Table Of ContentGender, Equality and
Social Justice
This book addresses a gap in both contemporary theorising and empirical analysis of
the European Union’s (EU) law and policy frameworks on migration, sex work and
anti-trafcking. Drawing on the authors’ previous research on these policies and with
their practical experience of engaging with various EU institutions in law and policy-
making fora around gender, equality and justice, the work examines the processes
involved in constructing and enacting policy frameworks and legal interventions
on these issues, within a feminist analytical framework. The authors map how EU
agenda-setting operates and detail the roles that various EU institutions, external
groups and actors, including non-governmental organisations, play in promoting
or blocking policy on these three issues. The book draws on feminist theorising on
gender, policy-making and social justice to develop a general theoretical framework
to help us understand how and why a consensus has seemingly been achieved at
EU level on what constitutes gender equality in these three policy areas. The book
presents a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers in law,
migration, EU policy-making and gender studies.
Sharron FitzGerald is Senior Researcher at the Centre de Recherches Sociologiques
et Politiques de Paris (CRESPPA), Paris 8 University, France.
Jane Freedman is Professor at Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques
de Paris (CRESPPA), Paris 8 University, France.
Routledge Studies in Law and Humanity
Series Editor
Jill Marshall
Royal Holloway University of London
This series welcomes monographs, including Routledge Focus titles, and edited
collections exploring how law creates and represents what living a life and being
human mean. As such, the series is interested in work that probes understandings
of the person, the self, personal identity, individual freedom, birth, living and
dying, our relationship with the world around us, and how these are captured by
the legal system and law in general.
Other titles in this series:
Personal Identity and the European Court of Human Rights
Jill Marshall
Gender, Equality and Social Justice
Anti-Trafficking, Sex Work and Migration Law and Policy in the EU
Sharron FitzGerald and Jane Freedman
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-
Studies-in-Law-and-Humanity/book-series/RSILAH
Gender, Equality and
Social Justice
Anti-Trafcking, Sex Work and
Migration Law and Policy in the EU
Sharron FitzGerald and
Jane Freedman
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Sharron FitzGerald and Jane Freedman
The right of Sharron FitzGerald and Jane Freedman to be identifed as
authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-75399-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-75405-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-16238-4 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003162384
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
We would like to thank our editorial team at Taylor &
Francis Group for their support and help to realise
this project. This book is the product of feminist
collaboration based on the principles of mutual
recognition and respect. In that spirit, we dedicate this
book to each other. Jane would like to thank Sharron,
and Sharron would very much like to thank Jane.
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Where is the justice in gender equality policy? 18
2 Mapping a short history of EU gender equality
law and policies 43
3 Gender in EU migration policies 68
4 The EU and sex work: how the Swedish model
has prevailed 93
5 The emergence of sex trafcking as a gender equality
issue in the EU 114
Concluding remarks 139
Index 147
Introduction
Human mobility and the freedom to journey out into the world has a certain
cachet. It flls our imaginations with images of adventure, personal transforma-
tion and the lure of possibility. In Europe, individual freedom and the freedom
to move are central and cross-cutting features of the European Union (EU) and
core to what it means to be a citizen of the EU (Askola 2007). Partly as a conse-
quence of the wish to open internal borders to allow EU citizens to travel freely,
external European borders have become increasingly closed to non-EU citizens,
with militarised apparatuses of security controlling access to EU territory. Con-
sequently, EU citizens enjoy relatively unfettered mobility and rights to live and
work within the borders of the Union and the European Economic Area (EEA),
while those from outside of the EU, and particularly from the Global South, are
increasingly restricted in their access to European territory.
Crucially, the discursive frame changes dramatically when the image of human
mobility moves from a European notion of travel as a leisure activity or a citizen’s
‘right’ to an image of ‘other’ people’s aspirations or desperate need to migrate in
the face of impossible circumstances. Refracted through an EU securitisation lens,
these migrants’ quests for a better life, for example, have material consequences
for the treatment that they receive both at and with Europe’s borders. Migration
has been increasingly represented as a threat to the EU in various dimensions
(economic, political, societal), and this has justifed the EU’s exclusionary border
and immigration laws and policies (Lavenex and Piper 2019). Moreover, the
EU’s response to migration from specifc parts of the world helps to feed racial-
ised class and gender discourses and institutional practices regarding the presence
of certain kinds of migrants throughout Europe (FitzGerald 2011; Freedman
2017). Taken together, then this has produced a situation where migrants from
the Global South – arguably the majority of the world’s migrant population –
have, at best, restricted access to the world and particularly to Europe. They are,
as Alain Badiou observes, ‘locked out, often literally’ (2008: 39).
While Gender, Equality and Social Justice leaves aside a pursuit of the cultural
symbolism around migration to Europe, the EU’s law and policy measures form
the institutional backdrop for the specifcities that shape the discussion in the
chapters that follow. Discussion explores the various dimensions and processes
involved in why and how the EU’s various institutions, and the various actors
DOI: 10.4324/9781003162384-1
