Rafaela Pascoal

Motherhood
in the Context
of Human
Trafficking and
Sexual Exploitation
Studies on Nigerian and Romanian
Women
Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking
and Sexual Exploitation
Rafaela Pascoal

Motherhood in the Context

of Human Trafficking and
Sexual Exploitation
Studies on Nigerian and Romanian Women
Rafaela Pascoal
Department of Cultures and Societies
University of Palermo
Palermo, Italy

ISBN 978-3-030-50848-7 ISBN 978-3-030-50849-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

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À Maria e ao Manuel, que abraçaram a
invulnerabilidade eterna.
Acknowledgement

First of all, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Ignazia Bartholini who
patiently has shared with me her knowledge in the last few years. Furthermore, I
would like to acknowledge the input of my colleagues Giorgia and Letizia Palumbo,
the exchange of ideas with Francesco and the patience of Ellie. Finally, this book is
also an outcome of social interaction; thus, I am thankful to all the people, especially
my family and friends, who have enriched my life experiences.

vii
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking . . . . . 13
2.1 The (in) Definition of Sexual Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2 Lack of Legislation in Sex Work. Sexual Exploitation
and Prostitution: The Grey Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3 The Relevance of the Means . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination
Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.1 Vulnerable Factors from the Origin Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2.1 The Libyan Route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.3 Nigerian Motherhood and the Travel Route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.3.1 The Route Through Libya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.3.2 The Route Through Morocco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.1.1 The Oath and the Link with Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.1.2 The Use of Relations of Proximity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
4.2 The Use of the Nigerian Motherhood as a Coercive Instrument . . . 81
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual
Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.1 The Role of Motherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

ix
x Contents

5.2.1 The Motherhood of the Nigerian Women . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

5.2.2 Transnational Motherhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.2.3 Can the Children of Human Trafficking Victims Be Also
Considered a Victim? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State . . . . . . . . . 127
5.3.1 Abortions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.3.2 Adoptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
5.3.3 The Role of the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6.1 Vulnerability After the Denounce and Secured Rights . . . . . . . . 149
6.2 The Italian Legislation on the Protection of Human Trafficking
Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.2.1 The Italian Legal Framework Regarding the Protection
of the Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
6.2.2 A Legislative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
6.2.3 The Italian Referral Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking
Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
6.3.1 Difficulties and Best Practices on the Asylum-Seeking
System for Human Trafficking Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
6.3.2 The Outcasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
6.3.3 The Full Protection Package Under Art.18 . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.3.4 Non-accompanied Minors and Human Trafficking
Victims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
6.4 The Protection of the Romanian Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
6.5 The Protection of the Victims with Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
6.6 The Reunification of Family After Trafficking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Acronyms

ANITP Agenţia Naţională Împotriva Traficului de Persoane—Romanian

National Agency Against Human Trafficking
APOV Abuse of position of Vulnerability
CARA Centro di Accoglienza per Richiedenti Asilo—Reception Center for
Asylum Seekers
CAS Centro di Accoglienza Straordinaria—Temporary Reception Center [for
asylum seekers]
CIE Center for Identification and Expulsion
ENI Europeo Non Iscritto—non-registered European [citizen]
EU European Union
ILO International Labour Organization
IOM International Organization for Migration
OHCHR Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
NGO Non-governmental organization
THB Trafficking in human beings
VoT Victim of human trafficking
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

xi
Chapter 1
Introduction

In the international legal framework, the phenomenon of human trafficking was

originally focused solely on sexually exploited women and children.1 Throughout
the years, the international legal definition of human trafficking2 has been enlarged,
by focusing on the individual, rather than simply on gender or age categories.
However, the international legal framework has always encouraged the adoption
of a gender mainstream,3 based on the global data on human trafficking.

1
The International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic was concluded on
18 May 1904 and came into force on 18 July 1905, ratified by a total of 26 states that had colonies:
His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British
Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India; His Majesty the German Emperor, King of Prussia,
in the name of the German Empire; His Majesty the King of the Belgians; His Majesty the King of
Denmark; His Majesty the King of Spain; the President of the French Republic; His Majesty the
King of Italy; Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands; His Majesty the King of Portugal and of
the Algarves; His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias; His Majesty the King of Sweden and
Norway; and the Swiss Federal Council. Five years after the treaty was renegotiated in Paris and
concluded on 4 May 1910.
2
The definition of Human Trafficking is expressed by Art.3, comma a) The adoption of the United
Nations, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and
Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime:
“‘Trafficking in persons’ shall ‘mean’ the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt
of persons, by ‘means’ of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of
deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of
payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the
purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitu-
tion of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices
similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”
3
The Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings [CETS
N. 197] was adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 3 May 2005 and opened for signature in
Warsaw on 16 May 2005, on the occasion of the third Summit of Heads of State and Government of
the Council of European member states; Directive 2011/36/EU of the European Parliament and of
the Council of 5 April 2011 on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and
protecting its victims.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4_1
2 1 Introduction

Interestingly, world reports seem to confirm the original idea of the relationship
between human trafficking and gender, in that it concerns mainly women and
children (EUROSTAT 2015; UNODC 2016).
Despite the gender emphasis on human trafficking, especially for sexual pur-
poses, it is interesting how academic literature has overlooked the subject of
motherhood (Brotherton 2016). Furthermore, nowadays, with the evolution of the
phenomenon, the concept of exploitation includes specific types of exploitation,
such as sham marriages (FRA 2017; UNODC 2016; Europol 2016), illegal adop-
tions (GRETA 2016b, c, 2017a), and surrogacy (GRETA 2017a), that are closely
related to the issue of motherhood. Sexual exploitation is also highly related to the
issue of motherhood, as the victims are usually women of a fertile age, yet, in a
situation of lack of self-determination, the role of mother can be often denied to the
victims by their exploiters.
If in one hand, the issue of motherhood on human trafficking has been clearly
overlooked by scholars in the past years, on the other hand, American literature has
offered the readers with paramount reflections on the role of motherhood on slavery.
One of the most complete literary depictions of motherhood in slavery is the novel
Beloved, written in 1987 by the Nobel winning author Toni Morrison. The novel, set
after the American Civil War, portrays a system that intentionally disrupts mother–
child relationships, where ‘definitions belonged to the definers—not to the defined’
(Morrison 1987: 225). In a fallacious apparatus of freedom, the role of motherhood is
abruptly denied to the oppressed. The children of the slaves are property of the
dominant, thus, the female slaves are entitled to reproduce, but not to have roles. And
if your children do not belong to you, what does it mean to be a mom, even in a
situation of freedom?
Motherhood, or the absence of it, is highly connected with reproductive rights and
these do not belong to VoTs (victim of trafficking), but to their traffickers (Women’s
Link Worldwide 2014). This often includes the right to choose whether or not to
have an abortion, to have a child, or to be a mother. Furthermore, human trafficking
is often connected to kinship (Europol 2016), where the traffickers share and abuse
the victims’ emotional or family ties (Pascoal and Schwartz 2016). Hence, I ask why,
despite all these features, is motherhood still not considered in relation to human
trafficking?
The answer could be related to the hidden nature of the study target, making it
difficult to research, or even the trouble we have attaching roles in society to victims.
In fact, the idea that a human trafficking victim might have other roles in society can
destabilise the dominant definition of ‘victim of trafficking’—continuously narrated
in the media—that is mainly focused on the ‘disables’ rather than the ‘enables’
(Anthias 2002). In this research, I understand the fluidness of the concept ‘human
trafficking victim’ and the borderline easiness in which sex workers can become
human trafficking victims and vice versa (Carchedi and Tola 2008).
Motherhood is considered to be one of the main pillars of society, having a
fundamental role in every culture (Fineman 1995), historically related to the image
of the Madonna, the virgin mother, in Catholicism (Kristeva and Goldhammer
1985). This attribution can counteract the possibility of mothers having other roles
1 Introduction 3

in society, especially considering when immoral behaviours are assumed, such as

being engaged in the sex market (Castañeda et al. 1996). According to the scholars
Peled and Parker (2013), motherhood in sexual exploitation is also related to the
‘sacrificed mother’, thus, can we consider motherhood a push factor for sexual
exploitation?
The present book aims to provide the reader with a complex study analysis of the
sexual exploitation of Nigerian and Romanian women, regarding in particular the
context of motherhood. Motherhood will be the guiding concept, presented through
the different phases of trafficking: recruitment; transference; exploitation; and pro-
tection (OSCE and UN.GIFT 2010). Contrary to most of the academic literature
available—often concentrated only on one or two phases of human trafficking and
excluding in particular the follow-up of the protection—the book traces the path of
the woman, from the origin country to the destination country. Furthermore, it is on
this journey that the several ‘push and pull factors’ are also considered, not only
between the victim and the trafficker but also within the society.
The focus on these two nationalities, Nigerian and Romanian women, is due to
the high presence of these two nationalities within the European and Italian territory,
especially connected with sexual exploitation (EUROSTAT 2015). Furthermore, the
analysis intends to bring to light the causes of the phenomenon, across all phases, by
comparing the different factors between both nationalities, including their legal
situation within the European territory. The analysis of the vulnerability of the
women (Fineman 2008) and the intersectionality of several factors (Crenshaw
1991) will take us further into the discussion on agency (Bronwyn 1991), resistance,
and resilience (Butler et al. 2016). The use of these concepts will provide the reader
with an answer for the two main questions considered in this book: are Nigerian
women more vulnerable to human trafficking than Romanian women, and conse-
quently their children, due to their lack of European citizenship? Is motherhood a
factor of vulnerability in human trafficking for sexual exploitation?
The book is divided into six main chapters that dissect each of the issues related to
the subject of study in a more in-depth way. The first provides the reader with an
introduction to the issue of motherhood on human trafficking and describes the
adopted methodology, while the second chapter provides the reader with a brief
summary of the international legal framework on human trafficking, along with an
in-depth understanding of the concept of sexual exploitation. The third chapter
details the situation in the origin country as a starting point, followed by the journey
through the transit countries, and in this way only applies to the Nigerian women.
The fourth chapter offers a detailed framework of exploitation in the destination
country, by exposing the coercive instruments used by traffickers and disclosing the
role of intimate relations in human trafficking for sexual purposes.
The fifth chapter is focused on the motherhood of Romanian and Nigerian
women, analysing and comparing both groups, according to their particularities.
On one hand, I consider the situation of Nigerian women, focusing on the connection
between motherhood and legal status, and on the other hand, I take a closer look at
Romanian women and transnational motherhood, which is briefly mentioned in the
second chapter on the origin countries. Consequently, this chapter not only focuses
4 1 Introduction

on the subject of motherhood but also reflects on the absence of the role of the
mother, denied by the traffickers or even by the State.
Finally, the sixth chapter, the most complex chapter in the book, discusses both
the period of exploitation and the period of protection. It is difficult to consider these
two phases separately, especially considering that many Nigerian women are victims
of sexual exploitation within the asylum system (Pascoal 2018). Furthermore, this
chapter presents us with the structural challenges and obstacles facing the Italian
protection system in human trafficking cases, highlighting the importance of each
case being considered individually, regardless of nationality and avoiding
generalisation

