It has especially been the Nigerian group of women who have received massive media attention, as media could report an increase from two Nigerian women in 2003, to approximately four hundred within 2006. Nigerian women were,in the period studied, described as more visible, not only because of their ethnicity, but also because they behaved differently from other groups of women. The public outcry especially escalated when the prostitution scene became an increasingly visible element in Oslo's parade street Karl Johan. Nigerian women were in the public eye presented, in every way possible, as being a "matter out of place", and as doing the wrong things in the wrong places.