Challenging the binary construction of prostitution as work or violence, in this article we adopt a perspective to the under-researched phenomenon that is attentive to the agency of sex workers. We theorize sex work as a continuum of professional and organizational practices, and discuss prostitution frameworks and markets in two post-socialist EU member states, Slovenia and Croatia. The main aim was to explore how organizational patterns of sex work develop in the two countries and what their specific features and varieties are according to the different policy systems. Empirical analysis is based on fifteen qualitative interviews with sex workers in Slovenia and Croatia. Analysis shows that decriminalization policy context is more conducive to professionalization of sex work which can positively impact security and job satisfaction, while the criminalization framework facilitates violence and suppresses the empowerment of sex workers. It is argued that “governing through crime” that still persists, especially in Croatia, needs to develop alternatives such as adopting the principle of “collaborative governance” where policy decisions are informed by sex workers.
COBISS.SI-ID: 25478147
The article examines recent public debates on migration and integration in Austria, Denmark, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK. Shifts in public opinion relate to the 2015 mass migration termed as a crisis, while recent years have seen a substantial move of immigration policy and public debates from proclamations of democratic values towards a recently much harsher approach to immigration and integration. We argue that a gap exists between public opinion, policies, and discourses formulated at the EU and national levels. This gap might indicate that it is not the public opinion which influences public policies but rather the established legal and policy “crisis” frameworks, coupled with media landscapes that considerably affect the majority’s perception of immigrants’ rights and their prospects for integration.
COBISS.SI-ID: 48981763
Based on original fieldwork research (analysis of legislation, interviews with candidates and gatekeepers, and focus groups), the article identifies some of the less visible obstacles to women’s participation in local politics in Slovenia. Between 2014 and 2018, 35.6% of parliamentary representatives were women while the share of women ministers in the Slovenian government was 50%. Considerably fewer women were involved in politics on the local level, with just 7.6% holding the position of mayor in the same period and 10 municipal councils were without any women at all. This article discusses the reasons for such subnational variations in women’s representation in local politics. The analysis leads to the main conclusion that to change the low representation in certain local councils it is necessary to introduce a well-designed reform of the electoral system and measures related to gender mainstreaming, family life, and partnership roles
COBISS.SI-ID: 20838659
At the intersection of the feminist ethic of care and critical studies of men and masculinities, this article develops alternative interpretations of men’s practices of and attitudes about care in order to contribute to the loosening of gender dualisms in the perceptions and constructions of care. Empirical evidence collected in 23 individual interviews with men carers reveals that men in specific caring situations (intensive primary care) and in non-hegemonic social locations (according to class, age, ability and sexual orientation) resist dominant norms of masculinity to some extent and, in accordance with the feminist ethic of care, establish care as gender-neutral, complex, politically relevant and socially integrative disposition and activity.
COBISS.SI-ID: 46413827
The article analyses how contemporary processes of media production involving temporary work contracts for journalists, long working hours, the demand for unconditional commitment to work and so on push women into unequal position compared to male employees. Attention is paid to ‘engendered’ work in ‘greedy’ media organizations characterized by precarization of work and the related devaluation of journalism as a profession. Rather than detecting the extent of power and position of women in the media, we adopt the materialist analysis of mechanisms that mask gender inequality and contribute to ‘capitalizing’ on gender for the imperative of media productivity. The study was conducted in Slovenia, in Eastern European, post-socialist context, and comprised 33 individual interviews with media managers and workers at three television stations (public TV SLO, and commercial POP TV and Planet TV). In the analysis, we focus on how journalists, by internalizing the disciplining norms of ‘entrepreneurial subjectivity’, become the motivating force behind precarization of work. Although these processes are often perceived as gender neutral even among female journalists, we argue that they are masculinized and have different effects on men and women, among other things due to the individualization of women’s reproductive roles.
COBISS.SI-ID: 17603587