1.1 Methodology

Human trafficking for sexual purposes, as much due to its illegal nature, as to its
complex legal definitions, is continuously subject to debate between scholars and has
proven to be a challenging subject for academic researchers (Tyldum and
Brunovskis 2005). The imprecise and unlimited definition of human trafficking, as
well as the perplexity of certain concepts, such as ‘exploitation’, often lead to
researchers being unclear about their target groups. Consequently, research involves
a mix of two terms that are often confused with each other: sex workers and human
trafficking victims. Moreover, researchers are often biased in presenting their data,
according to their own perception of the phenomenon (De Wildt 2016). Considering
these complexities, in order to proceed with an accurate approach, I had to decide on
a precise definition of what I consider sexual exploitation to be. Furthermore, I also
had to be attentive to the ethical aspects of the research, since it was based on the
study of vulnerable groups, within criminal activity.
This study draws on an extensive analysis of academic literature on the subjects
of human trafficking, migration, and gender studies that provides a basis for further
qualitative data collection from the sources.
Despite that initially the research was designed to be concentrated in the Italian
and the Romanian territory, the reading of the report Reply from Spain to the
Questionnaire for the evaluation of the implementation of the Council of Europe
Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings by the Parties. Second
evaluation round (GRETA 2017b) as well as the report Africa-Frontex Intelligence
Community Joint Report (2016), on the latest stage of the research has pushed me in
completing the desk research with the analysis of press review and ruling documents
in the Spanish territory.
The newspaper articles were in Italian and Spanish, obeying to the languages of
the destination countries for both nationalities, published between 2009 and 2017;
these were selected from an online search, using keywords, such as: ‘Nigerian
human trafficking’, ‘Romanian human trafficking’, ‘abortions and sexual exploita-
tion’, ‘motherhood and sexual exploitation’, ‘coercive instruments’, ‘Nigerian
1.1 Methodology 5

Mafia’, and ‘loverboy method’,4 resulting in a total of 26 press articles. The nine
court judgments were in Spanish, selected by searching on the legal database www.
iberley.es for the keywords ‘Nigerian children’, ‘human trafficking’, and ‘prostitu-
tion’, within proceedings from 2000 to 2017. The same research was conducted on
the Italian legal database DeJure with no substantial result. This legal analysis
provided me with a wider knowledge of the phenomenon in two different destination
countries, Spain and Italy (Snape and Spencer 2003). This comparison has also
enriched the present research, since it provides the possibility to consider human
trafficking in a different context, noticing differences in the strategies of the criminal
networks, migration policies and anti-trafficking measures, as well as the ways that
criminal networks adapt to the national legal framework in force.
Research on human trafficking is often hindered by the absence of the target
population (Berman 2003). The small presence of target participants is usually
focused on women that have already been identified (Pascoal 2017). Therefore,
the period of exploitation is difficult to access, not only due to the hidden nature of
the phenomenon but also because it can be unsafe for the researcher, as well as for
the victims (Zimmerman and Watts 2004).
The fact that researchers normally only include identified human trafficking
victims in their research can limit the reader to a one-sided version of the study, as
the victims are already aware of their victimisation and can filter the information they
give. For instance, the oppressed person can restrict or distort data, or provide data to
the researcher according to the information that has been previously given to law
enforcement agents (Pascoal 2017). Furthermore, the victims could still be emotion-
ally attached to their trafficker (IOM 2014). Identified victims are normally
traumatised, which means they are often unable to provide precise information
(Zimmerman et al. 2006) and often fall into a deep silence as a defence mechanism
to the trauma (Brennan 2005). In this case, the researcher not only should be
attentive to avoid secondary victimisation but also should be cautious to avoid the
possibility of exposing the victim to their exploiters. In order to limit the interference
of these potential problems in the research outcomes, the methodology was carefully
planned.
The research involved participant observation within groups of Nigerian and
Romanian migrant women involved in sex work. This method has advantages and
disadvantages (Siegel and De Wildt 2016). It is clearly an efficient and authentic way
to interact with the research subjects and glean information from speaking with them
or overhearing conversations. However, a certain number of limitations must be
considered, such as the amount of time this type of research allows, ensuring the
research meets ethical considerations, and assuring the reliability of the information
provided by the women. Much care was taken to maintain the anonymity of the

4
Definition by the government of the Netherlands:‘loverboys’ (or Romeo pimps) are human
traffickers who usually operate by trying to make young girls or boys fall in love with them.
Sometimes they manipulate young people in other ways. Once they have victims under their
influence, they exploit them, for instance in the sex market https://www.government.nl/topics/
human-trafficking/romeo-pimps-loverboys
6 1 Introduction

sources, as regarding the names that are reported with random initials, as also any
other indicator that might lead to the object of the research.
In general, participatory research in outdoor sex work tends to be limited to short
periods (Coy 2006). However, in order to establish deeper ties with the women, I
engaged in the voluntary street unit once a week, every Friday evening for around
4 hours, for 2 years. The street unit, whose aim was to maintain the contact with the
girls and provide them with support in the arrangement of medical visits or other
types of necessities, performed as the mediator, since they had already established
trustful ties with the girls during the 2 years that they were operative. They have
introduced me as the new member, facilitating the interaction with the girls. Fur-
thermore, my personal characteristics, as a migrant young female—regarding gen-
der, age, and nationality—have also enhanced my relationship with the target group.
These encounters had granted me the opportunity to go deeper into the experi-
ences of the target group, not only by analysing them at different times of the year,
especially during Christmas and Summer but also by being able to interact with them
on different occasions and collect also non-verbal reactions regarding certain sub-
jects. The fact that the participant observation was carried out during their involve-
ment in the sex market allowed me to take a more in-depth look at the issue (Denzin
and Lincoln 2011). What is more, this extended period of participant observation
allowed me to create contexts5 to further explore my subject of interest, thus to
underline indicators of potential human trafficking victims (Pascoal 2017). The
indicators had a relevant role since many of the women do not feel like victims
(Siegel and Yesilgoz 2003), especially considering that exploitation is often
camouflaged by emotional relationships with the traffickers.
As my research is based on the comparison of Romanian and Nigerian women
and it is difficult to have access to both nationalities in the same space, I divided my
study by nationality. On one side, I volunteered for the street unit for Romanian
women who were engaged in the sex market, and on the other side, I volunteered for
an association that provides assistance for Nigerian women who are victims and
survivors of human trafficking. The first group, due to the different roles and
relationships between the women and their pimps, helped me to delimit my defini-
tion of the term ‘human trafficking victim’. This distinction was not simple, consid-
ering that it is difficult to separate sex workers and victims of human trafficking into
two distinct groups; these are not static concepts and one person can easily begin as a
sex worker and become a victim or vice versa (Carchedi and Tola 2008).
I was not able to observe the relationship of the Romanian women with their
children since most of them live a transnational motherhood, hic est, a motherhood
that crosses transnational borders since their children remained in the origin country.
Establishing a confidential relationship with them helped me to understand this
aspect of their lives and their relationship with their origin country. On the other
hand, Nigerian motherhood was observed in prima persona, as my volunteer work

5
For further information, please see the article Pascoal (2017). ‘Minding the Gap’ on human
trafficking for sexual purposes. Romanian Journal of Population Studies, 11(1), 79–91.
1.1 Methodology 7

consisted of taking care of Nigerian children, while their mothers were having Italian
classes. The volunteer work had a duration of 6 months, every Friday for a timing of
4 hours. The Italian classes were part of a support programme, including a trainee-
ship bourse, to victims of trafficking women.
Considering that the first sample group was composed of outdoor Romanian
women engaged in the sex market, from the beginning of my participant observation,
I started to identify potential indicators of human trafficking victims, in order to
avoid confusing human trafficking victims with independent sex workers. The
indicators were: (1) the clothes that they wear according to the temperature, often
the women can be in shorts even during the winter; (2) working for long periods of
time; (3) being present on the street in adverse weather; (4) lack of knowledge of the
city or lack of social life; (5) not going to their country of origin for a long period of
time even when they have children there; and (6) changing their behaviour in the
presence of certain elements of the group (Pascoal 2017). The indicators were set out
on a scale of frequency and detected in higher levels of the scale that varied from
weak, medium, strong to very strong. Furthermore, while one indicator may suggest
a lack of self-determination of the individual, the combination of two or more
indicators strongly suggest a potential exploitative situation.
The use of these indicators, was not only helpful in identifying potential human
trafficking victims, but also in distinguishing the potential controllers within the
group, as can be understood from the last indicator. For instance, the girls were more
talkative and have claimed to go home earlier on the absence of these individuals,
that I had identified as potential controllers. Furthermore, in one case, the suspicion
of the role of the controller was confirmed through the excerpt of police wiretapping
in a newspaper article. During the participant observation, I have outline macro
sensible concepts as ‘sex work’; ‘the relationship within their primary groups as
family and intimate relationships’; ‘relationship with their children’; ‘knowledge of
the urban space’; ‘work conditions’; and ‘social interaction’. These were applied in
order to understand the self-determination of the girl in the workspace and in their
proximity relations, especially in the origin country.
The interaction as a volunteer in a street unit avoids setting off alarms for the
exploiters or controllers, leaving space for deeper conversations when we caught the
girls alone. All these observations were registered after the encounters. Therefore,
every Friday, I registered the observed information, while during the week-interval, I
was able to reflect on the gathered material.
Besides the information provided ‘first hand’ (Laczko and Gozdiak 2005), I also
enhanced the research through the application of 30 semi-structured interviews with
key informants working on the issue of human trafficking, in different sectors. The
application of semi-structured, rather than structured, interviews does not limit the
participant’s answers (Sarantakos 2005) and was intended to create better interaction
with the key informants as well as to allow them more freedom to elaborate on their
experiences (Gorman et al. 2005).
The key informants included: three experts on the subject of human trafficking;
eight law enforcement agents from Italy and Romania: two lawyers, one prosecutor,
one police officer and four agents of the AINTP-The Romanian Anti-Trafficking
8 1 Introduction

Agency; and 19 civil society workers, including 5 interviews in Romania, 1 in

France, and 13 in Italy. Out of the interviewees in Italy, six were employed in
anti-trafficking associations working on the protection path under Art.18 in the
North, Center, and South of Italy, including Sicily. The interviews with the French
and Italian stakeholders were conducted in Italian, while the ones conducted in
Romania were conducted in the English language. The semi-structured interviews
were composed of 20 questions and had an average duration of 1 hour. Three out of
30 interviews were conducted by telephone—one with the French association and
two interviews with Italian associations—while the rest were conducted face to face.
The French interviewee is considered an institutional informer since the individ-
ual is a representative of the organisation responsible at a national level for the
protection and shelter of human trafficking victims, Ac.sé Dispositif. The experience
of the interviewee at a national level with cases of human trafficking victims that
were mothers has incised on the importance of including this interview on the study.
The Italian associations were chosen from different Italian regions, North, Central,
and South Italy, in order to understand the influence of the integration context of the
victims after the exploitation period. Key informants were accessed through the
combination of purposive sampling and the snowball method (Johnson 2014), in
which settings, persons, or events are selected for the important information they can
provide that cannot be accessed in other forms (Maxwell 1997). The variety of
participants working in different sectors provided different perspectives on the
subject, by including the criminal, sanitary, cultural, economic, and social aspects
of the phenomenon during and after the exploitation period.
Pursuing qualitative research in sensitive issues, such as human trafficking,
requires highly ethical protocols (Haggerty 2004). Indeed, the fact that participant
research in human trafficking involves vulnerable subjects usually means it is
regarded as unethical (Siegel and De Wildt 2016). Furthermore, safety should be a
key part of the ethical concerns of the researcher, in which colleagues should be
aware of the location of the researcher (Kelly and Coy 2016). In this case, my
participant observation was firstly through purposive sampling, which introduced
me to the group of volunteers that were already in contact with the women.
Furthermore, since the street unit was a religious group, most of the women assumed
I was a religious person, which for them was synonymous with being inoffensive
(Kelly and Coy 2016).

