Marked women: prostitution, order and exclusion

Abstract

In the article, we debate the stigmatizing processes on women engaged in club prostitution in the section of the Iberian frontier located between the cross-border axes of Montalegre-Xinzo de Limia and Bragança-Alcañices/Zamora. From the perspective of symbolic interactionism about stigmatization as a relational projection embedded in dissensions between actors or groups situated in different moral spaces, we consider as main objectives: (i) map the social dynamics of the production of derogatory stereotypes about prostitution, (ii) interpret meanings present in the stigmatizing practices, (iii) understand the relevance of women’s ethnicity and corporeal nature in the activation/reinforcement of these practices, (iv) identify some effects produced by the interpersonal and institutional repression of commercial sex, (v) show the ubiquity of the whore stigma as a form of symbolic violence against women in general, disciplining bodies and behaviors. We seek, in this way, an understanding of social mechanics, contents, reasons, consequences and breadth of the stigmas aimed at sex workers, keeping in mind that therein reside many of their major problems and, therefore, many of the priority challenges to social intervention in the field of prostitution.