The project examines the entanglements of prostitution and transnational mobility on the basis of state and international attempts of regulation, media imaginaries and the multi-layered experiences of the women involved. Since the 1920s, the League of Nations has been committed to combating the "Traffic in Women and Children", with particular attention to France. The press and cinema films presented numerous cases of white women being abducted for the purpose of prostitution. At the same time, women engaged in prostitution travelled across the Mediterranean in various ways. During National Socialism, the motif of the "(Jewish) trafficking in girls" also with regard to France and its colonies gained great ideological significance, while at the same time prostitution and transnational mobility were organised by the state, for example in the context of forced labour. In the post-war period, it was new sexual morals and decolonisation that lead to a new attention for the figure of the North African pimp.
The project deals with a specific phenomenon of international criminality, with police practices, moral panics and their antisemitic and racist images as well as the complex agency of the women involved between exploitation, economies of makeshift and choices. The project examines various contexts from the 1920s through National Socialism and the Vichy regime to the 1950s in order to arrive at a new understanding of transnationally negotiated gender orders, international organisations and police practices as well as cross-border marginalised mobilities.