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Chapter 2
The International Legal Framework
on Human Trafficking

Initially, the international legal framework on human trafficking mainly focused on

women and children in sexual exploitation,1 and only later considered the individual,
regardless of gender and age.2 A broader concept of the term ‘human trafficking
victim’ was only later introduced, with the implementation of the Protocol to
Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and
Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational
Organised Crime, the Palermo Protocol.3 Despite this, the majority of the Member
States admitted that the phenomenon was more prevalent in women and children;
even so, the representatives of the Member States showed preference to include all
categories, rather than only women and children.
The Palermo Protocol introduces the definition of human trafficking in Art.3,4 by
dividing it into three main elements: the act (the recruitment, transportation, transfer,
harbouring, or receipt of persons); the ‘means’ (threat or use of force or other forms

1
The 1904 International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic; the International
Convention for the Suppression of White Slave Traffic in 1910; the 1921 International Convention
for the Suppression of the Traffick in Women and Children; the 1933 International Convention on
the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age.
2
The 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the
Prostitution of Others.
3
United Nations, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially
Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational
Organised Crime, adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by the General
Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15 November 2000.
4
‘“Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt
of persons, by “means” of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of
fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another
person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of
the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or
practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs’.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 13

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4_2
14 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of the

abuse of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or
benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person); and
the purpose (the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery,
servitude or the removal of organs).
In order to recognise the presence of human trafficking, all three elements should
be identified, unless the victim is a minor, in which case, there is the automatic
recognition of the ‘means’ APOV× Abuse of Position of Vulnerability. In this
circumstance, it is not necessary to identify the ‘means’ in order to recognise
human trafficking victims (Pascoal 2017b). Furthermore, it is also important to
note that the intention of the ‘purpose’ is sufficient to denote a human trafficking
situation (Gallagher 2010). For instance, in the case that the offender recruits a
person, through one of the above-mentioned ‘means’, and is caught before the actual
exploitation of the victim occurs. Furthermore, it is also important to highlight that
with the addition of the phrase ‘at a minimum’, the ‘purpose’s’ definition leaves an
option open for potential new types of exploitation. According to Janie Chuang
(2010:1662), ‘a new international law is needed to provide the necessary infrastruc-
ture to ensure cooperation among governments with respect to protection of traf-
ficked persons, prosecution of traffickers, and prevention of the underlying causes of
the phenomenon’.
Despite the fact that the adoption of a common definition of human trafficking has
been a considerable achievement for the international community, the application of
such legal definitions in domestic law has proven to be a challenge (Jansson 2013).
In fact, the broad definition of the concepts, such as ‘vulnerability’, ‘exploitation’,
and ‘consent’, as well as their vagueness and ambiguity, (Roth 2012; Jansson 2013;
Gallagher 2010) have become a bone of contention. In 2004, the publication of the
Protocols’ Legislative Guide by the UNODC provided the Member States with an
in-depth explanation of the terms in the Protocol, with further definitions of the
adopted vocabulary. For instance, the Legislative Guide gives a definition for the
‘means’ of APOV as being ‘any situation in which the person involved has no real
and acceptable alternative, but to submit to the abuse itself’. However, the term ‘real
and acceptable alternative’ still remains unclear (Gallagher 2012).
2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking 15

After the implementation of some European Parliament Resolutions5 and the

Joint Actions by the Council6 and Commission Communications,7 the European
Union implemented the Council Framework Decision 2002/629/JHA of 19 July
2002 on combating trafficking in human beings.8 The Council Framework was
clearly in line with the Trafficking Protocol, maintaining the three elements of
‘act’, ‘means’, and ‘purpose’. Later, in 2004, the Council Directive 2004/81/EC9
established the possibility that third-country citizens, who are human trafficking
victims, would be granted protection, including a residence permit.
With the establishment of the Council of Europe Convention on Action against
Trafficking in Human Beings in 2005,10 the so-called Warsaw Convention, the
Member States were urged to adopt a gender mainstream. The Warsaw Convention
is based on the implementation of the three ‘Ps’—Prevent, Protect, and Prosecution.
In order to monitor the implementation of the Convention, the European Council
established the GRETA Group that frequently evaluates the implementation of the
Convention on the Member States.11

5
See, for instance, the European Parliament’s Resolution A4–0326/95 on Trafficking in human
beings in 1995, at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri¼OJ:C:1996:032:
FULL&from¼EN; Resolution on the Communication from the Commission to the Council and
the European Parliament on trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation (COM(96)
0567 C4–0638/96) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?
uri¼CELEX:51997IP0372&from¼EN; The European Parliament resolution of 10 February 2010
on preventing trafficking in human beings https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/
files/european_parliament_resolution_of_10_february_2010_on_preventing_trafficking_in_
human_beings_1.pdf
6
See for instance the 97/154/JHA: Joint Action of 24 February 1997, adopted by the Council on the
basis of Article K.3 of the Treaty on the European Union, concerning action to combat trafficking in
human beings and sexual exploitation of children, at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/
TXT/?uri¼CELEX%3A31997F0154
7
The Commission communication of 20 November 1996, to the Council and the European
Parliament on trafficking in women for the purpose of sexual exploitation, at https://eur-lex.
europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri¼LEGISSUM:l33095&from¼EN. The Communica-
tion from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament of 9 December 1998, for
further actions in the fight against trafficking in women COM (1998) 726, in https://eur-lex.europa.
eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri¼LEGISSUM:l33096&from¼EN; The Communication
from the Commission to the council and the European Parliament, Proposal for a Council Frame-
work Decision on Combating Trafficking in Human Beings and Combating the Sexual Exploitation
of Children and Child Pornography Com (2000) 854 final.
8
See further at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri¼CELEX:32002F0629&
from¼EN
9
29 April 2004, Council Directive 2004/81/EC, on the residence permit issued to third-country
nationals who are victims of trafficking in human beings or who have been the subject of an action
to facilitate illegal immigration, who cooperate with the competent authorities.
10
See further at https://rm.coe.int/168008371d
11
See further at https://www.coe.int/fr/web/anti-human-trafficking/greta
16 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

In 2011, the European Union adopted the Directive 2011/36 EU,12 which indi-
cates a European Anti-Trafficking Coordinator, previously nominated in 2009, by
the Stockholm Programme—An open and secure Europe serving and protecting the
citizens.13 Furthermore, through Art.19,14 the Directive establishes the National
Rapporteurs or Equivalent Mechanisms. The work of the National Rapporteurs
and Equivalent Mechanisms is based on the assessment of human trafficking trends,
in collaboration with the civil society. In 2013, the EU Anti-trafficking Coordinator
established the EU Civil Society Platform against Trafficking in Human Beings,
composed of almost 100 European NGOs, in order to establish a direct dialogue with
the civil society working on human trafficking.15
The Directive also enhances Article 26,16 the non-punishment provision of the
Warsaw Convention, through Art.8,17 that urges the Member States not to punish
human trafficking victims who commit an unlawful act during their exploitation.
Furthermore, it is also important to mention Art.1718 of the Directive on compensa-
tion, that follows Art.1519 of the Warsaw Convention and was later enhanced by

12
Directive 2011/36/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 April 2011, on
preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims, and replacing
Council Framework Decision 2002/629/JHA, at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.
do?uri¼OJ:L:2011:101:0001:0011:EN:PDF
13
See further at https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/eu-policy/stockholm-programme-open-and-
secure-europe-serving-and-protecting-citizens-0_en
14
‘Member States shall take the necessary measures to establish national rapporteurs or equivalent
mechanisms. The tasks of such mechanisms shall include the carrying out of assessments of trends
in trafficking in human beings, the measuring of results of anti-trafficking actions, including the
gathering of statistics in close cooperation with relevant civil society organisations active in this
field, and reporting’.
15
For further information, please see: http://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/files/
eu_civil_society_platform_against_thb_2018_0.pdf
16
Each Party shall, in accordance with the basic principles of its legal system, provide for the
possibility of not imposing penalties on victims for their involvement in unlawful activities, to the
extent that they have been compelled to do so.
17
Non-prosecution or non-application of penalties to the victim—‘Member States shall, in accor-
dance with the basic principles of their legal systems, take the necessary measures to ensure that
competent national authorities are entitled not to prosecute or impose penalties on victims of
trafficking in human beings for their involvement in criminal activities which they have been
compelled to commit as a direct consequence of being subjected to any of the acts referred to in
Article 2’.
18
‘Member States shall ensure that victims of trafficking in human beings have access to existing
schemes of compensation to victims of violent crimes of intent’.
19
‘Each Party shall provide, in its internal law, for the right of victims to compensation from the
perpetrators. Each Party shall adopt such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to
guarantee compensation for victims in accordance with the conditions under its internal law, for
instance through the establishment of a fund for victim compensation or measures or programmes
2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking 17

Art.1620 of the Directive 2012/29/EU,21 establishing minimum standards for the

rights, support and protection of victims of crime.
In 2012, the European Commission adopted the EU Strategy towards the eradi-
cation of trafficking in human beings for the period 2012–2016.22 The 2012–2016
EU Strategy reinforces the commitment of the European Commission to tackle
human trafficking, with a gender mainstream, through the design of a coherent
policy. The main priorities of the 2012–2016 Strategy are: ‘identifying, protecting
and assisting victims of trafficking; stepping up the prevention of trafficking in
human beings; increasing prosecution of traffickers; enhancing the coordination
and cooperation among key actors and policy coherence; increasing the knowledge
of an effective response to emerging concerns related to all forms of trafficking in
human beings’.
The 2012–2016 Strategy was followed by the adoption of the Communication on
Reporting on the follow-up to the EU Strategy towards the Eradication of trafficking
in human beings and identifying further concrete action, 4 December 2017.23 The
Communication is based on the previous legal framework, with a major emphasis on
‘disrupting the business model and untangling the trafficking chain; provide better
access to and realise the rights for victims; and intensify a coordinated and consol-
idated response, both within and outside the EU’. The aims of the Communication
were later confirmed, through the Joint Statement of commitment to working
together against trafficking in human beings, signed by 10 European Agencies.24

aimed at social assistance and social integration of victims, which could be funded by the assets
resulting from the application of measures provided in Article 23’.
20
‘Right to decision on compensation from the offender in the course of criminal proceedings
1. Member States shall ensure that, in the course of criminal proceedings, victims are entitled to
obtain a decision on compensation by the offender, within a reasonable time, except where national
law provides for such a decision to be made in other legal proceedings. Member States shall
promote measures to encourage offenders to provide adequate compensation to victims’.
21
Directive 2012/29/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 October 2012
establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, and
replacing Council Framework Decision 2001/220/JHA, see text at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri¼celex%3A32012L0029
22
See further at https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/sites/antitrafficking/files/eu_strategy_towards_
the_eradication_of_trafficking_in_human_beings_2012-2016_1.pdf
23
See further at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri¼COM:2017:0728:FIN
24
The European Asylum Support Office (EASO), European Police Office (Europol), European
Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security,
and justice (eu-LISA), European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA),
EU Judicial Cooperation Unit (Eurojust), European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), European
Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), EU
Agency for Law Enforcement Training (CEPOL), and the European Foundation for the Improve-
ment of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).
18 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

