Sex worker exit programmes are designed to help people stop selling sex and find alternative ways of getting by. Currently, there is limited knowledge about how these programmes operate to assist sex workers in adopting societal norms and expectations of a healthy and productive lifestyle. By drawing on Foucauldian theory, the article unfolds this transformation as a process by which individuals aligned with and internalised particular subjectivities subjectification.
Sex worker exit programmes are support initiatives designed to assist individuals who want to stop selling sex. The first exit programme was launched in San Francisco in to divert first-time offenders from criminal sanctions to social work measures Wahab, Since then, similar programmes have spread across the US Cascio, and to countries where selling sex remains legal.
Research on exit programmes has aimed to capture how and to what extent they serve their purposes. However, there is still limited understanding of the rationales and technologies at work in the programmes to assist sex workers in adopting or complying with common norms and expectations for a healthy and productive lifestyle see Lemke, ; ; Rose et al, ; Dean, Therefore, while sex can legally be sold without facing criminal sanctions, the system simultaneously turns sex workers into a target group for social work interventions.
The project aimed to finance municipal exit programmes between and through a grant of In this way, a specific problematisation of sex work was supposed to trickle down to social work practice through the application procedure for funding.
The government thereby expressed a view of social workers as professionals who have acquired specific competences and knowledge concerning how to approach sex workers and change their activities. The article employs a governmentality lens to discern the tactics and conditions in place for assisting the targeted sex workers in adopting the strategies and rationales of the programme.
