360 Soziale Probleme und Sozialdienste; Verbände
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In this article, we examine anti-refugee hate crime in the wake of the large influx of refugees to Germany in 2014 and 2015. By exploiting institutional features of the assignment of refugees to German regions, we estimate the impact of unexpected and sudden large-scale immigration on hate crime against refugees. Results indicate that it is not simply the size of local refugee inflows which drives the increase in hate crime, but rather the combination of refugee arrivals and latent anti-refugee sentiment. We show that ethnically homogeneous areas, areas which experienced hate crimes in the 1990s, and areas with high support for the Nazi party in the Weimar Republic, are more prone to respond to the arrival of refugees with incidents of hate crime against this group. Our results highlight the importance of regional anti-immigration sentiment in the analysis of the incumbent population’s reaction to immigration.
Background: Predicted increases in suicide were not generally observed in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the picture may be changing and patterns might vary across demographic groups. We aimed to provide a timely, granular picture of the pandemic's impact on suicides globally.
Methods: We identified suicide data from official public-sector sources for countries/areas-within-countries, searching websites and academic literature and contacting data custodians and authors as necessary. We sent our first data request on 22nd June 2021 and stopped collecting data on 31st October 2021. We used interrupted time series (ITS) analyses to model the association between the pandemic's emergence and total suicides and suicides by sex-, age- and sex-by-age in each country/area-within-country. We compared the observed and expected numbers of suicides in the pandemic's first nine and first 10-15 months and used meta-regression to explore sources of variation.
Findings: We sourced data from 33 countries (24 high-income, six upper-middle-income, three lower-middle-income; 25 with whole-country data, 12 with data for area(s)-within-the-country, four with both). There was no evidence of greater-than-expected numbers of suicides in the majority of countries/areas-within-countries in any analysis; more commonly, there was evidence of lower-than-expected numbers. Certain sex, age and sex-by-age groups stood out as potentially concerning, but these were not consistent across countries/areas-within-countries. In the meta-regression, different patterns were not explained by countries’ COVID-19 mortality rate, stringency of public health response, economic support level, or presence of a national suicide prevention strategy. Nor were they explained by countries’ income level, although the meta-regression only included data from high-income and upper-middle-income countries, and there were suggestions from the ITS analyses that lower-middle-income countries fared less well.
Interpretation: Although there are some countries/areas-within-countries where overall suicide numbers and numbers for certain sex- and age-based groups are greater-than-expected, these countries/areas-within-countries are in the minority. Any upward movement in suicide numbers in any place or group is concerning, and we need to remain alert to and respond to changes as the pandemic and its mental health and economic consequences continue.
In a significant number of cases, clerical sex offenders impregnate their victims and force them into hiding, abortion, or adoption. This phenomenon is referred to in this paper as reproductive abuse. Clearly, most victims of reproductive abuse are adults, but even among minor victims of clerical child abuse, between 1 and 10 percent may have experienced reproductive abuse. On the basis of pertinent studies, this paper explores archival material on several dozen allegations of reproductive abuse in the context of clergy sexual abuse of minors in the US Catholic Church. Besides some tentative estimates of the general frequency of the phenomenon, this paper offers a distinction of three different types of reproductive abuse and an analysis of the interplay of clericalist and secular misogyny, which appears to be largely responsible for the silencing of victims as well as for the impunity of perpetrators and leads to the invisibility of this phenomenon, despite the high importance attributed to reproductive issues in the Catholic context.
Objective: Prisoners constitute a high-risk group for suicide, with suicide rates about 5 to 8 times higher than in the general population. The first weeks of imprisonment are a particularly vulnerable time, but there is limited knowledge about the risk factors for either early or late suicide events. Methods: Based on a national total sample of prison suicides in Germany between 2005 and 2017, suicides within the first 2 (4 and 8) weeks after reception into prison were matched by age and penalty length with cases that occurred later. Factors that potentially influence the timing of suicide were investigated. Results: The study has shown that 16.7% (31.5%) of all 390 suicides in German prisons occurred within the first two weeks (two months) of imprisonment. Factors that facilitate adaptation to the prison environment (e.g. prior prison experience) were negatively associated with early suicide events. Factors that hindered the adaptation process (e.g. withdrawal from illicit drugs) were observed more frequently in early suicide events than in late ones. These factors are active at different times of imprisonment. Conclusion: At reception, particular attention should be paid to the following factors associated with early suicide events: widowed marital status, lack of prison experience, and drug dependency.