2.1 The (in) Definition of Sexual Exploitation

Defining sexual exploitation can be a heavy task, thus, I decided to go beyond the
related literature review, and provide the reader with a socio-legal definition, based
on the implementation of qualitative methodology. Furthermore, I decided that the
implementation of qualitative methodology should not be limited to the opinion of
key infromants but should also include the perspective of the target participants.25
Hence, during the participant observation, I gathered elements from my conversa-
tions with the women engaged in outdoor prostitution while I was volunteering in the
street unit in order to set a clear definition of sexual exploitation as I understand
it. This included voluntary sex workers, semi-autonomous individuals, and potential
human trafficking victims (Pascoal 2017a).26 However, before moving on to a
sociological analysis of the issue, I understand the necessity to revise the interna-
tional legal framework on sexual exploitation, so that a common definition of the
terms can be clarified.
The establishment of a common and international definition of human trafficking
has been a considerable achievement for the world community (UNODC 2012). In
fact, despite the binary debate on the issue, the international legal framework on
human trafficking has a global group of supporters who stress the importance for
each individual to have access to human rights (Zhang 2007). However, as previ-
ously mentioned, the broadness and the vagueness of the definition have been
criticised in academic circles (Roth 2012; Jansson 2013; Gallagher 2010). Indeed,
one group of academics has highlighted the difficulty in applying the definition
within domestic law in the Member States (Jansson 2013).
Due to its ambiguity, the term ‘exploitation’ has proven to be one of the most
challenging concepts to define. In the definition of human trafficking, the term
‘exploitation’ has been allocated under the element ‘purpose’. Initially, the term
was predominantly based on sexual exploitation (UNODC 2006), yet during the
Travaux Préparatoires the term evolved to include other exploitative purposes that
have been added to the trafficking definition. In fact, due to the flexible and dynamic
characteristic of the human trafficking phenomenon, some delegations at the ninth
session of the Ad Hoc Committee advised that the expression ‘at minimum’ be
introduced, which opened the concept of ‘purpose’ to new forms of exploitation that
had not yet been considered (UNODC 2006).
It is important to note that, as stated in Art.3a of the Trafficking Protocol, in order
for all three ‘elements’ (‘act’, ‘means’, and ‘purpose’) to be present, the offender
must have at least the intention of carrying out the ‘purpose’. This means intending

25
During my participant observation, I use the expression ‘women in the sex market’, in order to
apply a neutral expression. With this expression, I avoid generalising and labelling the women as
‘human trafficking victims’ or as ‘sex workers’, as these are proven to be redundant concepts that do
not reflect the complexity of the women’s role while engaged in the sex market.
26
As this research took place during the time that the women were in the sex market, the attributed
definitions are not legally based, but applied based on identification indicators.
2.1 The (in) Definition of Sexual Exploitation 19

to profit from ‘the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual
exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery,
servitude or the removal of organs’. Furthermore, it is important to highlight the
distinction that is made in the Trafficking Protocol between sex work and sexual
exploitation, as one of the three elements above cited. The Protocol introduces the
terms ‘sexual exploitation’ and ‘exploitation of prostitution’ under the element of the
‘purpose’, in which the term ‘exploitation of prostitution’ refers to the ‘benefit from
the prostitution of another person’ (Gallagher 2015). However, both terms have been
highly debated among scholars, due to their inexact definitions.
During the Travaux Préparatoires,27 the Member States decided not to define the
terms ‘exploitation of the prostitution of others’ or ‘other forms of sexual exploita-
tion’, so that each Member State could address these issues, according to their
domestic law. For instance, in the fifth session of the Ad Hoc Committee, the
Netherlands presented a proposal regarding the pitch submitted by the United States
(A/AC.254/L.54). In this proposal, the Netherlands suggested replacing the term
‘sexual exploitation’ with the term ‘slavery’, which should mean ‘the status or
condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of
ownership are exercised, including forced prostitution and servitude and other
practices similar to slavery as defined in Article 1 of the 1956 Supplementary
Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and
Practices Similar to Slavery’.28
The openness of the Protocol regarding these terms has led to different applica-
tions of the concepts, in which some Member States have opted for a more conser-
vative legislation, while others have taken a different stance on the issue of ‘sexual
exploitation’. However, the study of the concept of ‘exploitation’ by the UNODC
(Gallagher 2015) verified that this heterogeneous application leads to major incon-
sistencies, due to the fact that the definition of exploitation varies greatly between
different countries. For example, if in one country every person involved in the sex
market is considered a victim, this country’s statistics may show a higher number of
victims of trafficking than another country, in which only some women engaged in
the sex market are considered victims. In fact, during the UNODC’s study, many
practitioners revealed that it is often difficult to distinguish between human traffick-
ing and other crimes (Gallagher 2015). Furthermore, the seemingly limitless char-
acteristic of the definition of human trafficking provides the Member States with the
possibility to expand or limit its interpretation of undefined concepts within the
national context (Chuang 1998). Therefore, the concept of human trafficking is often
referred to as ‘describe various groups of people’ (Zhang 2007). This misperception
between sexual exploitation and sex work has left a blank space, where there is no
precise definition, at an international level, regarding a fixed concept of ‘sexual
exploitation’.

27
Page 347, subparagraph b.
28
Fifth session: 4–15 October 1999, Rolling text (A/AC.254/Add.3/Rev.4), Article 2 bis1,
‘Definitions’.
20 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

Consequently, this unequal application of the term has led to a binary concept that
is applied according to the moral and legal background of the Member State
(Gallagher 2010). Due to the blurry definition of human trafficking, Member States
have started manoeuvring the definition of human trafficking as a ‘puppet’ that can
be adapted to suit the political position of the State. Furthermore, the international
recognition of the criminal nature of the phenomenon has opened up the possibility
to apply a ‘paradigm of oppression’ regarding anti-prostitution measures (Weitzer
2012).
Over the years, a scholarly debate has emerged within academic feminism
regarding the issue of sex work and sexual exploitation. On one side, sex work is
considered undignified, a form of maintaining patriarchal control over women
(Barry 1995; Hughes 2002), and inherently exploitative (Reanda 1991). For
instance, Carole Pateman (1988) sees prostitution as modern patriarchy, in which a
legal contract is made between unequal sides, where women continue to be submis-
sive, the victims of men. On the other side, and more recently, certain academics
defend the legitimacy and integrity of sex work (Kempadoo and Doezema 1998;
Sullivan 2003; Doezema 2005; Agustín 2007), stating that sexual services should be
seen as an activity that empowers women (Campbell and Sanders 2007) and as
acceptable within a contract of mutual respect (Nussbaum 1999). Therefore, prosti-
tution, instead of being only the perpetuation of the paternalistic and oppressive
violence against women, it may also serve as an independent activity that enhances
women’s empowerment (Kempadoo 2001). This binary debate assumes very stable
but separated positions and still continues today (GAATW 2018).
The increase of migrant women in some European countries has brought more
attention to their involvement in the sex market; as they are usually regarded as
vulnerable individuals, whose consent is often linked to a level of deception, threat,
and exploitation (Kelly and Reagan 2000). On the other hand, the scholar Laura
Agustín (2005) claims that this assumption that migrant women are ignorant and
naive shows a paternalistic attitude towards them. In Agustín’s study of Migrants in
the Mistress’s House: Other voices in the Trafficking debate, the researcher proves
that women use their contacts to travel, often aware of the sexual nature of the work.
‘Given the different degrees of complicity and opportunism on migrants’ part in the
deals made to get them into Europe and employment, ‘trafficked victim’ is a poor
description of and discounts what many women say about their own life projects’
(Agustín 2005: 106). However, the researcher also admits that women might not be
aware of the work conditions in the destination country, especially when referring to
smuggling methods.
This division on the understanding of sex work, especially for migrant women,
led to the creation of a policy in the United Kingdom. This policy was based mainly
on moral values and on a vision of prostitution as inappropriate sexual behaviour,
meaning that in order to receive aid, one had to declare themselves a victim, and
claim that they regretted engaging in sex work. This created the idea that all women
in sex work are vulnerable individuals, linked to criminal networks (FitzGerald
2010; Munro 2005). For instance, the UK Home Office document on Coordinated
Prostitution Strategy (Home Office 2006) enhances the unacceptability of outdoor
2.1 The (in) Definition of Sexual Exploitation 21

sex work. It is described as something that ‘is not an activity that we can tolerate in
our towns and cities’. This statement gives the idea that sex workers are not valid
citizens (Campbell and Sanders 2007), and that they are engaged in immoral activity.
However, Agustín (2005) highlights that it is only the women in the sex market that
are regarded as vulnerable individuals, while men and transsexuals are not. She also
highlights that men are represented as more likely to turn to smuggling networks
than women, in order to migrate. Therefore, even when exploited in the construction
and agricultural sector, men are often denied protection and are not considered to be
human trafficking victims.
In fact, in Italy, despite a great deal of labour exploitation affecting both genders,
especially in domestic work (Sciurba 2015) and in agriculture (Amnesty Interna-
tional 2012; IOM 2010), the majority of victims who have humanitarian protection29
under Art.1830 are female victims of sexual exploitation.31 These statistics reflect
how attention is paid to sexual exploitation rather than other forms of exploitation
(Van Der Leun and Schijndel 2015) due to the fact that the sale of a woman’s body is
considered to be especially humiliating.
Delimiting a clear line between human trafficking and unregulated prostitution
can be as hard and complex as differentiating between forced labour and unregulated

29
Humanitarian Protection: This permit has a duration of 2 years, allowing access to study and work
and is renewable for a work permit. Access to the right of family reunion according to the
requirements of Decree n. 286/1998. Furthermore, the asylum seeker also has access to treatment
as an Italian citizen regarding social and sanitary support and public accommodation (according to
Art. 14, comma 4 of the DPR 12 January 2015, n. 21, that previews the biannual nature of the
residence permit for humanitarian purposes, in the case that the asylum seeker is interested in a
working activity as required in Art.40, comma 6 of Decree n. 286/1998, the asylum seeker can have
access to public accommodation).
30
Article 18, Paragraph 1, of the Consolidated Immigration Act reads: ‘Whenever police operations,
investigations or court proceedings involving any of the offences set out in Articles [inter alia,
600 and 601 CC], or whenever the social services of a local administration, in the performance of
their social assistance work, identify situations of abuse or severe exploitation of a foreign citizen,
and whenever the safety of the foreign citizen is seen to be endangered as a consequence of attempts
to escape from a criminal organisation which engages in one of the afore-cited offences, or as a
consequence of statements made during preliminary investigations or in the course of court pro-
ceedings, the chief of police, acting on the proposal of the Public Prosecutor, or with the favourable
opinion of the same Public Prosecutor, may grant a special residence permit enabling the foreign
citizen to escape from the situation of abuse perpetrated by the criminal organisation and to
participate in a social assistance and integration programme’.
31
Data from the Ministry of the Interior for Gender equality, regarding 2013 and 2014. The statistics
present the number of human trafficking victims identified that have followed a protection path of
Art.18 and Art.13. The total number over the 2 years was 1180 victims, in which 860 were women
and 307 were men; 623 were sexually exploited, compared to 177 for labour exploitation. It is also
interesting to consider the number of concessions of Art.18 for juridical purposes, which was
216, mainly used for the migrant witnesses in the smuggling trials. In fact, despite the vast amount
of labour exploitation in Italy, the application of protection of for human trafficking victims has
been provided in a higher number for witnesses in smuggling trials, than for victims of labour
exploitation. Data retrieved from http://www.archivio.pariopportunita.gov.it/images/stories/
documenti_vari/UserFiles/Il_Dipartimento/tratta/DATI_EMERSIONI_2013-2014.pdf
22 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

