| Abstract [eng] |
This master’s thesis, drawing on the theory of social constructionism developed by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1999), examines the ways in which knowledge about sex workers is constructed within Lithuanian public and political discourse. The study employs a qualitative research design, analysing publications from Lithuanian news portals LRT.lt, Delfi.lt, tv3.lt, and 15min.lt across three time periods (2015–2016, 2019–2020, and 2024–2026), alongside institutional and political documents, including draft laws on the regulation of sexual services proposed in 2015, 2019, and 2026, as well as transcripts of parliamentary debates. In addition, two semi-structured interviews were conducted with Lithuanian sex workers. The findings reveal the dominant constructions in both discourses that enable reductionist narratives: sexual services are framed through associations with systemic violence, exploitation, and coercion, and are ontologically conflated with human trafficking, while sex workers are predominantly represented as “victims”. In the public discourse, the topic was primarily foregrounded in the context of crime-related news; law enforcement institutions and specialised NGOs function as the principal producers of knowledge, whereas the voices of the broader public and of sex workers themselves, together with the diversity of their experiences and motivations, remain under-represented. In the political discourse, the institutionalisation of dominant constructions was observed throughout legislative processes aimed at legal reforms aligned with an abolitionist approach in criminal and social policy. |