Child sexual abuse has been discussed thoroughly; however, marginalized groups of victims such as victims of child sexual abuse in early childhood and victims of maternal sexual abuse have rarely been considered. This essay combines these two relevant perspectives in child protection and aims to pin out future directions in the field of child abuse and specifically maternal sexual abuse and its early prevention. In the course of the 7th Haruv International PhD Workshop on Child Maltreatment at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, in 2019 the topics of maternal sexual abuse and early prevention of child maltreatment in Germany were discussed and intertwined. Problems concerning the specific research of maternal sexual abuse in early childhood and prevention were identified. Both, maternal sexual abuse as well as sexual abuse in early childhood, i.e. before the age of three, are underreported topics. Society still follows a “friendly mother illusion” while recent cases in German media as well as research findings indicate that the mother can be a perpetrator of child sexual abuse. Similarly, sexual abuse in early childhood, namely abuse before the age of three, is existent; although the recognition of it is difficult and young children are, in regards to their age and development especially vulnerable. They need protective adults in their environment, who are aware of sexual abuse in the first years of life. Raising awareness on marginalized or tabooed topics can be a form of prevention. An open dialog in research and practice about the so far marginalized topics of maternal sexual abuse and sexual abuse in early childhood is crucial.
Resting state fMRI has been employed to identify alterations in functional connectivity within or between brain regions following acute and chronic exposure to Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component in cannabis. Most studies focused a priori on a limited number of local brain areas or circuits, without considering the impact of cannabis on wholebrain network organization. The present study attempted to identify changes in the wholebrain human functional connectome as assessed with ultra-high field (7T) resting state scans of occasional (N=12) and chronic cannabis users (N=14) during placebo and following vaporization of cannabis. Two distinct data-driven methodologies, i.e. network-based statistics (NBS) and connICA, were used to identify changes in functional connectomes associated with acute cannabis intoxication and chronic cannabis use. Both methodologies revealed a broad state of hyperconnectivity within the entire range of major brain networks in chronic cannabis users compared to occasional cannabis users, which might be reflective of an adaptive network reorganization following prolonged cannabis exposure. The connICA methodology also extracted a distinct spatial connectivity pattern of hypoconnectivity involving the dorsal attention, limbic, subcortical and cerebellum networks and of hyperconnectivity between the default mode and ventral attention network, that was associated with the feeling of subjective high during THC intoxication across both user groups. Whole-brain network approaches identified spatial patterns in functional brain connectomes that distinguished acute from chronic cannabis use, and offer an important utility for probing the interplay between short and long-term alterations in functional brain dynamics when progressing from occasional to chronic use of cannabis.
Garbage piles up in the capital of Cambodia; it lies around in corners, on streets, in fields. COVID-19, which has led to a global reduction in the production of greenhouse gases considered utopian, has had little if any significant impact within this country, where garbage is produced in the same amounts, likewise burned and buried, or dumped into the rivers. The smelly sewage channels of Phnom Penh run as brown as usual, patterned with flip-flops, shampoo packaging, diverse plastic particles, and undefinable fragments of rubbish, travelling south-eastwards into the morning glory fields; passing by buzzing, still active markets, passing urban poor areas, where children play in the thick mud, passing citizens in facemasks. On 10 April, the Cambodian government counted some 120 official cases of COVID-19 infection among its populace...
Built to colonize
(2019)
Change ahead—emerging life-course transitions as practical accomplishments of growing old(er)
(2019)
With the aging of the "Baby Boomer" cohort, more and more adults are transiting from work into retirement. In public discourse, this development is framed as one of the major challenges of today's welfare societies. To develop social innovations that consider the everyday lives of older people requires a deeper theoretical understanding of the retiring process. In age studies, retiring has been approached from various theoretical perspectives, most prominently disengagement perspectives (retirement as the withdrawal from social roles and responsibilities) and rational choice perspectives (retiring as a rational decision based on incentives and penalties). Whereas, the former have been accused of promoting a deficient image of aging, the latter are criticized for concealing the socially stratified constraints older people experience. This paper proposes a practice-theoretical perspective on retiring, understanding it as a processual, practical accomplishment that involves various social practices, sites, and human, as well as non-human, actors. To exemplify this approach, I draw upon data from the project "Doing Retiring" that follows 30 older adults in Germany from 1 year before to 3 years after retirement. Results depict retiring as a complex process of change, assembled by social practices that are scattered across time, space, and carriers. Practice sequences and constellations differ significantly between older adults who retire expectedly and unexpectedly, for example through sudden job loss or illness. However, even among those who envisaged retiring "on their own terms," the agency to retire was distributed across the network of employers, retirement schemes, colleagues, laws, families, workplaces, bodies and health, and the future retiree themselves. Results identified a distinct set of sequentially organized practices that were temporally and spatially configured. Many study participants expressed an idea about a "right time to retire" embedded in the imagination of a chrononormative life-course, and they often experienced spatio-temporal withdrawal from the workplace (e.g., reduction of working hours) which entailed affective disengagement from work as well. In conclusion, a practice-theoretical perspective supports social innovations that target more than just the retiring individual.
Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world. However due to a changing legal landscape, and rising interest in therapeutic utility, there is an increasing trend in (long-term) use and possibly, cannabis impairment. Importantly, a growing body of evidence suggests regular cannabis users develop tolerance to the impairing, as well as the rewarding, effects of the drug. However, the neuroadaptations that may underlie cannabis tolerance remain unclear. Therefore, this double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled, cross-over study assessed the acute influence of cannabis on brain and behavioral outcomes in two distinct cannabis user groups. Twelve occasional (OUs) and 12 chronic (CUs) cannabis users received acute doses of cannabis (300 μg/kg THC) and placebo, and underwent ultra-high field functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). In OUs, cannabis induced significant neurometabolic alterations in reward circuitry, namely decrements in functional connectivity and increments in striatal glutamate concentrations, which were associated with increases in subjective high and decreases in performance on a sustained attention task. Such changes were absent in CUs. The finding that cannabis altered circuitry and distorted behavior in OUs, but not CUs, suggests reduced responsiveness of the reward circuitry to cannabis intoxication in chronic users Taken together, the results suggest a pharmacodynamic mechanism for the development of tolerance to cannabis impairment.
Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world. However, because of a changing legal landscape and rising interest in therapeutic utility, there is an increasing trend in (long-term) use and possibly cannabis impairment. Importantly, a growing body of evidence suggests that regular cannabis users develop tolerance to the impairing, as well as the rewarding, effects of the drug. However, the neuroadaptations that may underlie cannabis tolerance remain unclear. Therefore, this double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, cross-over study assessed the acute influence of cannabis on the brain and behavioral outcomes in two distinct cannabis user groups. Twelve occasional and 12 chronic cannabis users received acute doses of cannabis (300-μg/kg delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) and placebo and underwent ultrahigh field functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In occasional users, cannabis induced significant neurometabolic alterations in reward circuitry, namely, decrements in functional connectivity and increments in striatal glutamate concentrations, which were associated with increases in subjective high and decreases in performance on a sustained attention task. Such changes were absent in chronic users. The finding that cannabis altered circuitry and distorted behavior in occasional, but not chronic users, suggests reduced responsiveness of the reward circuitry to cannabis intoxication in chronic users. Taken together, the results suggest a pharmacodynamic mechanism for the development of tolerance to cannabis impairment, of which is important to understand in the context of the long-term therapeutic use of cannabis-based medications, as well as in the context of public health and safety of cannabis use when performing day-to-day operations.
This article addresses the continuing resilience of two post-Soviet governments – Azerbaijan and Lithuania – against community-based engagement and social protection of HIV-positive people by exploring the challenges of two social activists. The analysis shows how basic social and medical needs of people living with HIV/AIDS remain unmet, while stigmatisation informs the local health policies and manifests as a protective mechanism against contrary promotion effects. The findings call for urgent policy changes to prevent the further suffering of these people because of poor state strategies. The aim is to help further intervention practices and improve social care services for HIV-positive people in the two countries.
Background: The year 2016 has marked the highest number of displaced people worldwide on record. A large number of these refugees are women, yet little is known about their specific situation and the hurdles they have to face during their journey. Herein, we investigated whether sociodemographic characteristics and traumatic experiences in the home country and during the flight affected the quality of life of refugee women arriving in Germany in 2015–2016.
