Many residents have come to complain of the “rampant prostitution” taking place on the streets, and sometimes even in old building staircases in this downtown Parisian neighbourhood. Local elected officials and police commissioners promise that the situation will improve while underlining the historical nature of this problem. “There has always been prostitution in this area,” explains the mayor. “Now it is declining. The situation is changing for the better.” Meanwhile, an association that helps sex workers points out that the majority of these women—victims of “modern-day slavery”—are in need of protection. The dominant discourse of the residents present is, granted, one of empathy but under one condition: not in my backyard. Sex work has no place in a gentrifying neighbourhood.

In the heart of the 2nd arrondissement, not far from Les Halles and a few metres from the famous Rue Montorgueil—a bustling open-air market where Parisians frequent trendy terraces and renowned food shops with sumptuous window displays—Rue Saint-Denis is and always has been an anomaly. While downtown Paris is increasingly marked by the presence of bourgeois residents and businesses, Rue Saint-Denis continues to be a world of deviance. Though it has a number of cafés, restaurants and fabric stores, its main features are a string of sex shops and the visible presence of sex workers.

True to its legacy as a working-class neighbourhood, the Rue Saint-Denis area seemed, until recently, to have remained on the fringes of the gentrification dynamics affecting the 2nd arrondissement: rents were still low, and there were obvious indicators of precariousness. One of the shopkeepers, familiar with the street for many years, gives the following description: “Everywhere else gentrification has completely taken over, but Rue Saint-Denis has stayed cosmopolitan and kept the scars of its past. Every day is a walk on the wild side here. There are still dealers—they’re more scattered but they’re there—and weirdos, dingbats and of course a few prostitutes who stay put no matter what!”

Julie is one of these women. Having lived and worked on Rue Saint-Denis for 35 years, she’s witnessed the changes in the street, its businesses, population and ambience. “The street you see today is nothing like what it used to be,” she explains. “It was really something! Drama all the time, lots of girls… It was the prostitutes’ street, it was Rue Saint-Denis. Now it’s changed, but we still work here because… Because that’s the way it is. We’re not going to leave because the neighbourhood is changing. We still have our place here, even if it’s tough.”

Through the testimonials of Julie and others involved in sex-related businesses, I wanted to understand how these actors negotiate their place in this evolving urban space, from their simple presence on the street to forms of resistance—informal, everyday, and silent—against gentrification.

“I came here because this was where the work was,” Julie explains. “Rue Saint-Denis has always been a prostitutes’ street!” She cites the historical legitimacy of her presence to defend her continued practice. The disappearance of prostitution and sex-related activities on Rue Saint-Denis would be a mutilation of Paris’ history, dating back several centuries.

In fact, until the end of the 18th century, Rue Saint-Denis was located between the Cour des Miracles and the Cimetière des Innocents, sites “very popular with madams and scoundrels,” described by Victor Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame as “a vast green-room, serving at that period for all the actors in that eternal drama of robbery, prostitution, and murder enacted on the streets of Paris.” Following the French Revolution, and after the reconstruction of Les Halles half a century later, Rue Saint-Denis became increasingly commercial. Its proximity to the Sentier, a clothing industry hub, also influenced the specialization of businesses. However, in the 70s and 80s, sex quickly replaced fabric as the street’s main industry with the opening of a dozen sex shops.

In this sense, the presence of sex workers, sex shops and peep shows on Rue Saint-Denis is the imprint of a history that still influences the representations, images and conceptions that make up the daily reality of the street. Julie describes the heritage aspect of this presence: “A street of Parisians, yes, and with tourists too. When there was still motor traffic, buses of Chinese tourists would drive by and take pictures. You had the Eiffel Tower and Rue Saint-Denis. That’s the way it was. Tourists came to see the monuments and Rue Saint-Denis was part of all that.”

To Julie, the historicity of the presence of sex work is not random but explained by its beneficial role in the moral order of Paris. “It’s historic,” she says.“Rue Saint-Denis is a street that offers these types of services. And let me tell you, it’s a good thing we’re here! There are people who really need it. There have always been people who need it. We haven’t moved, we don’t want to move, and so, we won’t.” To many of the “traditionals” like Julie, the commemoration of the full history of the street becomes an argument for resistance.

Since the 1970s, central Parisian neighbourhoods have been undergoing gentrification as their location has (once again) become attractive and strategic for local political and economic players as well as for some wealthier city-dwellers, at the expense of the working class. Apartments are renovated and the rent goes up; businesses that cater to the new urban middle classes flourish, with an increased focus on fashion and home decor; ordinary cafés are trans- formed, restaged in a mixture of the trendy and the traditional.