labour. Despite this, many feminists find themselves on opposite sides of the binary
debate, between the presence of human trafficking for sexual purposes and the
existence of consented prostitution. It should be assumed that both phenomena
exist (Szörényi 2014) and can be chronologically changeable (Aninoșanu et al.
2016). Therefore, in my opinion, generalising and establishing the place of ‘consent’
in prostitution and sexual exploitation can be a herculean task, especially when
assuming a general theory and ignoring all the complexities within both phenomena.
Within the scholarly debate on the sex market, I understand the concept of
prostitution as a business transaction that empowers women economically
(Kempadoo 2001; Agustín 2005; Nussbaum 1999) and I reject its reduction to the
term ‘sexual exploitation’ (Raymond 2003). Therefore, adults that provide a service
within an economic transaction should already be considered subjects of rights,
within a legal contract. However, sex workers are often regarded as a vulnerable
sexual minority (Campbell and Sanders 2007), as invisible subjects, whose rights are
often not recognised, and are therefore highly exposed to discrimination. The
categorisation of sex workers as a vulnerable group falls into Martha Fineman’s
(2012) theory of a group of individuals ‘who cannot exercise their right to contract’.
The lack of power to contract tends to expose sex workers to a higher risk of
violation of their human rights. Moreover, the lack of laws protecting sex workers
leads them to rely on pimps, who can abuse their position of vulnerability (Carline
2009). Hence, the criminalisation of prostitution or the lack of regulation leads sex
workers into a position of vulnerability.
Despite this moral concern, mainly regarding the idea that migrant women that
are engaged in the sex market are forced into this way of living because they have no
alternative, there are many other work sectors in which migrant women are
exploited. In fact, some work sectors can also expose them to higher risks as well
as to a lack of self-determination. Even if women are inserted within an activity that
is regulated such as caregiving or cleaning, most of their professional relationships
are not based on a legal contract, because there is no control over the women’s
employers (Sciurba 2015). However, these activities, despite the high level of
exploitation, do not tend to be an object of society’s concern, as these sectors are
less visible to the public eye.
During my volunteer work with the street unit, I encountered women who had
previously been working in the sectors that are ‘allocated’ to Romanian women in
Italy, such as caregivers, agricultural workers, or waitresses. Experiencing a high
level of exploitation in such activities, some of these women decided to turn to
prostitution (it was not clear if they were also sexually exploited). The women
declared that their change to the sex market was based on the fact that it was easier
to endure than the exploitation in other activities. For instance, one of them
complained about the heavy work in agriculture and the long hours. Another
woman declared that she worked for 12 years as a caregiver, where she lived with
her employer, working all day, 6 days a week. Both of the women stated that they
preferred working in the sex market, feeling less exploited and earning more money
than in their previous jobs. Another important aspect is the relationship between
2.1 The (in) Definition of Sexual Exploitation 23

wage and work conditions. In fact, the women asserted that in comparison with the
other work sectors, the sex industry provides them with a bigger income.
In Laura Agustín’s (2005) study, the anthropologist encountered many women
that did not complain about prostitution per se but the exploitation that they were
subjected to within the sex market. Actually, the fact that women indeed consent to
the activity (Thomas and Jones 1993) does not necessarily imply that the women
willingly consent to the inadequate conditions (Chuang 1998). During one of my
interviews with a Romanian prosecutor, he referred to different statements made by
women who were identified as victims of human trafficking. His statement reflects
Martha Nussbaum’s (1999) theory, in which the exposure to risk in prostitution, can
be the same as is encountered in other professions:
I was talking to a prostitute: You are not afraid of them? No, because I am a good girl, they
will not beat me, because I am a good girl. They never beat. P: What about STDs? G: Sir, if I
worked in a paint factory, wouldn’t I catch a disease? With a boss yelling at me all the time,
and the head of the department that also harasses me, for less than 500 euro? This amount of
money, I can do it in one day.32

It is very interesting to analyse this woman’s statement regarding prostitution, not

only due to the demonstrated and clear concept of exploitation but also due to her
perception of sex work as not being an undermining activity. The prosecutor also
mentioned that further on during the interview, another girl strongly defended her
engagement in prostitution, refuting all the eventual vulnerability factors, such as
poverty and lack of stability that can lead to sex work.
I had spoken with girls that said: ‘why are you so narrow-minded? It is a job like any other.’ I
met 16-year-old girls, with two apartments in (Romanian city). And they said: ‘I am going to
tell you everything, I know what I am doing, I know I won’t be able to do this all my life, but
now I am at the top, I have in my bank account 13.000 euro.’ -I also met a girl who said: ‘I
am not doing this because of the money, but because I like it. I don’t understand what you
have to do with my sexual life and why it is a subject of the police?’33

Although these girls see their involvement in prostitution in a positive light, this
does not mean that all women who are engaged in the sex market are freely engaged
in the activity. However, it does show that not all women are victims of human
trafficking. During my volunteer work with the street unit, I started to enquire about
the girls’ opinions on the subject of the regulation of prostitution. The answers were
very diverse. For instance, during a conversation with one of the women34 about the
possibility of regulating prostitution in Italy, she declared that the regulation of
prostitution would only provide the sex workers with better work conditions.
Another girl was, instead, planning to migrate to Brussels in order to improve her
conditions, mentioning not only the increase of income but also the possibility to rent
a window and be less exposed to people with aggressive behaviours, as prostitution
is regulated in Belgium (Reinschmidt 2016). However, although some of the girls

32
Interview number 11 (Law enforcement), 03/04/2017, Romania.
33
Interview number 11 (Law enforcement), 03/04/2017, Romania.
34
According to my indicators, this girl has been identified as being voluntarily engaged in sex work.
24 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

had a positive outlook on prostitution, others, despite their involvement in the sex
market, showed a negative perspective, particularly concerning moral grounds. For
instance, one of the women, who was quite angry, told us about a client that
approached her with his girlfriend:
They think that because we have this work, we are wh*res and we like being here, but that
girl is more wh*re than us.

This comment shows that she is disgusted that a woman would willingly share her
partner on sexual grounds with another woman. However, it is interesting that rather
than mentioning the attitude of the man, she focused solely on the attitude of the
woman. This leads us to the conclusion that, contrary to others previously men-
tioned, this woman has a very patriarchal perspective. Furthermore, with this
comment, she also shows she feels that sex work is immoral, and other women
who willingly participate in such acts are disgusting, suggesting that she, herself, has
no choice but prostitution. In fact, this was not the first time that she had expressed
negative feelings towards being engaged in prostitution; she had previously men-
tioned that she was only in the sex market because of her child. It is also important to
highlight that according to a friend in the group that is from the same village in
Romania, this woman suffers domestic violence from her husband who obligates her
to come to Italy and work as a prostitute. However, despite her recent reluctance to
work in the sex market, she has never demonstrated any relevant indicator of being a
human trafficking victim.
During these years in volunteer work in the street unit, different levels of
exploitation and willingness were detected in different girls. For instance, sometimes
the girls within the same group had different opinions. In fact, I have noticed often
that girls from the same group demonstrate different levels of willingness and
exploitation. Thus, I cannot generalise and express one opinion from the viewpoint
of the individuals engaged in the sex market, even if they are within the same group.

2.2 Lack of Legislation in Sex Work. Sexual Exploitation

and Prostitution: The Grey Areas

According to Campbell and Sanders (2007), the lack of policy on sexual services has
been proven to increase the abuse and violence on sex workers. On the other hand,
the regularisation of sex work requires the legalisation of brothels and increases
labour inspections. With these controlling measures, sex workers have more power
to contract about their rights and, thus, they are less exposed to coercive actions and
violence (Brents and Hausbeck 2005). For instance, in Utrecht, the Netherlands, sex
workers are under the protection of the police, which results in less violence against
sex workers and no murder cases (Doornick and Campbell 2006). This suggests that
the vulnerability of sex workers is not based on the range of their activity, but on the
lack of their entitlement to protection and regulation in sex work. In particular, this
2.2 Lack of Legislation in Sex Work. Sexual Exploitation and Prostitution: The Grey. . . 25

concerns the right to work in favourable conditions, where the sex worker is in the
position to oblige the use of contraception.
While one group of researchers sustains that regulating sex work can decrease the
vulnerability of the sex workers, the anthropologist Agustín (2005) affirms that,
despite the fact that the legislation on sex work in the Netherlands has strengthened
their labour rights, it has also augmented the gap between national sex workers and
migrant sex workers. This disparity within the sex market is due to the perception of
migrant women as a vulnerable group, as they are not able to access a work permit
for sex work. Consequently, migrant women are seen to bring down the quality and
the image of independent sex workers, not only due to selling sexual services for
lower prices but also due to the image they portray of a lack of freedom for women in
the sex market, who are often assumed to be trafficking victims. Laura Agustín’s
study reports that, despite the legalisation of prostitution in some countries, the work
conditions of the sex workers do not always improve, as is also true in the labour
market (Cho et al. 2013).
In countries or states where sex work is not regulated, people have a tendency to
be condescending towards sex workers, who are often referred to as victims and
considered to be without agency. Sex workers can also be regarded as non-rights’
holders or non-citizens, especially if they are migrant women. Furthermore, sex
workers are often considered unworthy to protect, not only in the abolitionist
countries but also in countries where prostitution is not regulated. In the book La
vittima (Gulotta 1976), the author details several factors of vulnerability that predis-
pose a person to be a victim. These are pull factors that can be considered intrinsi-
cally part of the victim—passive vulnerability—that actually attracts offenders in
committing a crime. One of these factors concerns those who are considered to be
sexually deviant, as prostitution is seen as immoral in a number of social contexts.
This means that, although there are numerous cases in which prostitutes are victims
of certain crimes, the authorities might not feel the obligation to protect them, as they
are often seen as deviant individuals. In fact, groups who are normally criminalised
by the state are generally avoided as subjects of political rights, being reduced to
‘bare life’, with just the right to survive (Peano 2012; Agamben 1998).
This observation reflects that the vulnerability of sex workers, in being mainly
exposed to certain crimes, is not limited to the nature of the activity itself, but to
the cultural and social stigmatisation that is also present within the representatives of
the state. Hence, if the crimes against them are not being taken seriously due to the
characteristics of the target group, then there is a tendency for repercussion and lack
of protection. For instance, volunteers of a street unit that I interviewed stated that on
one of the visits the girls were scared because a man was threatening them. The girls
decided to call the police in order to ask for protection. However, once the person
answering the phone heard she was a sex worker, they hung up; this happened twice
and only when one of the volunteers, who belongs to a religious congregation, called
the police did the person at the hotline send the police to verify the situation.
This situation demonstrates that in countries where prostitution is not legislated,
the protection from the State is usually only granted when the individuals engaged in
the sex market are considered victims of human trafficking (Kapur 2002), hic est,
26 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

women who regret being involved in sex work. For example, in Italy, the protection
to human trafficking victims granted by Art.18,35 when it was first applied, pre-
cluded that in order to obtain access to the residence permit the woman had to
abandon the sex market, even if the woman was no longer exploited. The separation
of the protection path from the residence permit has occurred with the introduction of
Art.6, comma 4 of the Legislative Decree on 28 December 2006 n.300, to include
Romanian and Bulgarian citizens, at the time new members of the European Union
(Mancini 2007). However, despite this separation, many protection institutions still
offered shelter to the victim only in case of ‘redemption’.36

2.3 The Relevance of the Means

Not all trafficking definitions seem to include the element of the ‘purpose’.
According to the feminists Wijers and Lap-Chew (1997: 45), trafficking in women
can be defined as ‘all acts involved in the recruitment and/or transportation of a
woman within and across national borders for work or services by means of violence
or threat of violence, abuse of authority or dominant position, debt bondage,
deception or other forms of coercion’. The analysis of the given definition stresses
the importance of understanding that the trafficking dynamics are mainly concen-
trated on the ‘act’ and the ‘means’, rather than the ‘purpose’, itself.
Therefore, in this subchapter, we will analyse the importance of the ‘Means’
within the definition of sexual exploitation.
As previously mentioned in this debate, I, myself, oppose the idea that sexual
exploitation is equal to prostitution, by denying the consideration that women that
engage in this activity are all victims of human trafficking. Hence, I agree with
Korvinus’s (2006) definition of exploitation that describes it as the endeavour to
obtain the maximum gain possible by means of abuse and specifically in relation to a
person working in unfavourable conditions. Therefore, from my perspective, pan-
dering per se cannot be considered exploitation, as it only includes profiting from
another person. Furthermore, I consider that being employed as a sex worker can
often serve as protection and is a safety guarantee for many women (Agustín 2005;
Campbell and Sanders 2007), depending on the conditions in which this person is
expected to work and live. This means that, contrary to the major national legisla-
tions in Europe, I do not consider procuring or pandering a form of exploitation by
itself, unless it is accompanied by the described ‘means’ in the Protocol’s trafficking
definition or in situations that go beyond the worker’s normal conditions as stated in

