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THE 'CHOICE' OF STUDENT'S PROSTITUTION

Preprint · January 2017

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Alban Landré
National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, Grenoble
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Alban Landré (Erasmus student 70078074)

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Sociology of Sexuality

(Ivan Bernik)

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences

This paper investigates the field of students’ prostitution. There is a lack of debate, data,
studies and state response about a phenomenon that concerns 1.8% of the French
students, according to a student’s union. Even if there is a lack of data, the phenomenon
seems to be increasing with the amount of poor students. The two main goals of this paper
is to know whether or not there is a choice in involving into students prostitution, and
whether or not students are more isolated because of the internet as mean of meeting
client, sometimes presented as a progress because it gives autonomy. The main motivation
for students-prostitutes is having both money and time to study.

Table of contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................. 3
Overview of students’ prostitution ......................................................................................................... 4
The appeal of prostitution for students .................................................................................................. 4
A choice? ................................................................................................................................................. 5
The responsibility of the State ................................................................................................................ 7
The domination and isolation of student-prostitutes ............................................................................. 8
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 9
Literature ............................................................................................................................................... 10
Movie................................................................................................................................................. 11

‘Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable
became an object of exchange, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when
the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given,
but never sold; acquired, but never bought – virtue, love, conviction, knowledge,
conscience, etc. – when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of
general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the
time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is
brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value.’

Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, chap. 1, 1847, quoted by Marzano (2006)

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Introduction

Students’ prostitution is most of the time hidden behind prostitution in general and behind
student’s poverty. The phenomenon is alarming in two ways. It is alarming because of the
lack of information about the practice and because of the lack of response from the States.
Maybe student’s prostitution is drowned into the debate because prostitution is considered
as a job and being a student is also almost considered as a job, so you cannot be both. Being
a student requires different amounts of time according to the individuals and according to
the studies they follow. Some people cannot follow most time-demanding studies because
they lack of money and need to work alongside their studies. Poor students (does not
mandatorily mean that they can access scholarship, often they are at the very limit) are then
most of the time forced to work if they want to live besides studying. For those who follow
hard-demanding time studies or those who need to study a lot, prostitution can be a
solution because the hour-wages are quite high (easily more than 100 €/hour).

I will focus on female students-prostitutes because of the lack of data about male. I will
focus on the motivations and condition of the prostitutes and not on the motivations of the
clients because of the even greater lack of data and studies about it.

I will try to answer two hypotheses that seemed relevant to us in analysing students’
prostitution in light of the data and literature we found.

Hypothesis 1: I will test the hypothesis arguing that students-prostitutes do that because it is
the only option to earn money saving time to study, that is to say they have no real choice.

Hypothesis 2: Students-prostitutes nowadays are more and more autonomous from pimps
thanks to new technologies so they are more and more isolated from colleagues and public
and associative charity help as well.

The rare data I found comes from students unions in France and the UK and also from the
Australian Labor Party (in the opposition at that time). Then I found more testimonies, in
sociological and psychological studies, or directly in books and in a movie about the everyday
life of student’s prostitutes. I of course also red and use more theoretical sociological
analyse studies about students’ prostitution attitudes and practices, prostitution in general
and youth poverty where there was testimonies as well.

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I translated myself the sentences I quoted from French sources.

Overview of students’ prostitution

It is hard to really find figures about student prostitution in the ‘West’. In France, for
example, according to J-F. Dauriac cited by A-F. Dequiré (2011), ‘poor students’ are
estimated to be between 45,000 and 100,000, over an amount of students of 2.3 million
students (between 2% and 4,3%). For Clouet (2008), 225,000 French students experience
some troubles to fund their studies. Some unions try to publish some data. The British
National Union of Students says that ‘nearly five per cent of UK students have worked in the
sex industry and nearly 22 per cent of students have considered working in the sex industry’
(NUS Wales 2015). For the French students union ‘Sud’, cited by Dequiré, around 40,000
French students are regular or occasional prostitutes (‘proper’ prostitution, escorting or
paying a rent with sex or company). That would mean one in 57 students (1.8%), but we
have to keep in mind in this paper that ‘it is near impossible to uncover the accurate number
of prostitutes, and even more difficult to count those attending university’ (Wallenbrock
2015). In Australia in 2002, the Labor Party Shadow Minister for Education estimated that
‘students made up at least ten per cent of those in the industry’ (Sullivan 2005). The
Independent, quoting a study by Ron Roberts, states that in the UK, ‘between £600,000 and
£3m per institution is going into universities straight from the sex industry’ (Philby 2012).
What is sure is that they all say that ‘greater numbers of students’ (Turner & Phillips 2011)
are taking the streets to fund their studies. ‘The English Collective of Prostitutes, which runs
a helpline from its base in London, said the number of calls it receives from students has
doubled in the past year [2011]’ (Philby 2012).

