ABSTRACT
As in several other European countries, the transnational human trafficking discourse affected national debates in Norway on how prostitution should be regulated. Over time, prostitution in had been redefined to be a matter of gender inequality, even a form of gendered violence. At the same time, prostitution became more and more associated with irregular migration. Taken together, this discursive turn not only paved the way for the introduction of a ban on the purchase of sex, included in the Norwegian Penal Code in 2009, but also for a more aggressive way of policing third-party involvement. Based on empirical research conducted together and separately throughout this whole period, we detail in this chapter both the emergence of the sex purchase act and how the policing of prostitution simultaneously is impacted by other parts of the Norwegian legislation and how this has affected sex workers and prostitution markets in Norway.