35
Legislative Decree 25 July 1998, n. 286, ‘Testo unico delle disposizioni concernenti la disciplina
dell’immigrazione e norme sulla condizione dello straniero’, published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale
n. 191 18 August 1998—Supplemento Ordinario n. 139.
36
We will further discuss this issue in the following chapter regarding granting protection within the
grey zones between asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking.
2.3 The Relevance of the Means 27

their contract or the national legislation (ILO 2009). In this case, Member States
should consider the element of exploitation when the employer does not meet the
compliance of the national labour law regarding working and rest hours, safety
measures and remuneration, or in the presence of the ‘means’.
According to the Dutch Government that legally regulates sex work in the
national law, basic human rights, such as dignity, physical integrity, or personal
freedom, should be the factors used to delimit exploitation from labour activity,
including sex work (Korvinus 2006). Obviously, delimiting these aspects has also
been a difficult task, especially since other governments, such as the Swedish
government, understand prostitution as a violation of human rights. Therefore, in
order to determine a transparent definition of exploitation, by avoiding concepts that
can be seen as ambiguous, I consider that within the debate on human trafficking for
sexual exploitation and sex work, the focus should be on the ‘means’ used and the
conditions of the purpose—that should follow the national labour legislation regard-
ing the working and rest hours, safety measures, remuneration—rather than the
purpose itself.
Furthermore, I do not agree with Hughes (2002) who considers that the free will
of sex workers is always somehow coerced by trauma, substance addiction, poverty,
or violence, but I value the possibility that women are capable of ‘consent’. On the
other hand, consent can be coerced, especially in cases where emotional ties and
psychological manipulation are used, such as the loverboy method. Therefore, in this
research, I use the term ‘sexual exploitation’ when, in a substantial asymmetry of
power, the dominant person subjects an individual to inferior conditions and abuses
the position of vulnerability of the victim, bringing about a situation where the
victim lacks an alternative. In case of Member States in which sex work is not
regulated, an exploited person is one who is in a subjugated position on an asym-
metric relationship of power and demonstrates to have unacceptable working con-
ditions and remuneration in comparison to the living and working standards in the
destination country. Therefore, in the case of sex work, an exploited person is one
who is in an inferior position to the circumstances in which an articulate sex worker
would normally operate according to the national legislation, in case prostitution is
regulated.37
In this case, the Netherlands presents an example regarding the definition of
sexual exploitation,38 since it seems to be a very clear perception of the difference

37
13, e.g. Supreme Court 5 February 2002, which refers to the Explanatory Memorandum to the
(old) Article 250 of the Criminal Code.
38
Section 273f,5 , Inserted within the Part XVIII. Serious Offences against Personal Liberty,
‘induces another person to make himself available for the performance of sexual acts with or for
a third party for remuneration or make his organs available for remuneration or takes any action in
regard of another person which he knows or has reasonable cause to suspect will lead that other
person to make himself available for the performance of these acts or services or make his organs
available, whereas this person is under the age of eighteen years’. ‘Exploitation shall at least include
exploitation of another person in prostitution, other forms of sexual exploitation, forced or com-
pulsory labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery or servitude’.
28 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

between the regular conditions of the worker and the abuse of the same activity
regarding the nature of the work conditions and the number of hours worked.
Therefore, if the work is regulated, where the acceptable conditions of the worker
are legally defined, submission to exploitative labour conditions should be easy to
identify. What is more, the identification of exploitation can also be decided based
on the victims’ earnings, rather than their work conditions. For instance, in one case
the Amsterdam Court of Appeal declares the fact that ‘the suspect also intended to
exploit the complainants is, in any case, apparent from the fact that the complainants
had to surrender half of their earnings from prostitution to the suspects and/or their
fellow suspects, while there was no proportionate effort in return’.39
In the article Stealing Labour: an economic analysis of forced labour and human
trafficking, the author, Fabrizio Sarrica (2015), provides us with a very illustrative
mathematic equation by which exploitation can be defined. The equation combines
four main elements: the desired salary and the obtained salary; with the desired
worked hours and the actual worked hours. According to the author, exploitation can
be defined by the difference between the desired wage and the received wage as well
as the difference between the desired worked hours for the received wage and the
actual worked hours. Therefore, in order to perceive the level of exploitation, Sarrica
(2015) multiplies the desired wage by the number of worked hours, in order to
achieve the total number of worked hours with the worker’s required wage. Fur-
thermore, with the presented equation, Fabrizio Sarrica (2015) not only determines
and delimits an exact definition of exploitation, but he also suggests its use in terms
of calculating a monetary sum regarding the compensation for the victim.
In case that there is no presence of flagrant exploitative conditions, and where
exploitation can only be verified by the division of earnings and emotional manip-
ulation between the victim and the trafficker, the victims do not usually perceive
their own victimisation. In fact, in these cases, it is more difficult to prove the
‘means’, such as ‘deception’ and ‘coercion’. Furthermore, the level of awareness
of victimisation can also depend on cultural context and societal perceptions, which
are not always immediately obvious to the victims (Gallagher 2010). In fact, in cases
where the exploiters have been profiting through the loverboy method, it has been
difficult to prove the existence of human trafficking without the application of harder
‘means’, meaning that the exploitation is often based on the use of APOV.
Different levels of exploitation have been identified in human trafficking. For
instance, Carchedi et al. (2003) highlights that coercion, such as taking the victim’s
ID or passport, is ‘lighter’ than, for example, the total constraint of mobility or
violence that could be inflicted on the victim. Moreover, the author highlights that
these two situations belong to a range of infinitive combinations of coercion mea-
sures that can be found and identified within human trafficking.
According to the sociologist Francesco Carchedi et al. (2003), human trafficking
for sexual exploitation normally comes under a more extensive phenomenon, such as
foreign prostitution. The author further reflects on the fluidity with which one can

39
Amsterdam Court of Appeal 26 October 2011, LJN: BU4222.
2.3 The Relevance of the Means 29

change between the three different categories that he has identified within the
phenomenon of prostitution (autonomous; semi-autonomous; exploited). During
my field experience, I was able to verify the journey of a girl who was exploited
by one group but was then later identified to be autonomous in another group, in a
different location. Within this last group, the woman developed an ambiguous
relationship of friendship with limited coercion, mainly based on soft ‘means’
resulting in a situation of semi-autonomous relationship, with no engagement of
physical violence. In this way, the coercion was masked by a psychological-affective
dependency, based on the element of trust and on the woman’s need for affection.
This situation is indeed quite common, especially between Romanian citizens; in
order to sexually exploit their co-nationals, they do not start with exploitation, but
with a masked friendship/relationship. During my time with the street unit, we used
to visit a group of girls who appeared at first to be sex workers. However, after
1 year, one of the girls began to show signs of potential indicators of being a human
trafficking victim. Therefore, despite initially not displaying any apparent indicator
of exploitation, after a year, the girl had started to behave differently. Particularly, a
certain avoidance had become noticeable, especially in speaking with the street unit
volunteers in the presence of one of the girls, who was actually the one who has been
positioned in that area the longest. The girl had started to menace her friend and this
was when the victim realised the situation of deception. Therefore, one day, when
she was alone with the members of the street unit, she explained that the price she
initially agreed to pay was later increased and she felt deceived by the ‘controller’ of
the joint,40 who she thought was a friend.
The exposed situation presents us with two main elements in human trafficking
for sexual purposes. The first is manipulation by way of emotional relationships,
using soft ‘means’ (deceit, fraud, and APOV). The use of this strategy reduces the
risk of the exploitative situation being reported to the authorities, especially in cases
in which the victim is a citizen of the European Union. The second important
element is that the submission process is gradual, again a form of ‘deceit’, in
which, the victim only understands the scheme after a long period of time, when
they are already in a situation of submission and had developed an interdependent
relationship.
This level of exploitation has been identified by Carchedi et al. (2003) as semi-
autonomous, in which the ‘protectors’ lead the sex workers into partial submission.
Partial submission is one of the most difficult states to identify as exploitation, as in
many cases a large percentage of the gains can go to the sex worker, but at the same
time, coercive instruments have been used to submit the sex worker to exploitation.
What is more, in one of the three levels within the phenomenon of prostitution,
Carchedi et al. (2003) identifies the possibility of the protection of a male figure in a
consensual agreement. However, in my opinion, in these cases, exploitation can be
present, not due to the fact that the boyfriend profits economically from the sex work

40
Term used (usually among Nigerians) to describe the area of pavement or position in the street
where the sex worker stands in order to attract clients.
30 2 The International Legal Framework on Human Trafficking

of the girlfriend, but in his role regarding her activity and considering if the amount
of money earned is representative of his work. Therefore, in case the boyfriend
assumes a relevant role in the activity of the girlfriend, such as public relations,
protector, or agent that arranges the clients, then he shall receive the proportional
amount of money for it. This must occur always on the absence of the ‘means’, that
is, in a situation that the sex worker consents the boyfriend to perform these roles. On
the other hand, if the boyfriend does not considerably perform a professional role,
then he should not be entitled to a tribute of the woman’s work. In case the tribute is
given in the presence of the ‘means’ than the victim only accepts the contract since
there is a lack of alternative; as refrained by Michael 2012) ‘accept my power, for I
will protect you from worse violence’.
Furthermore, it should be noted that traffickers have improved their strategies,
especially when targeting EU citizens, where physical coercion is avoided, and the
element of trust is essential to the implementation of softer techniques. In fact, in
these cases, women who are victims of trafficking should not be regarded as victims
due to their engagement in sex work, but due to the manipulation and emotional
abuse by their boyfriends that takes them away from the empowerment they should
experience as an autonomous employee. Therefore, regarding migrant women from
one side only as sex workers or from another side only as victims of human
trafficking, seems to disregard the complexities of human trafficking, considering
that both sides provide a redundant and an extremist perspective of engagement in
the sex market.