The appeal of prostitution for students

Many students are in a precarious situation to keep living decently while studying, in a
context where there are ‘very few jobs, where student support has been massively cut [in
the UK]’ (Turner & Phillips 2011). Prostitution is a well-paid job in terms of the hours of
work. That’s probably why it is interesting for students. They usually do not have time for
‘normal’ jobs and most of the time, the hours of ‘normal’ jobs would have been overlapping
with the lessons hours. In France for example they would say that they do not want to go to
work at the Mac Donald’s, ‘fast food is a recurring theme in the news stories’ (Wallenbrock

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2015). ‘A lot of my friends have gone on to shop work, and have ended up leaving college. I
didn't want that to be me’ said Clare (Turner & Phillips 2011). Laura D., in a testimony book,
(2008) says that as a student she turned into prostitution because she already had one job
besides of her study and that it was simply impossible to cumulate two jobs and her studies.
She starved herself because of the lack of money. She tried prostitution and it was of course
quite better for her in terms of hours of work and of money. ‘In a montage of Laura
performing various acts for clients (dusting in a maid’s outfit, intercourse, etc.) prices slide
around her body parts, illustrating the completion of body commodification’ (Wallenbrock
2015). It then permits to have both money and time. Time to study and money to spend
during spare time with friends and do not appear poor.

Then, it can permit more than survival but social distinction by consumption: ‘therefore the
film portrays an economic exchange as described by Marx: Laura places her body as a
commodity on the market. After she has exchanged this body for its value (a value that is
partly determined by labour), she is able to trade it in the cash nexus for luxury goods. The
on-screen arithmetic enhances this Marxist reading, and while the numbers may degrade
Laura’s nudity to a price, they also elevate prostitution to a métier, a strategic career that is
based on market needs and values’ (Wallenbrock 2015). Laura D. accesses middle class
consumption and achieves her translation degree thanks to prostitution’s money. ‘The risk is
the habituation to a certain lifestyle’ (Philby 2012).

About our first hypothesis, we cannot be sure that prostitution was the only possibility
students had to earn money but what is sure is that there is a strong correlation between
the augmentation of students’ poverty and the augmentation of students’ prostitution.
About hypothesis 2, we can say that students turning into prostitution are clearly into a lack
of public and charity help if they prostitute themselves and that working in prostitution turn
them more and more into loneliness about their condition. Then they are likely to feel that
they are the only responsible of what’s happening and do not want to say to others what
they are doing.

A choice?

'NUS Wales recognises that sex work can be a choice for students, as the nature of the work
allows them the flexibility to keep up with the rigours of study, while funding their living

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costs. However we are concerned that so many students reported that covering basic living
expenses was a strong factor in their decision to enter sex work’ (NUS Wales 2015). In her
book, Laura D. said that she felt that she had no other choice than prostitution. It was
survival sex. She had to pay her half of the rent, her bills, her half of the food to her
boyfriend with whom she was living. Student poverty is strongly linked with separate living
from the parents (Dequiré 2011). Her parents had not enough money to help her live and
study in town but they were not poor enough to get a scholarship. According to a study
about youth prostitution in Toronto and Sao Paulo, 75% of the young people involved in sex
trade are homeless (Kidd & Liborio 2010). What is striking after observation is that most of
the students think first that they will get involved into prostitution activities only a few times
to pay their bills but then they feel trapped. For Ferguson, Bender, Thompson, Maccio &
Pollio (2011), youth prostitution is a ‘survival job’ such as panhandling, dealing drugs, theft
and selling blood: a last resort.

‘It is the last time’ and ‘I quit in X days/month’ is a typical sentence that prostitutes say and
say to themselves or into testimonies. They never plan do stay in this job (Rubio 2013). We
can relate that with things that building workers say. In ‘Chantier interdit au public’ (2008),
Nicolas Jounin relates that many immigrant building workers (usually illegal immigrants with
precarious working status) said him during his participant observation that they wanted to
quit in a few months and go back home. In some cases, he managed to call or meet them
after this amount of time but they were still working on building sites. In France it is more
difficult for ethnic minorities to find ‘regular’ jobs. A student-prostitute with North African
stigma says that she tried to find other jobs but that ‘doors stay closed when you are a
beurette (second-generation North African-girl)’ (Gerig 2011). Most of the young prostitutes
have a ‘strong interest in exiting sex trade’, according to Kidd & Liborio. Prostituted students
both feel free and trapped because of the money they earn selling their bodies.

