It was past 10 p. The two women, whose names have been changed to protect their identities, were waiting outdoors in their underwear for potential clients and had no time to rush back to their van. They sprinted in the opposite direction, braving the darkness of the night, hoping to escape what have now become frequent police raids on the woods, which are infamous for sex work.
One of them told my friend he was going to fuck her. The sex workers in Vincennes are mostly Nigerians, the majority of whom are victims of sex trafficking and considered by French authorities as women in need of protection. In recent months, and despite their precarity, they have been subjected to regular police raids, allegedly in an attempt to remove them ahead of the Olympic Games, according to local organizations. Sex work is not illegal in France. In , the country replicated what is known as the Nordic model for sex work, decriminalizing public solicitation of sexual services and punishing only the client who pays for sex.
In the eyes of the law, the women are all victims and cannot be punished. Various organizations working with sex workers on the ground told New Lines that documentation control has increased in the first six months of , with many incidents being reported by sex workers in Vincennes and across the city. These controls are being used to go after the women because the police cannot criminalize them as sex workers, only as undocumented foreigners.
The women are detained and taken to police stations, where they can be held for up to 48 hours. Liza says she was detained a few weeks ago, taken in her underwear for questioning at the police station and then told to leave the country and return to Nigeria despite the fact that she is a victim of sex trafficking. So far, 37 such deportation decisions have been given to women working in the woods of Vincennes, according to Aurelia Huot from the Paris Solidarity Bar, which offers free legal services to migrants and vulnerable communities, including sex workers, in Paris.
Most of the women are eventually released and go into hiding for a while before resuming work, as the execution of the order is rarely implemented. The woods of Vincennes, for instance, will host the cycling competition of the Games. But it is not just venues directly linked to the Games that are being affected β authorities are also evacuating irregular immigrants, homeless people and sex workers from the entire Parisian territory. Huot says that in the past, the police were cooperative and officers offered the women protection.