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Chapter 3
Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries
to Destination Countries

3.1 Vulnerable Factors from the Origin Countries

As previously stated, this book will guide the reader through the different phases of
human trafficking, from the origin country, where the woman is usually recruited, to
the transit and the destination country, when the transfer and the exploitation occur.
Therefore, this chapter helps the reader understand the starting point of the process of
human trafficking, which is usually related to a low level of education, limited access
to information, and difficult familial contexts (IOM 2017; Zhang 2007). Further-
more, due to the comparison between Romanian and Nigerian women, the present
chapter also discusses the journey of the Nigerian women up until they arrive in the
destination country. This long passage through several transit countries is mainly
due to the limitation of regular migration possibilities to Europe (UNODC 2018).
Furthermore, as we will see, the transit countries have become exploitation hubs for
migrant women (IOM 2017), which has increased their level of vulnerability.
Poverty and lack of opportunities seem to be the main cause of human trafficking
(Carling 2006), as well as high levels of unemployment, illiteracy, and gender
inequality (Frontex 2018). Furthermore, it is also important to focus on the socio-
cultural context of the origin countries, especially regarding the cultural models that
grow around the phenomenon of human trafficking. In Benin City, for instance, a
cultural framework has been created around the migration flows to Italy and Spain
due to ‘quick money syndrome’ (Pamblech 2014). The women often have high
expectations when departing for Europe, and are also often pressured by their
families. According to Blessing (2017), in Benin City, the expectation for girls is
so high that when a child is born, usually the family is disappointed if it is male. In
addition, due to the culture of migrating to Europe, girls that do not want to study are
often called Italian girls, because their aim is to depart and go to Italy. Therefore,
according to Blessing, some of these girls prefer to rely on boyfriends who are
already established in Europe, the so-called Yahoo boys. These boys normally find

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 35

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4_3
36 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

the women through internet chats, aiming to recruit them and bring them to Europe
(Blessing and Pozzi 2017).
In Benin City, the ‘European dream’ is deeply rooted within the cultural dimen-
sion of the community. For instance, the researcher Pamblech (2014) discussed the
presence of several adverts selling language courses in the languages spoken in the
main destination countries, that is to say, Spanish, Italian, French, and Swedish,
which predominantly target those aiming to migrate to these countries. Furthermore,
the ‘European dream’ is enhanced by the migrants and the victims who have already
departed and feel the need to demonstrate their success in the destination country.
Therefore, the continuous stream of information suggesting a prosperous life in
Europe leads many women into a situation of ‘deceit’ regarding the conditions in
Europe, especially concerning sexual exploitation (Malakooti and Davin 2015).
Although the previously mentioned factors consider the situation of Nigerian
women, they can also be identified as some of the root causes of Romanian human
trafficking for sexual exploitation. I will start with a common element in both groups,
also identified as one of the most important influence factors on human trafficking,
the family (European Commission 2015). The family is a base institution that
provides social, cultural, and economic resilience resources that can better address
a vulnerability (Fineman 2010). However, due to its important role, family can also
be a push factor towards an exploitative situation (Europol 2016).
It has been proven that family often can have a key role in Romanian human
trafficking, in that the women depart in order to make money to help their family
have access to a good house (Pascoal and Schwartz 2016). However, the effect of
this role on the victim is ambiguous. It is true that, on one hand, family can have an
interest in maintaining the women in the sex market, but on the other hand, it has also
been proven that the contact that Romanian women have with their relatives in the
origin country can be a resilience factor, helping them to escape the exploitative
situation.1 In comparison to Nigerian women, Romanian families are geographically
closer to the women, not only due to their accessibility by phone, but also regarding
the possibility of frequent visits between the destination and origin country. In fact,
the geographical and legal position of Romania in the European Union allows the
women to have consistent contact with their relatives; this was enhanced by the
increase of low-cost airlines between Romania and Italy.
The involvement of the family in the sex market is not only clear in the Romanian
cases, but it has also often been mentioned with regard to the situation of Nigerian
women (IOM 2015). In fact, according to Sister Florence, in the report of the Danish
Immigration Office, half of the victims in Nigeria have been trafficked by their
relatives, be it their mother, father, brother, boyfriend, or husband (Danish Immi-
gration Office 2007). The fact that the girls are often recruited in a familial environ-
ment (Okojie et al. 2003) and that the recruiter is a relative does not only impose a
vulnerability factor in the recruitment phase, but it can also put a lot of pressure on
the victim during the exploitation phase.

1
Interview number 3 (expert on THB), 29/11/2016, Italy.
3.1 Vulnerable Factors from the Origin Countries 37

The responsibility of feeding the family, usually attributed to the older sisters in
Nigeria, increases the pressure on the victim to endure the exploitation. Therefore,
although family can be a strong resilience asset against the exploitative situation
(Kirby 2006), it is also one of the most influential factors that maintains a woman in
exploitation, especially if the relatives are interested in receiving money from the
girl. In this case, the family becomes a factor of resistance (Butler et al. 2016), thus a
factor that makes the woman endure the exploitative situation, and it does not
provide the victim with the means to overcome the situation of trafficking. Hence,
being a resistance factor, it only lengthens the duration of the exploitation, enhancing
the endurance of the victim during the exploitation, but not leading to a state of
resilience, where the victim is able to overcome the position of vulnerability (Butler
et al. 2016). This resistance factor is linked to the fact that family can be considered a
plausible justification for exploitation (Peled and Parker 2013). Hence, once the
individual is able to escape the exploitative situation, the family is the main element
that can either protect the woman or lead her into a situation of re-trafficking or
continuous victimisation.
Besides the influence of the family, another important aspect that has an impact
on the women of both nationalities is community. For Romanian women, it can be a
positive or negative influence. In Italy, the Romanian community, which counts with
a total of 1.206.938 citizens, is stronger than the Nigerian that on 1 January 2019
counted with only 117.358 citizens.2 On the contrary to the migration in the United
Kingdom, the Nigerian diaspora in Italy does not have a historical or cultural
background. They settled in Italy by working firstly in the tomatoes harvesting,
passing later to the sex business. Further on, many of these women started to call
their co-national in order to work for them in the sex market (Cole 2006). Therefore,
part of the female Nigerian diaspora in Italy has established themselves in the
territory through their engagement in the sex market (Carchedi et al. 2003). Conse-
quently, as a part of the Nigerian community was or is in contact with the sex market,
there is a more complex intercommunity.3
Age is also considered a relevant vulnerability factor,4 especially considering that
the victims tend to be more naïve when they are younger. Indeed, at a younger age,
women are easier to manipulate and are likely to pay more for the debt (Fernandez
et al. 2017). Since 2014, Italy has registered an enormous increase of female
Nigerian non-accompanied minors (IOM 2017). However, despite the fact that the
Nigerian women arriving in Italy are younger than before, the traffickers often force
the women to declare that they are adults. In Italy, the Legislative Decree 47/2017
concedes the entitlement of special rights to non-accompanied minors. For instance,
they are entitled to have a guardian that is legally responsible for them. Moreover,
the minors are placed in adequate reception centres or family institutions for minors
with major safety measures than the reception centres that are previewed for adults.

2
For more information, further see https://www.tuttitalia.it/statistiche/cittadini-stranieri-2019/
3
Interview number 3 (expert on THB), 29/11/2016, Italy.
4
Interview number 3 (expert on THB), 29/11/2016, Italy.
38 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

Therefore, by declaring adulthood, the minors are allocated in reception centres for
adults, with less restrictive schedules and controls, facilitating contact with the
traffickers (IOM 2015).
In contrast, Romanian minors are not often trafficked to Italy, as the traffickers
avoid potential legal obstacles by trafficking them at a domestic level.5 In fact, being
within the European Union, Romanian traffickers often attract minors, especially
those with an unstable childhood, to human trafficking, at a domestic level, through
the loverboy method. The traffickers often marry the minors in Romania, in order to
avoid requesting power of attorney from the parents to pass the border. In this way,
the trafficker is the husband, thus legally responsible for the minor.6

3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability?

In order to understand the victims’ level of vulnerability in the destination country, it

is important to understand the vulnerability that the victims are exposed to during the
journey. As this book is a comparison between Romanian women and Nigerian
women, this subchapter regarding the travel will be focused only on Nigerian
women. This particular focus on Nigerian women is due to the restrictions imposed
on migration from Nigeria, contrary to the situation of Romanian women for whom
their European Union citizenship guarantees easier mobility and accessibility
between the origin country and the destination country. Furthermore, this subchapter
only considers the current situation of Nigerian women who arrive in Europe
through the Mediterranean Sea, because, as we will observe, in the past the majority
of the victims would mostly arrive directly by plane (Carchedi 2000). However, it is
important to mention that this does not mean that all Nigerian human trafficking
victims enter illegally into European territory through the Mediterranean Sea.
The introduction of Nigerian women in Italian territory was initially connected to
the emotional relationships that were established between the Nigerian women in the
periphery of Benin City and Lagos and the male staff of AGIP, Italian Petrol. The
women were deceived in these relationships, as they hoped to marry in Europe in
order to escape from a situation of poverty (Carchedi 2000). Once in Europe without
an established economic situation, the women started to work on the seasonal tomato
harvest during the summer. Because harvesting ceased in the winter months, and the
women needed a continuous income, many decided to engage in the sex market
(Cole 2006). Consequently, Nigerian women started to see the sex market as a

5
Interview number 18 (Romania). Supported by analysis of the SIMEV statistics provided to the
author by the Anti-Trafficking National Agency. According to the cross-examined data between
internally exploited victims and their age, it was verified by SIMEV statistics that in 2015, 69% of
the victims internally exploited were under 17 years of age.
6
Romanian High Court of Cassation and Justice, 19 April 2010, Decision no.149, https://www.
unodc.org/cld/case-law-doc/criminalgroupcrimetype/rou/2010/2228542008.html?lng¼en&
tmpl¼htms
3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability? 39

profitable occupation and started to call their relatives and female acquaintances to
come to Italy, through the establishment of a debt.
According to PietroStefani (2000), in 1989 the main Italian cities hosted around
6000 Nigerian women with visas granted by the Italian Embassy in Lagos, while by
the middle of the 1990s, this number had increased to 15,000 Nigerian women. In
fact, the period between 1991 and 1992 is what sociologist Francesco Carchedi
(2000) defines as the second wave of prostitutes arriving in Italy. This migration
wave included Nigerian women that arrived by plane from Lagos directly to Italy or
entered Europe through Amsterdam with a tourist visa and stayed illegally after the
expiry date.
The high number of visas granted by the Italian Embassy in Lagos conducted the
Torino Public Prosecutor’s Office to start investigating the involvement of the
Embassy in Nigerian criminal network activities. Consequently, the final judgement
on 28 June 1999, led to the prosecution of four members of the Italian Embassy in
Lagos. This operation, and the consequent loss of the criminal networks’ contacts
within the Italian Embassy, directed them in finding other routes and new sources to
grant travel documents. In fact, the criminal networks have started to use several
European countries, such as the Netherlands, England, and Spain as transit countries,
bringing victims in by plane and then continuing the journey to Italy by land.
Nowadays, women are brought to Europe from Nigeria in two ways: through the
Mediterranean, mainly Spain, Malta, Greece, and Italy, or directly by plane through
other European countries. According to the Frontex report (2016), the main
European cities that receive direct flights from Lagos with fraudulent documents
are Madrid, London, and Rome, while origin airports were also mentioned such as
Accra, Bamako, Casablanca, and Dakar. The smugglers tend to have access to
forged Nigerian or foreign passports, which take 3 weeks to arrive and cost up to
1000 US Dollars (Malakooti and Davin 2015).
Historically, the majority of the victims would come from the Edo State, espe-
cially since pioneer traffickers have established ties within this region. Therefore, the
region has become a hub for organised crime operating in human trafficking.
Consequently, the establishment of such a hub has attracted people from other
Southern states of Nigeria such as Ogun, Osun, Lagos, Anambra, Enugu, Imo,
Rivers, Cross-River, Delta, and Akwa Ibomthat, who were later recruited in Europe
(Frontex 2018). There are four recognised routes to exit Nigeria: ‘via Nigeria’s
northern border into the Niger; from Lagos State, exiting via the south-western
border into Benin; from Borno State, exiting via the north-Eastern border into
Cameroon and Chad; and flying out of Lagos or Abuja airports’ (Malakooti 2016: 9).
According to an interview in the report NoTratta (Baldoni et al. 2014), the well-
structured criminal networks operating in sexual exploitation still bring women into
Europe by plane, usually by means of tourist visas or family reunification. Appar-
ently, the possibility of travelling by plane is based according to the amount of
money that the woman can bring to the trafficker. Furthermore, it is illogical for the
criminal networks to invest so much money in their ‘products’ and to later expose
them to risks in the desert or the sea and condemn the women to a fragile physical
and psychological condition (Baldoni et al. 2014). However, the possibility of
40 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

sending the women to the destination countries by plane seems to be limited to the
well-structured criminal networks, while in the Mediterranean it has been revealed
the prevalence of largely independent actors (Campana 2018).
The choice of trafficking Nigerian women through the Mediterranean, particu-
larly through Libya, has had a deep impact on their exploitation. Nowadays, the
women present an asylum claim once they enter Italy, which decreases their debt, to
25,000–30,000 euros, as I will further analyse. In the past, the price of the debt for
trafficking women through Morocco was cheaper for the victims than the Libyan
route (Frontex 2016). However, the Moroccan route has registered a price increase,
due to control over Nigerian criminal networks in the country and the consequent
stability. For this reason, a Nigerian community has been established in the cities of
Nador and Oujda. The presence of this diaspora is mainly due to the block at the
Spanish border, which consequently only allows the passage of a small flow of
people, inflating the passage price of each victim.
The vast majority of Nigerian women arriving in Morocco are allocated in Europe
and normally do not plan to stay in Morocco, yet due to the problems in reaching
Spain, many women stay in the country for a longer period (Kastner 2010). The
amount of time spent in the transit country has a direct influence on the condition of
the women arriving in Europe; those passing through Morocco often stay for at least
a year in the transit country and therefore often get pregnant and give birth in
Morocco, arriving in Europe with young children. In contrast, those passing through
Libya until 2017 did not stay long enough to give birth and mostly arrived in Europe
when they are still pregnant (UNHCR, IMPACT, Altai 2017).