Laura D. (2008) also reports that she met on Skype some young prostitutes that did it not
starting from a point of poverty. Wallenbrock (2015), who analysed other movies about
students prostitution report that sometimes, they present several student-prostitutes as
being in an erotic research by prostituting themselves and that ‘this encourages the
audience to perceive student-prostitutes as liberated young women who encourage needed
sexual experimentation in the frigid, aging bourgeoisie’. This practice seems to be marginal.

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The beginning of the involvement into students’ prostitution is linked with the lack of
money. The argument of the saving of time compared to other jobs is explicit, even more
with the testimonies saying that those who took other jobs quit university. However,
because of the ‘good’ salaries, students’ prostitution permits them to access to a more
expensive lifestyle that the one they were used to. One may argue that we already crossed
the limits between needs and desire and it could seem right. But if we take the Spinoza’s
framework saying that mankind is not ‘in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom’ (Spinoza
1677, preface of part III), the hypothesis of choice would be invalidated because one could
argue that the consumption made thanks to prostitution is not a free desire but a need in
terms of self-esteem for example. Such as many jobs, students’ prostitution is both a trap
and liberation, especially if exterior signals of wealth (clothes, parties) are important. For
Kemayou, Tadjuidje and Guebou (2011), ‘it is most of the time a choice dictated in last resort
by survival necessity’ (they are talking about prostitution in general). For ‘regular’
prostitution, there are maybe more choices than prostitution as a job, even if it is a debate.
But again, for students, we can consider it as choice between prostitution and quit studying.

The responsibility of the State

For most of the studies I red, the falls of the scholarships and other funds are quite
responsible of that more and more students involve into sex trade. ‘They [ministers] know
that the cuts they're making are driving women into things like sex work. It's a survival
strategy so we would hold the government responsible for that’ (Turner & Phillips 2011). In
‘Mes chères études’ (Bercot 2010), it is ‘after seeking and being denied help from student
services that Laura investigates the possibility of prostitution online’. In France, besides the
lacks of scholarships, many students experienced delay in obtaining their scholarship
(Dequiré 2011).

What is important to define for the State according to prostitution in general, is whether or
not prostitution is something public, that is to say ‘a kind of work’. Otherwise it can be
considered as something private, ‘where only mutual consent matters’ (Marzano 2006). If
this is considered as kind of work and not as a private deviance, then it is the
(ir)responsibility of the state to pass laws to organize (or not) this work.

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About hypothesis 1, the different States have to decide whether or not they consider
students prostitution as a job. If they do so and consider it as a job, then should provide
prostitutes with a statute. If they consider it a something private, they do not have to do
nothing and accommodate with this state of affairs. In the second case, the State could also
help more poor students in order to make them quit and study with no need of extra money
besides scholarships.

About hypothesis 2, it is clear that student’s turn into prostitution because of a lack of
assistance and that they cannot escape and talk about it because of a lack of public
assistance. The problem, not only for the State but also for associative assistance is that
thanks to new technologies, students only need a website and can then be a kind of ‘hidden’
prostitutes on their own with no collective practice of the work and discussions about it.
They cannot know where other prostitutes are and then cannot contact them to help them
and talk.

The domination and isolation of student-prostitutes

Internet can sometimes protect against pimps and undesired clients, but it also emphasizes
the situation and the feeling of isolation. It permits to conserve some self-esteem and to do
not ‘take the street’ (Rubio 2013). Sometimes young people involve in prostitution because
of a lack of other socio-economic opportunities, even in Europe. But usually, student’s
prostitution offers to students the possibility to achieve their studies, but with strong moral
and psychological costs, and the risk of sexually transmitted infections. Clare, cited by Turner
& Phillips said ‘I'm a different person to how I was when I started out. I've lost a lot of my
confidence and I've lost trust in a lot of people’. Most of young prostitutes sometimes do not
define themselves as prostitutes: ‘I am not a whore’, ‘I am better than this’ (Pharo 2013), ‘I
don’t want to live like this anymore (Gilbert, Farrand & Lankshear 2013).

In fact, most of student’s prostitutes are trapped. If we take the Hirschman ‘exit, voice,
loyalty’ framework, it is crystal clear that those who do that for money are trapped. ‘Voice’ is
most of the time impossible if they do not want to lose clients or if clients pay after sex. ‘Exit’
would mean to stop to study or to search for another job less paid per hour. So then they
stay in ‘loyalty’ and face the strange fantasies and the orders (use of the imperative mixed
with compliments [Laura D. 2008]) of their clients. In the movie (Bercot 2010) the student-

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prostitute suffers 3 ‘financed rapes’ and several bondage intercourses but never says
anything because she wants her money. They are alone with their ‘choice’ and the
management of their lives with most of the time no possibility to organise collectively with
others or even just talk about prostitution with their relatives because of shame.