In 2004, the city of Paris launched an operation called Vital’Quartier designed to develop neighbourhood businesses in certain districts whose commercial makeup was considered outdated and no longer serving the needs of residents. The Saint-Denis district was one of the areas targeted by this program. Following resident complaints about the noise disturbance caused by sex shops and sex workers during night-time hours, the businesses on Rue Saint-Denis were identified as misaligned with the needs of residents. The City’s interventions in the area meant stepping up the fight against sex shops and peep shows, which were considered responsible for noise disturbance and encouraging the presence of sex work. Over half of these establishments have closed their doors in the past ten years. Some of the former sex shops and peep shows remain vacant while others have been taken over by new neighbourhood shops: an organic fruit and vegetable store, a florist, a wine shop and restaurants. Though the future of some of these businesses remains uncertain, these types of changes to a commercial street are typical of the gentrification process.

Also typical of this process is the arrival of middle to upper-class populations who wish to live in the heart of the city while taking advantage of a low-cost urban space. Once settled, the new residents express their desire to “change the image of Rue Saint- Denis.” They organize neighbourhood events or suggest projects for planting trees and flowers on the street to “counter its shady look” by making it “prettier” and “more attractive.” These projects and beautification efforts are indications of a strategy to modify the Rue Saint-Denis, making the street more bourgeois. In this context, prostitution is seen as a problem that ruins the street’s image. As a recent resident explained: “What we expect is to prevent sex shops and eliminate prostitution because they no longer correspond to the new image of Rue Saint-Denis.”

Traditional sex workers resist the gentrification process—and, consequently, the emergence of a new register of norms and values based on contemporary morals—by appropriating spaces with their codes, habits and practices. Sex workers and peep show actors still occupy Rue Saint-Denis by day and by night and make their activities explicitly known—never hiding them, and sometimes flaunting them—through their visible presence outside the doors of their buildings or storefronts, or through the suggestiveness of their outfits. “We’re not going to hide!” exclaims a peep-show stripper. “On the contrary, we stay out at the front. It might make some people uncomfortable but we’re just here like we’ve always been, working and everything. We’re not at the National Assembly here, we’re on Rue Saint-Denis.”

Being visible on Rue Saint-Denis is also a way for sex workers to defend their territory, and even more so their identity. Though not defined by tangible markers, there is an understanding that the sidewalks of the central part of Rue Saint-Denis, and of some of the streets adjacent to it, belong to this community of sex workers. Non-traditional sex workers face more risks, stigmatization.

Despite the recent changes, prostitution and sex-related businesses are still part of the identity of Rue Saint-Denis. Many peep shows are still open and active and a number of “traditional” sex workers who have been working on the street since the 70s are still practising. However, whereas their historical presence on Rue Saint-Denis once gave them a type of legitimacy, sex workers, sex shops and peep shows are now affected by the changing image of the space they occupy. As one sex worker explains: “Rue Saint-Denis was … a typical Parisian spot. Because it was a street that was … a street where you walked and there was always drama. For me, Saint-Denis was a street that had girls, and a great atmosphere. And now it’s sad … It’s sad, we’re alone. That old vibe is gone and people look at us differently. We’re practically looked down upon, as if we shouldn’t be here anymore.”

Today, Rue Saint-Denis is constantly in flux and can’t be boxed into a single imaginary. In the face of urban policies that favour businesses aligned with the representations and consumption practices of the middle and upper classes, the continued presence of peep shows and sex shops can be considered a form of resistance. It is a coexistence that curbs the gentrification process. Even if times are hard for this “undesirable population,” giving up is out of the question. “Some customers are confused when they come and see what Rue Saint-Denis is becoming,” explains a peep show tout. “It’s not a party like it used to be. But we put on shows, so we’re still here. We’re a business with all the paperwork. We’ve got a show licence. So there’s no reason for us to leave. Everything is legal here so they can’t kick us out.”

The legal nature of these businesses is cited as an ethical defense of their activities in the face of stigmatization. If sex workers and sex-related businesses are currently considered undesirable, it’s because they don’t correspond to the norms and values imported by the new residents. For those involved in this line of work, resistance relies on defending their own set of values, among the multiple realities that make up Rue Saint-Denis.

French sociologist and philosopher Maurice Hallbwachs argued that a space, though always in the midst of transformation, is also a constant reminder of the historical continuity that formed between a group and a place. He said that spaces and places are inseparable from the people that act on a city. As a result, the aspirations of the present–commercial changes, residential mobility and public policy–cannot easily erase the presence of the past. The Rue Saint-Denis sex workers are a group whose identity has been constructed in tandem with its feelings of belonging to this street. Because of this, this street’s very history restrains the process of gentrification that has begun in this area. The silent and informal forms of resistance exercised on a daily basis by “traditional” sex workers and peep show actors to (re)negotiate their place on Rue Saint-Denis is a form of resistance within, and defence of, their discourse and practices, representing a system of values considered deviant only by others. For Julie, the deci-sion is clear: she will stay here, where she is at home, on Rue Saint-Denis, where, as she describes, a sex worker wears the many hats of “actor, psychologist, and nurse of the soul and the sex.” ●

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Mathilde Caro is a doctoral student at the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in the sociology department. Her academic work explores the rue Saint- Denis and rue Montorgueil, two streets in the center of Paris, characterized by their spatial proximity and their social and symbolic distance.