True tales of pimps in the red light district of Amsterdam. You have full access to this open access article. The suspicion was that a growing number of Dutch girls were being groomed by handsome young men who employed all sorts of devious methods to prepare their girlfriends for life as a prostitute.
Stories about a new generation of pimps, often of Moroccan origin, regularly appeared in the Dutch media. In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork on pimps operating in the red-light district of Amsterdam, we describe the ways in which these young men operate and how they justify their behaviour. On the basis of empirical research we intend to present a more realistic picture of what goes on in the prostitution industry and highlight the discrepancy between what is reported in the media and what is actually happening in the prostitution sector.
We also examine the background to the moral panic about loverboys and the ways in which these young men were supposedly able to induce many young girls into becoming prostitutes. This English term has a unique definition in Dutch: loverboys are young men who use their seduction skills with the aim of exploiting young girls as prostitutes. What we are actually dealing with here are ordinary pimps and when we take a closer look at the modus operandi of these young men, we find that there is nothing new under the sun.
The story about a new generation of pimps, often of Moroccan origin, who are busy grooming young and innocent girls for prostitution that continues to pop up in the Dutch media, appears to be little more than an urban legend. We have argued elsewhere [ 3 ] that what began as a moral panic about loverboys became a reality when young men started to re-enact and copy the moral panic.
This is probably one of the ways in which a real social problem develops: the panic becomes a self-fulfilling example or, as Young [ 24 ] phrased it: fantasy is translated into reality. In this article, we will let the main characters speak for themselves: the young men who are the object of the panic explain how they began to participate in the discourse on what loverboys are. Their actions can be seen as a form of protest or social revenge in response to their low status.