This analyse about how people turn into students prostitution leads to consider it as a paid
rape. ‘Prostitution always implies the selling or buying of a brutal and violent sexual act.
Even if a woman prostitutes herself deliberately, no one can justify prostitution as the result
of a completely free choice’ (Marzano 2006). Consider that prostitution is a free choice is ‘do
not take into account under what real conditions chose to engage is such an activity’ (ibid).
For Marzano, prostitution is not a choice but a way of selling something such as workforce,
to live. That means alienation in the sense of Hegel (non-identity): student’s prostitutes are
disgusted by themselves and consumption is an attempt of escaping of what they did to earn
money. Even more it is alienation in the sense of Marx: it is the infrastructure that forces the
student to prostitute and he/she feels like a stranger to him/herself because he has no final
control on his/her job and on him/herself.

Conclusion

Our first hypothesis was that students who turned into prostitution did it because it was the
last resort to keep studying. Otherwise they would have quit their studies because of the
lack of money and the lack of time to work. This hypothesis seems to be validated by the
data and testimonies we used for this paper.

The second hypothesis was starting from the fact that the internet helps prostitutes to find
clients without the need of a network or a pimp. We then asked whether or not this
‘progress’ was a threat for prostitutes as well. It could be validated too thanks to the
testimonies we have of students’ prostitutes unable to talk about it even with their families,
lovers or closest friends even if sometimes they feel some of their friends open to it. But we
honestly did not found enough data and testimonies to really validate hypothesis 2.

The lack of information, data, studies, about students’ prostitution is concerning. According
to the rare data we have, the phenomenon is definitely not an exception, in France, in the

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UK and in Australia for example. Besides the lack of information, the lack of concern of the
State is worrying as well. By lack of concern, we understand both the lack of consideration
and action and the lack of action in the field of student’s poverty in general. More and more
people can go to the university and need to go to the university because of the changes of
the job market, but more and more of them cannot afford it, leading to students’
prostitution.

A good question, which is not really sexual sociology, would be: what do the male students
who are in the same poverty than female do to earn money to keep studying? Do they
prostitute for men as well? Do they simply quit their studies or do they find alternatives to
earn money and study like females? But of course to answer this question we need more
data and studies.

Literature

Clouet, E. (2008). La prostitution étudiante à l'heure des nouvelles technologies de

D. Laura, (2008). Mes chères études: Etudiante, 19 ans, job alimentaire, prostituée, Max Milo

Dequiré A-F., Les étudiants et la prostitution : entre fantasmes et réalité, Pensée plurielle
2011/2 (n° 27), p. 141-150

Ferguson, K. M., Bender, K., Thompson, S. J., Maccio, E. M., & Pollio, D. (2011). Employment
status and income generation among homeless young adults: results from a five-city, mixed-
methods study. Youth & Society

Gerig C., Prostitution : la vie cachée d'étudiantes de la métropole, La Voix du Nord, 21 avril
2011

Gilbert, T., Farrand, P., & Lankshear, G. (2013). “I Don’t Want to Live Like This Anymore”
Disrupted Habitus in Young People “At Risk” of Diagnosis of Personality Disorder. Youth &
Society, 45(3), 347-364

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Jounin, N. (2008). Chantier interdit au public. Enquête parmi les travailleurs du bâtiment, La
Découverte

Kemayou Louis Roger, Tadjuidje François Guebou, Madiba Marie Sophie, « Pratique de la
prostitution : regards croisés entre régulation socioéconomique et rejet des
normes », Pensée plurielle, 2/2011 (n° 27), p. 93-110

Kidd, S. A., & Liborio, R. M. C. (2010). Sex Trade Involvement in São Paulo, Brazil, and
Toronto, Canada: Narratives of Social Exclusion and Fragmented Identities. Youth & Society

Marzano M., « Chapitre IV. Consentement et sexualité : la place du sujet », Je consens, donc
je suis…, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, « Hors collection », 2006, p. 129-187

NUS Wales, Student sex work ‘must be choice, never a necessity’, Friday 27 March 2015

Pharo P., Chapitre 6 / Prostitutions contemporaines , Ethica Erotica, Paris, Presses de

Philby C., Students and the sex industry: Empowering or the last resort of the debt-ridden?,
The Independent, 3 December 2012

Rubio V., « Prostitution masculine sur internet. Le choix du client », Ethnologie française
2013/3 (Vol. 43), p. 443-450

Spinoza B., Ethics, 1677, consulted on Wikisource

Sullivan, M. (2005). What happens when prostitution becomes work. An Update on

Turner K., Phillips O., NUS: Students turning to prostitution to fund studies, BBC, 14
december 2011

Wallenbrock, N. B. (2015). The screen student-prostitute, a twenty-first-century discourse:

Movie

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 Bercot E., Mes chères études (2010), (movie about Mes chères études, Laura D.)

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