Methods: Six hundred sixty-three women from six countries (Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, and Eritrea) living in shared reception facilities in five distinct German regions were interviewed by native speakers using a structured questionnaire. Sociodemographic data and information about reasons for fleeing, traumatic experiences, symptoms, quality of life, and expectations towards their future were elicited. All information was stored in a central database in Berlin. Descriptive analyses, correlations, and multivariate analyses were performed.
Results: The most frequent reasons cited for fleeing were war, terror, and threat to one’s life or the life of a family member. Eighty-seven percent of women resorted to smugglers to make the journey to Europe, and this significantly correlated to residence in a war zone (odds ratio (OR) = 2.5, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.4–4.6, p = 0.003) and homelessness prior to fleeing (OR = 2.1, 95% CI = 1–4.3, p = 0.04). Overall the described quality of life by the women was moderate (overall mean = 3.23, range of 1–5) and slightly worse than that of European populations (overall mean = 3.68, p < 0.0001). The main reasons correlating with lower quality of life were older age, having had a near-death experience, having been attacked by a family member, and absence of health care in case of illness.
Conclusions: Refugee women experience multiple traumatic experiences before and/or during their journey, some of which are gender-specific. These experiences affect the quality of life in their current country of residence and might impact their integration. We encourage the early investigation of these traumatic experiences to rapidly identify women at higher risk and to improve health care for somatic and mental illness.
Historically – if one can say that given the infancy of the field – environmental plastic debris has been the baby of marine research. Driven by the rediscovery of long forgotten, 1970s studies on the occurrence of small plastic fragments (today termed microplastics) in the oceans, oceanographers and marine biologists resurrected the topic in the early 2000s. Since then, the field has rapidly expanded and established that plastics are ubiquitous in the marine system, from the Arctic to Antarctic and from the surface to the deep sea. ...
The physical housing environment is important to facilitate activities of daily living (ADL) for older people. A hindering environment may lead to ADL dependence and thus increase the need for home services, which is individually restricting and a growing societal burden. This study presents simulations of policy changes with regard to housing accessibility that estimates the potential impact specifically on instrumental activities of daily living (I-ADL), usage of home services, and related costs. The models integrate empirical data to test the hypothesis that a policy providing funding to remove the five most severe environmental barriers in the homes of older people who are at risk of developing dependence in I-ADL, can maintain independence and reduce the need for home services. In addition to official statistics from state agencies in Sweden and Germany, we utilized published results from the ENABLE-AGE and other scientific studies to generate the simulations. The simulations predicted that new policies that remove potentially hindering housing features would improve I-ADL performance among older people and reduce the need for home services. Our findings suggest that a policy change can contribute to positive effects with regard to I-ADL independence among older people and to a reduction of societal burden.
The present study concerns the development of a computerized tool targeting housing accessibility issues. A user-centered approach involving professionals from the housing sector and senior citizens from four European countries resulted in a fully functional prototype of a mobile application (app) including an apartment database. The app raises awareness on housing accessibility and has the potential to support decision making and strengthen all citizens regardless of functional capacity to be more active in their endeavors for a satisfying housing solution. Further refinements and additional features are needed to enhance the potential benefits; they include addressing potential challenges facing senior citizens, developing interactive features that allow users to provide input and adapting to different national contexts to make the app applicable for the European market.
In modern welfare states, family policies may resolve the tension between employment and care-focused demands. However these policies sometimes have adverse consequences for distinct social groups. This study examined gender and educational differences in working parents’ perceived work–family conflict and used a comparative approach to test whether family policies, in particular support for child care and leave from paid work, are capable of reducing work–family conflict as well as the gender and educational gaps in work–family conflict. We use data from the European Social Survey 2010 for 20 countries and 5296 respondents (parents), extended with information on national policies for maternity and parental leave and child care support from the OECD Family Database. Employing multilevel analysis, we find that mothers and the higher educated report most work–family conflict. Policies supporting child care reduce the level of experienced work–family conflict; family leave policy appears to have no alleviating impact on working parents’ work–family conflict. Our findings indicate that family policies appear to be unable to reduce the gender gap in conflict perception and even widen the educational gap in work–family conflict.
Investors and insurance policyholders are often confronted with complex products and providers' opaque organisational structures. At the same time, the possibility that their claims will not be honoured often poses an existential risk. Financial regulation therefore aims at putting in place a financial services framework that will safeguard market processes whilst also protecting consumers. However, benefits of regulation are accompanied by certain risks, as can be exemplified with the case of insurance regulation.
