Current discussions surrounding prostitution frequently conflate agency and adaptation. In neoliberal economies, where structural inequity operates under the guise of choice, phrases such as “consensual sex work” mask underlying coercion imprinted in poverty, gender hierarchies, and migration precarity. Decriminalization is a crucial first step, not to legitimize prostitution, but to alleviate the state violence that creates barriers to exit. Once prostitution becomes recognized as a form of labor, as a subset of the broader exploitative logics of capitalism, we can start to create the social, economic, and moral infrastructure to eradicate its need.
The Mirage of Choice
Societies often celebrate autonomy when a woman or a man enters this occupation. “I chose this,” they indicate. Yet the choice exists in a landscape framed by limited opportunity, racialized labor markets, migrant status, gender devaluation, and debt. Writers such as Jessica Flanigan tell us that prohibiting consensual sex work violates the rights of people. But, this liberal-autonomy frame misses a larger truth: consent under capitalism is often an adaptation to structural constraints, rather than the free flourishing of desire.
From a Marxist-feminist lens, labor under capitalism is a continuum of “unfreedom,” whether in a factory, farm, or brothel. As one study shows, migrant workers “choose” while organized in structural unfreedom determined through gendered, racialized labor markets. In this sense, prostitution is not exceptional: it is paradigmatic. The commodification of intimate labor in sex work shows the logic of late capitalism in its most raw form.
When we use this work as “empowerment,” we must ask: empowerment from what? If empowerment simply means surviving by selling your body in a world around scarcity, is it valorizing adaptation rather than transforming?
The Criminal State and Decriminalization as Repair
The criminalization of prostitution, whether through outright prohibition, the so-called Nordic Model, or partial prohibitions, fundamentally punishes poverty instead of exploitation. Under prohibitionist regimes, workers are subject to criminal sanctions. There is an underlying assumption across both models that survival work must be deterred, as opposed to an examination of the labor in the context of structural constraints.
Criminalizing these workers leads to deportation, arrest, exclusion from labor protections, and barriers to exit. Research indicates that criminalization escalates stigma, relegates workers to unsafe locations, and reduces screening of clients and health and legal access to support. It further serves to drive exploitative logics, promoting it underground where vulnerability thrives.
Without the coercive weight of the law, we change the playing field: workers will be accountable, not simply victims of traffickers. Removing criminal sanctions, although it leads to safety improvements, is not the only remedy for the structures of exploitation unless we ameliorate crime and restore social and economic rights. Merely treating prostitution as another job under capitalism can miss its point: much of the work happens because of exclusions from the market or because they are in debt, have just migrated, or are socially isolated. So, decriminalization of prostitution is more than just legitimizing the trade as normal.
Beyond Survival
Once bureaucratic restrictions are removed, the subsequent question is how to eliminate prostitution. This is the real measure of justice. It means creating communities where bodily labor is not the only option for the precarious, gender-marginalized, migrant, or indebted. It means universal access to education, childcare, social housing, non-exploitative work, and migration justice.
It is useful to apply Nancy Fraser’s concept of redistribution and recognition here: justice requires people not only to have economic security (redistribution) but also to have cultural value (recognition). Many such workers do not receive either under neoliberal governments. Instead, they labor in a space that is invisible, devoid of rights, and measured in unpaid emotional and sexual labor. Therefore, the project of really reducing prostitution would require an economic policy change and a cultural shift, not just decriminalization.
It would also require addressing demand: namely, the men (and institutions) who purchase this content in a market shaped by inequality. Abolitionists argue that buying cannot be separated from exploitation.
Toward a Post-prostitution Politics
The process of moving from decriminalization to dismantling prostitution is not a straightforward, linear one. It requires equality between a rights-based agenda and social and economic structural transformation. First, there is the need to take down the punitive state and then to build the enabling state. One that gives alternatives instead of incarceration, one that heals instead of soothes.
“Prostitution as empowerment” becomes a convenient narrative: it allows the commodification of bodies to be presented as freedom. It allows states and markets to avoid responsibility: rather than invest in living wages, care control, and decent jobs, they shift to individuals the burden of sorting out a manageable form of exploitation and risk. Decriminalization of prostitution makes space for the removal of criminal stigma, but dismantling means imagining spaces where selling is a rare recourse and not a normalized category of labor. Transforming the conditions that shape this work as a survival strategy is the real radical agenda, one that demands justice. And here, abolition is not the triumph of moral purity, but the victory of social transformation.
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Momina Areej is currently pursuing an MPhil in Clinical Pharmacy Practice. With a passion for writing, she covers diverse topics including world issues, literature reviews, and poetry, bringing insightful perspectives to each subject. Her writing blends critical analysis with creative expression, reflecting her broad interests and academic background.