Discourses on Sex Trafficking in Young Women in Modern Jewish Societies: Migration and Deviance from the Perspective of Gender, Religion and Social Class

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Rebekka Voß
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 429880956

The project investigates the discourse among Jewish societies across Europe on the sex trafficking of young women, which emerged around the turn of the 20th century in response to the rise in antisemitic allegations in public discussions of prostitution. Within the framework of a case study on Frankfurt am Main and using an approach grounded in social history and the history of knowledge, the project analyzes the discourse on female sex trafficking in industrialized West Central Europe with its thoroughly acculturated, bourgeois Jewish community characterized by Reform Judaism and modern orthodoxy between 1880 and 1933, i.e. the first peak of anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Europe and the beginning of the Nazi persecution of Jews. The goal of the project is to rehabilitate and reclaim, on the example of key actors in Frankfurt am Main, the contribution of German Jewish social reformers to the international struggle against sex trafficking and prostitution. The project analyzes their participation in international organizations and conventions for the protection of women at risk, their knowledge of the extent, causes and measures to prevent trafficking in girls. Their social commitment to Jewish girls and women in both Frankfurt and Eastern Europe is considered, as are the institutions founded by the social activists for the protection of women and girls and the associated professionalization of social work. Along with this, the project will both elucidate the resources that enabled these individuals, despite their socially marginalized position as women and as Jews, to participate in the discourse, and trace the repercussions of their participation on the expansion of their own areas of social action. Moreover, the project analyses the origin and social situation of the users of these local support services for women, thus turning the spotlight onto a group of actors, which has been almost completely neglected in research on sex trafficking to date. The project aims at making visible the complex entanglements of gender, religion, national origin and social class in the discourse on female sex trafficking. The connection of this discourse with women’s movements and the origin of social work is placed within the context of the central emancipatory discourses of modern Jewish history as they relate both to the position of the Jewish woman in Jewish and bourgeois society and to the general integration of Jews in European nation-states. The project thus makes a significant contribution to modern Jewish history in Western and Eastern Europe, to the history of the women’s movement and of social work, and to the continuing discussions of human trafficking today.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants