Welfare States and Urban Marginality: Female Prostitution in the mid-1900s

TRANSITION Dialogue with Christian Sandbjerg Hansen, Aarhus University.

Rather than simply responding to social problems, welfare states also play a central role in defining them. This TRANSITION Dialogue explores how professional knowledge, institutional practices, and urban life intersect in shaping what comes to be understood as social marginality.

Christian Sandbjerg Hansen examines how prostitution in Copenhagen was redefined as a social problem between the 1930s and the 1960s. Drawing on his book project Pedagogies of Prostitution, which is based on extensive archival material (including policy documents, media debates, and nearly 1,000 court cases), his research traces how a wide range of actors, from police officers and psychiatrists to social workers, journalists, and politicians, contributed to shaping both public understanding of and institutional responses to prostitution in Copenhagen.

While reflecting on issues of control or regulation, Christian also highlights how these efforts were framed as forms of education that were not solely aimed at individuals, but at the city and its citizens more broadly. In this way, he opens up a perspective on how social categories take shape through everyday practices, and how lives at the urban margins are shaped in the process.

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Biography

Christian Sandbjerg Hansen is an Associate Professor at Aarhus University. His research focuses on the history of welfare, social policy, and urban marginality. He is the author of The Making of Place and People in the Danish Metropolis (2021), which examines how urban space, social categories, and state practices are historically intertwined. His current work continues this line of inquiry through the study of prostitution, professional knowledge, and the welfare state.

Format

With TRANSITION Dialogues, we want to create a conversational space where researchers, practitioners, and other professionals reflect together on themes central to understanding rural–urban transitions. Each Dialogue begins with a short input from our guest, followed by an open, exploratory conversation with all participants. The aim is not to reach consensus but to share perspectives, probe assumptions, and think collectively across disciplines and experiences.