This chapter outlines the conditions under which accounting-based smoothing can be beneficial for policyholders who hold with-profit or participating payout life annuities (PLAs). We use a realistically-calibrated model of PLAs to explore how alternative accounting techniques influence policyholder welfare as well as insurer profitability and stability. We find that accounting smoothing of participating life annuities is favorable to consumers and insurers, as it mitigates the impact of short-term volatility and enhances the utility of these long-term annuity contracts.
This thesis develops a conceptual framework for a better understanding of the impact of slow-onset climate and environmental changes on human migration in developing countries. Its regional focus is on the West African Sahel, where the majority of the population depends on agriculture and thus is highly vulnerable to environmental changes. Migration from fragile environments is predominantly considered one of several household strategies to adapt to and minimise the risk of environmental stress. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from two selected rural study areas, Bandiagara in Mali and Linguère in Senegal, this thesis analyses the drivers of migration from the two areas.
The findings illustrate that, even though people highly depend on the natural environment, migration motives are manifold and that migration often is not a household strategy to cope with environmental changes. Although environmental conditions shape migration in the region and the migrants’ support is crucial for most households, environmental stress plays a relatively small role as a driver of migration - at least in Mali, where it is considerably less important than in Senegal. On the contrary, migration is often driven by better opportunities elsewhere rather than by livelihood stressors in the home area. Particularly the migration of young people is often an individual rather than a household decision and influenced by individual aspirations, such as aspirations for consumer goods or a better future, rather than by environmental stress.
This thesis claims that research should consider people’s capabilities to migrate or to stay as well as their individual aspirations and preferences - in addition to the household’s needs and the opportunities elsewhere. This is important in order to explain why some people stay in and others migrate from an area affected by environmental stress, though living under similar conditions. Depending on people’s capabilities to choose freely between staying and migrating and their preferences and aspirations for one or the other activity, people can either be “voluntary migrants”, “voluntary non-migrants”, “forced migrants” or “trapped people”.
Moreover, it is important to consider social trends and transformation processes in the analysis of the linkages between environment change and migration. Higher education levels and aspirations to a “modern” lifestyle among young people, for instance, might decrease the impact of environmental factors on migration, despite worsening environmental conditions.
Prevalent poverty and related problems in the East African region call for substantial action from various stakeholders, including social workers. This book, based on comprehensive empirical research, portrays an emerging yet powerful profession that has a significant role to play in the endeavour towards social development, social justice, human rights and gender equality. The book is the first of its kind to provide first-hand theoretical and empirical evidence about social work in East Africa.
Does the rotten child spoil his companion? : spatial peer effects among children in rural India
(2014)
This paper identifies the effect of neighborhood peer groups on childhood skill acquisition using observational data. We incorporate spatial peer interaction, defined as a child's nearest geographical neighbors, into a production function of child cognitive development in Andhra Pradesh, India. Our peer group definition takes the form of networks, whose structure allows us to identify endogenous peer effects and contextual effects separately. We exploit variation over time to avoid confounding correlated with social effects. Our results suggest that spatial peer and neighborhood effects are strongly positively associated with a child's cognitive skill formation. Further, we explore the effect of peer groups in helping to provide insurance against the negative impact of idiosyncratic shocks to child learning. We find that the data reject full risk-sharing, but cannot rule out the existence of partial risk-sharing on behalf of peers. We show that peer effects are robust to different specifications of peer interactions and investigate the sensitivity of our estimates to potential misspecification of the network structure using Monte Carlo experiments.
Pursuant to art. 45 of the Solvency II Framework Directive, all insurance undertakings will be obliged to conduct an “Own Risk and Solvency Assessment” (ORSA). ORSA’s relevance is not limited only to the second pillar of Solvency II, where mainly qualitative requirements are to be found. ORSA rather exhibits strong interlinks with the first pillar and its quantitative requirements and may also serve as a trigger for transparency duties which form Solvency II’s third pillar. ORSA may thus be described in some respects as the glue that binds together all three pillars of Solvency II. ORSA is one of the most obvious examples of the supervisory shift from a rules-based to a principles-based approach. As such, ORSA has hitherto been only very roughly defined. Since it is for the undertaking to determine its own specific risk profile and to evaluate whether this risk profile deviates significantly from the assumptions underlying the standard formula, it seems only natural that the supervisor must specify in greater detail what these underlying assumptions are. The most practicable way to do so would be for EIOPA to establish a “standard insurer”, which implies a translation of the assumptions concerning the underlying probability distributions into directly observable characteristics. The creation of the standard insurer would be an important step towards relaxing the insurers’ fear of what ORSA might bring about.
