Gender Victims and Cultural Borders: The Globalization of Prostitution in Italy

In this article I will try to analyse the transformation regarding the italian regulation of prostitution on the grounds of another issue, that is the building up of cultural borders for the definition of "national'' and "european'' gender identities. The creation of cultural borders allows to outline the differentiation traits between social groups, while escaping plurality and internal contradictions which on the other hand could only show continuity and vicinity traits. In my point of view, the italian current debate on prostitution is a discoursive process that produces a "western'' pattern of relation between men and women, while referring internal tensions and contradictions to other cultures. The following analysis will use data and information coming from national official statistics on immigration, estimates on prostitutions and findings from national researchers on prostitution carried out by the research group called "Migration & Prostitutions'' based at the Department of Sociology of the Padua University.