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Biography
Marie-Louise Janssen (The Netherlands, 1966) got her master degree in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam in 1991. In 2007 she completed her PhD with the title: Sex Workers on the Move. Latin American Women in the European Sex Industry, which focuses on the construction of female identity among this specific group of immigrants and the personal interpretations they give to their identities as women, immigrants and sex workers. Marie-Louise Janssen has published about (migrant) sex workers and teaches in the areas of gender and sexuality studies and migration and human trafficking at the department of Cultural Anthropology and the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences (ISHSS) at the University of Amsterdam. After finishing her study Cultural Anthropology Janssen started working in Nicaragua as a coordinator of women projects. There she became interested in male street sex workers and started working with them on health issues and empowerment activities. In 1992 she returned to the Netherlands where she continued working with Latin American sex workers. She started her research activities on this migrant group, mainly centered on their social and legal situation. In 1993 she founded together with a Colombian colleague Foundation ESPERANZA, a Colombian-Dutch NGO dedicated to the prevention and combating of trafficking in Latin American women, as well as offering shelter and legal support to victims of human trafficking in both countries. In 2000 she started working on her PhD project at the University of Amsterdam. The central theme of her dissertation is: constructions of femininity among Latin American sexworkers in Europe. The research is based on 30 life stories of Latin American sex workers. By applying the methodology of oral history she seeks to provide insights into the way these immigrants are working and surviving in the margins of Dutch/European society and the actions they undertake within the specific context of the European sex industry as well as in their home country. As these women are coming from Latin America, their notions of femininity are deeply imbedded in a Latin American culture. At the same time, however, their notions are subject to change during their stay in Europe as well as afterwards when they return to Latin America. For this reason she collected one third of the life stories in theDominican Republic.
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