ISRF-funded project: Comparing the taxation of prostitution in Europe: experiences and negotiations with laws and fiscal arrangements.

This project explores the under-studied and under-theorized nexus between taxation and prostitution, and sheds light on the role of fiscal policies in shaping the relationship between the state and sex workers. Drawing on critical fiscal studies, we explore taxation as a social practice which has a key role in shaping the citizenship status of those who operate in the sex industry. Their political, economic and social inclusion/exclusion are influenced by fiscal policies which need to be looked at in the context of the governance of prostitution. The project will explore these dynamics by comparing three European countries which vary in prostitution and fiscal
policies: Italy, Portugal and Switzerland. We will investigate laws, policies, jurisprudence, criminal justice measures and practical fiscal arrangements that address the taxation of prostitution in the three countries, as well as political and public debates around these issues and their media representation, where at all present. Moreover, we are particularly concerned with how these legal measures are experienced by those whom they target. Drawing on the concept of legal consciousness the researchers will employ biographical interview methods to explore how prostitution taxation and their socio-cultural implications are understood, negotiated
and responded to by sex workers.