There is a general agreement that piracy; counterfeiting and passing off are unfair. However, there is often surreptitious - or even open - sympathy for, say, those who purchase counterfeit designer fashions or the latest technical gadgets. The pirate is even sometimes represented as a daring evil hero. In this book, Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili, Director General of Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, presents a unique study of a global phenomenon in which law-breaking and profiteering prevail at the cost of human health and life - and of the ways in which this can be fought by appropriate legislation, regulation and enforcement.
This article discusses the effects of the countercyclical premium discussed in insurance supervision in the context of Solvency II. While the basic principle of introducing countercyclical elements into Solvency II is endorsed, the authors argue for a system based on market scenarios which would enforce stricter capital requirements in boom times and less strict requirements in times of crisis.
In Lango, Northern Uganda, 20 years of war, cattle rustling and HIV/AIDS have resulted in widespread loss of life, population displacement, and loss of property. In spite of this turmoil, some traditional cultural practices, such as widow inheritance, early child marriage, and widow cleansing continued, although they were increasingly seen to conflict with ‘modern’ development thinking, especially when infringing women and children’s rights. External development actors first tried to address this situation by ‘sensitising’ communities, but with limited success. It however soon became evident that clan leaders were instrumental in perpetuating cultural practices: in the early 2000’s, they became increasingly identified as key actors to address harmful traditions and to resolve conflicts. With the many trials faced by local communities, women’s roles in supporting the family institution and upholding cultural values had however expanded too. Several development organisations were established to address the challenges related to these changes and one was the Lango Female Clan Leaders’ Association, with a focus on promoting girls’ education and access to justice for women. This case study examines the role that these female clan leaders have successfully played in tackling current gender- related challenges. It explores the interface between traditional and modern gender concepts and the value of working with cultural resource persons to address cultural challenges. The study involved desk research, field based semistructure interviews, focus group discussions with 30 respondents and key informants, and a validation write-shop, all held in the course of 2008.
Aims: This paper is a review of the literature on problem-related drinking of alcohol among medical doctors, and it deals with the epidemiology and results. Methods: A search of computer literature databases - PubMed and ETOH - was performed to locate articles reporting problem-related drinking among doctors, using population-based samples of doctors within the last two decades. Results: In the light of different definitions of problem-related drinking, there was found a breadth of prevalence of problem-related drinking - from heavy drinking and hazardous drinking (12%-16%) to misuse and dependence (6%-8%) - within the population-based samples of doctors. An increased risk was positively related to male doctors and doctors of the age of 40-45 years and older, and to some factors of work, lifestyle and health. Conclusion: For the future, it seems necessary to sensitise the research for problem-related drinking of doctors in Germany, e.g. initiating a representative survey, analysing the drinking of alcohol in the context of health, life-style and work-related factors.
This paper focuses on Eastern European migrants who, since the beginning of the 1990s, are entering the Republic Cyprus as “artistes”. This is a visa permit status as well as an euphemism for short-term work permits in the local sex industry. In addition to exploring the migrational experiences of these women and their living and working conditions in the Republic of Cyprus, the paper reconstructs, empirically and analyt ically, the connection between immigration and the local sex industry. Here, several categories of social actors and institutions in Cyprus are actively involved. The rhetoric of government representatives, entrepreneurs and clients in the sex business on the one hand is contrasted with the discourse of local NGO representatives concerned with immigrants’ rights on the other hand. The paper comes to the conclusion that all of these discursive positions ultimately do not do justice to the complex process of decisionmaking that women undergo who migrate into the sex industry. Either, freedom of choice is emphasized – such as by entrepreneurs and the government – or the domination of women – as in the public statements of the NGO. In order to analyze the ambivalent tension between freedom of choice and submission to force by which the women’s decision is characterized, the author employs Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which describes forms of political regulation that use the individual’s freedom of action as an instrument to exercise power.