BandungBergerak – “Prostitution is often a survival mechanism for coping with poverty”–Lim, L. L. (1998)

Urbanization in West Java is often claimed by the government as a marker of economic progress, driven by industrial expansion, infrastructure development, and investment growth. However, this progress also produced marginalization, especially for women from rural areas who were forced to leave due to declining agrarian livelihoods and gender inequality. Migrating to cities such as Bekasi, Bandung, and Bogor in search of work, many encounters limited opportunities and exclusion from formal labor markets. In practice, current regional development in West Java does not eliminate poverty but redistributes it, resulting in new forms of inequality in urban areas.

Within this condition of urban precarity, prostitution emerges as one of way out available, particularly for women migrants with limited social and economic capital (Lee, 2025; Hung, 2026). It is often framed as a moral issue or a problem of public order, but such perspectives obscure its structural roots. It is important to see prostitution in Indonesia as a form of survival under conditions of repression and unequal development. While the authorities excluded sex workers from the main economic agenda, they also rely on them as subjects who sustain the functioning of the broader capitalist political economy.

This condition is shaped by structural neglect, where the absence of labor protection and regulatory oversight leaves women exposed to exploitation, health risks, and trafficking. Rather than closing economic gaps, urban growth often redistributes them across space. Prosperity becomes concentrated in certain zones, while vulnerability is pushed outward into peri-urban regions where livelihoods are more precarious, and protections are limited.

Statistics Indonesia (BPS) recorded that West Java is the province with the highest number of commercial sex workers in Indonesia. In 2024, 79 villages and subdistricts in West Java were identified as areas with the presence of commercial sex workers. Bekasi Regency recorded the highest number with 17 locations, followed by Indramayu Regency with 13 locations and Subang Regency with 7 locations. Meanwhile, Cirebon Regency, Karawang Regency, and Bandung City each reported 6 locations. Furthermore, West Java ranks as the third-highest province in Indonesia in terms of unemployment, reinforcing the structural nature of economic precarity in the region.

Studies on regions such as Indramayu, long known as a major source of migrant labor, demonstrate how economic pressure and restricted employment opportunities shape livelihood trajectories that include sex work and, in some cases, human trafficking (Iqbal & Gusman, 2025; Riyady, 2025; Panggabean & Puspitasari, 2026). Similar dynamics are also observed in rapidly urbanizing areas such as Bekasi, Bogor, and Bandung, where peri-urban expansion, industrialization, and the growth of service economies generate large informal labor markets but fail to provide sufficient formal employment, thereby increasing vulnerability among migrant women (Winarso et al., 2015; Ferdiansyah et al., 2024; Widyastaman et al, 2026). In these contexts, informal and concealed forms of sex work often emerge alongside urban growth, embedded within commercial and service sectors.

The persistence of informal employment and prostitution in rapidly urbanizing regions such as West Java is indicative of broader structural inequalities embedded in the development process. When urban growth is not accompanied by inclusive job creation, it tends to reproduce cycles of poverty and vulnerability, pushing marginalized populations into precarious and unregulated sectors. This reinforces the argument that the expansion of sex work in these regions cannot be separated from systemic socio-economic constraints.

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Dressing Up Inequality: Prostitution and Leisure under Capitalism

As lower-income populations are pushed out of productive and accessible areas, they are relocated into more marginal spaces with fewer opportunities. Periodic raids and enforcement actions are used to regulate prostitution, framing it as a problem of morality and order. Prostitution is linked to capitalist development as part of a broader political economy that commodifies both labor and leisure.

The interventions from local governments and the state often displace rather than resolve underlying problems. In West Java, sex workers can be understood through Agamben’s (1998) concept of “homo sacer”, as populations that are simultaneously included in and excluded from the social order, subject to control, eviction, and regulation in the name of public order and regional economic growth. Prostitution operates within a broader process of social reproduction, in which commodified leisure and sexual services contribute to maintaining and restoring the labor force under capitalism, even as the sex workers themselves remain stigmatized.

Leisure in capitalism is not “free time” outside production—it is organized and commodified, and prostitution becomes part of this system. The growth of tourism and leisure industries creates demand for commodified intimacy and sexual services. Prostitution is embedded in the political economy of leisure, where sexual services become part of organized recreation that supports both consumers (such as tourists and workers) and the broader reproduction of the labor force, (Truong, 1990).

How prostitution as part of the leisure economy is well organized in cities of West Java. In reality, localization is often concealed and absorbed into ordinary peri-urban spaces, blending with office buildings and commercial areas. In Bekasi, Bogor, and Bandung, prostitution commonly operates under the guise of massage or spa services, a pattern that has long been widespread. These activities are shifted into less visible, indoor, and commercially operated settings. In this way, spatial governance does not remove marginality but simply reorganizes it, reducing its visibility while deeper inequalities and vulnerabilities remain. By keeping such practices out of sight, local governments are able to project an image of economic growth and expanding job opportunities to the public.

Addressing prostitution requires moving beyond moral judgment and toward a structural understanding of inequality. Rather than treating it as an individual problem, it should be seen in relation to socio-economic systems that produce vulnerability in the first place. Based on this structural analysis of inequality and vulnerability, the following recommendations can be proposed. National and local governments need to implement comprehensive economic and social policies that address the structural roots of vulnerability associated with prostitution. This includes expanding access to stable employment and fair wages for women, particularly in rural areas. Across parts of West Java, sex workers and NGOs have formed their mobilization and networks to create mutual care from below that helps them navigate the pressures of deepening economic inequality. Equally important is confronting the stigma surrounding women in prostitution. They are often positioned as objects of control, rather than individuals navigating constrained choices shaped by inequality.

Broader access to education, healthcare, and social protection can open up alternative pathways, particularly in areas where migration and poverty continue to push women into prostitution as a survival strategy in West Java. This includes providing skills training and health services for sex workers, as well as strengthening access to comprehensive education, including sexual education for women in rural areas. The goal is to better equip them to understand working conditions and improve their opportunities in their villages or when engaging in rural-to-urban labor migration.

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