3.2.1 The Libyan Route

The Libyan smuggling route was previously quite well controlled, due to the
agreement on 29 December 2007 between Libya and Italy, with the Additional
Protocol techno-operative between the Italian Republic and the Great Libyan Arab
Jamahiriya. The agreement meant that the Italian Republic provided ships to inter-
vene in the smuggling of migrants arriving from Libya, and this resulted in an
increase in refoulement of migrants to Libya (Human Rights Watch 2009).
The Protocol was enhanced by the signing of the Benghazi Treaty,7 on 30 August
2008, in which Muammar Gaddafi confirmed his collaboration on the prevention of
smuggling of migrants heading towards Italian territory. However, with the start of
the civil war and the death of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the military forces lost
control of the smugglers, which led to many migrants that were living in Libya
starting to arrive in Europe. In fact, in this climate of instability, the smugglers
started to use Libya as a transit country. Furthermore, after the death of Gaddafi, due

7
The friendship, partnership, and cooperation Treaty between the Italian Republic and the Great
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability? 41

to the dissolution of one of the Libyan armies, mainly constituted by sub-Saharan

citizens, many Nigerians returned to their origin country and started to fight with
Boko Haram (Barlow 2017).
Consequently, due to the recent increase in conflicts and terrorist attacks in the
North of Nigeria leading the country into a state of instability, migration from
Nigeria through the Mediterranean route has dramatically increased (Nourhan
et al. 2015). Therefore, criminal networks operating along the African routes have
started to organise bus or car transportation for migrants, in order to facilitate
crossing the borders, by bribing the border officials or by the presentation of forged
travel documents. According to the UNODC’s (2018) report Global Study on
Smuggling of Migrants, smugglers do not establish fixed fees, instead, the fees
depend on several factors, such as the distance, the number of border crossings,
the geographic conditions, the means of transportation, and the use of fraudulent
documents. Furthermore, it is important to note that the smuggling of migrants is
subject to economic rules, such as supply and demand.
In recent years the criminal networks have seen the smuggling of migrants as a
high-profit activity, which has led to an increase of individual passeurs operating in
the different countries along the route (UNODC 2018). Moreover, the smugglers do
not seem to be connected in a hierarchical or a highly structured organisation, but
they seem rather to have transnational ties that allow a quick geographical change, in
case of increase of demand or institutional obstacles (Nourhan et al. 2015).
According to criminologist Paolo Campana (2018), the number of smugglers also
increases according to the demand for a certain ethnicity or nationality.
The typical route leading to Libya passes through the cities of Kano, Ziden,
Agadez, Gatron, Sabah, Brach, Tripoli, and Zuwarah, where the criminal networks
have fixed people. It can take from 2 weeks to 1 month, by lorry, to pass each point.
In order to pass the borders, migrants are usually obliged to pay bribes to the border
police. However, this amount of money tends to be higher than the amount that the
migrants anticipate. Therefore, this usually means they must postpone the continu-
ation of their travel, in order to have a major profit in the transit countries. Conse-
quently, this situation puts the migrants in a very vulnerable position, especially
being exposed to traffickers or smugglers that offer them a passage in exchange for
bonded labour in Libya. In the case that the migrants are not able to pay the border
agents, the smugglers offer the sexual services of the women to the border agents, in
exchange for passage. The women’s bodies, whether they are accompanied by their
husbands or alone, are objects of violence, and they are repeatedly exposed to sexual
abuse by the smugglers on the route to Libya (Malakooti 2016).
The entrance into Niger for the Nigerian women often passes through the region
of Zinder and Marada, which is near to the Nigerian border and not far from the
urban centres of Kano and Katsina (Beretta et al. 2016). Once they have entered into
Niger, the migrants are directed to Agadez, which is where many of Nigerian
migrants, women and men, who were not initially recruited, understand that they
have been trafficked (Malakooti 2016).
In fact, when travelling the Libyan route, the migrants can be categorised into one
of three profiles: (1) they have been kidnapped by the traffickers or have departed
42 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

involuntarily from Nigeria; (2) initially they were not planning to migrate until a
recruiter suggested going to Libya or to Europe; and (3) they departed on their own,
without formal recruitment from traffickers. As for the women that decided to
migrate without formal recruitment in Nigeria, they can become trafficked in
Agadez, where smugglers take them to Arlit, where there are fixed prostitution
rings (Malakooti 2016).
Even if they were not recruited by traffickers to depart for Europe, the Nigerian
women are already vulnerable to sexual exploitation in the so-called connection
houses8 (IOM 2017) when they reach Agadez. This means that the women are
already exploited during the journey; what starts as a smuggling recruitment can
become a trafficking situation (UNODC 2018). In Agadez, a small community of
Nigerian people have started to establish themselves, consisting mainly of migrants
that have returned from Libya or that have stopped on the way Libya. After Agadez,
female migrants are transported to Niamey, which has also been recognised as a hub
for foreign prostitution (Beretta et al. 2016).
When migrants pass through Libya, they are usually arrested or detained, exposed
to bonded labour or sold for labour and sexual exploitation purposes (Europol 2016).
However, over time, the smuggling organisations that operate in Libya have
changed. In fact, until 2014, the detention centres were mainly managed by militia
groups, but now these centres have been transformed into hotspots for migrants.
According to researcher Arezo Malakooti (2016), the migrants normally endure
three stages during their time in Libya. On arrival, they are effectively held hostage,
because the smugglers ask for a ransom from the family. The ransom is not only
demanded for the men, but also for the women that refuse to engage in prostitution in
Libya and usually amounts to 1500 euros (Save the Children 2017).
Consequently, in the case that the family is not able to pay the release money, the
migrant is put to work and only after, if s/he survives, s/he is guided to the seaside to
go to Europe (Beretta et al. 2016). The departure to Europe comes unannounced;
migrants report that their ‘modir’9 normally takes them to the port or puts them into a
truck, and the migrant does not have to pay for the journey (Malakooti 2016). Once
the migrant is released by the ‘modir’ s/he can proceed to Europe. In the case that the
migrant is in the North of Libya, s/he usually proceeds to Italy or back to the origin
country. On the other hand, if the migrant is in the South of Libya, s/he returns to
his/her country of origin, due to their migration project failing. However, sometimes
the migrant returns, but to a different city, not his/her hometown (Malakooti 2016).
The migrants’ stay in Libya has changed somewhat in recent years; where it was
in the past simply a transit country, it is now also a destination country for human
trafficking victims (IOM 2015). Nigerian criminal networks are also operational in

8
Despite the fact that initially the term ‘connection houses’ was mainly used to describe places of
sexual exploitation during the journey to Italy, they have recently entered into the Nigerian jargon as
‘house of prostitution’, even when referring to places in Italy. Recently, migrants have started to
describe ‘Connection Houses’ as ‘where a large number of people were kept in captivity sometimes
in underground basements’ (REACH 2017).
9
Term used to describe an employer in forced labour, meaning ‘chief’ in Libya.
3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability? 43

Libya and usually put the women to work in the so-called connection houses. The
money that is earned in these houses is not for the madam that has recruited the
woman from Italy, but for the groups that manage the house and that have recruited
the girl while in Libya.10 The madam in Italy only earns the money once the girl
arrives in Europe and not during the journey. However, with the instability over the
last years, especially due to the Libyans gaining control, Nigerian criminal networks
have had less of a role in managing the transition of the women. In these years, if in
one hand, migrants in Libya were recruited ‘to generate an income, achieve their
own mobility and/or migratory goals’ (Sanchez 2020:2), on the other hand, interna-
tional agencies (DTM 2017) claimed that many migrants, women and men, were
sold in the slave market to the Libyans, even if they have already paid the smugglers.
Therefore, contrary to the well-organised Nigerian criminal networks that used to
work effectively in Libyan territory and were able to transfer groups of Nigerian
women, nowadays Nigerian women continue their journey in mixed migration flows
(Beretta et al. 2016). In the beginning, these connection houses or hotspots for
migrants were mainly a gathering point to wait for the exact number of migrants
to fill a boat. However, now these ghettos have also become hubs for buying and
selling migrants, controlled by Libyan men with weapons who stop the migrants
from running away (Malakooti 2016). While men are normally sold to work in
plumbing or agriculture, women tend to be sold for sex slavery or as domestic
workers. Due to the profit in the activity, women normally have a higher value,
around 2000 euros, while men cost around 400 euros (Graham-Harrison 2017).
Consequently, the passage through Libya has deep psychological consequences
for migrants; they are reduced to a high level of vulnerability by the inhumane
treatment and the cancellation of their personhood.
Libya is the place where many Nigerian migrants understand that they have been
sold by their co-national (Malakooti 2016). For the women that have not been
previously exploited in Agadez, arriving in Libya is when they realise that they
will be used as sex slaves, especially when they are offered to the Libyan militaries in
exchange for the passage of all migrants (Baldoni et al. 2014). The narratives of the
women, collected by the Be Free report, talk about the selling and buying of women
by the Arab men at the Libyan border (Beretta et al. 2016).
This treatment can reflect the power of the Nigerian criminal networks, as more
structured organisations tend to secure the protection of their girls, due to a broader
set of resources (IOM 2015). In fact, while the majority of the women are mistreated
during the journey and arrive in Italy already physically and psychologically vul-
nerable, the victims recruited by powerful criminal networks are fresh on arrival, as
they do not suffer the same abuse as the others because they arrive by plane.
Furthermore, the power of the criminal network can also influence the duration of
the victim’s stay in Libya as well as the exploitation.
Based on the conference report Trails of Insecurity (The Global Initiative against
Organised Crime 2016), the migrants commonly pay for travel by the end of each

10
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
44 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

stage of the journey. Hence, the migrants could stay in Libya for a week, 12 days, or
2 months, while the entire journey could last for 2 years. Many women describe
being in an unsafe environment; even if they escape from the detention facilities for
migrants, there is a high level of violence on the streets and the women are almost
always obliged to return to the place where they were before.
The fact that Nigerian migrants are often sold by their co-nationals directly to the
Libyan traffickers once they arrive in Libya (Malakooti 2016) demonstrates that
many Nigerian women did not arrive in Europe via the typical recruitment strategy,
starting in Nigeria. On the contrary, it shows that migrants often leave Nigeria
without the end goal of arriving in Italy and with no contact with the trafficking
network based in Italy. In fact, the recruiters are often individual smugglers that
profit from selling their co-nationals in the Libyan markets, or in the prostitution
rings in Agadez.
This can, in fact, explain the increased number of Nigerian women that have
arrived in Italy in recent years: 5500 in 2015 and 11,009 in 2016 (IOM 2017). It is
presumed that many women are brought across the Mediterranean by unorganised
smugglers, rather than the organised, Nigerian criminal networks that have brought
Nigerian women this way in the past. According to the Be Free report (Beretta et al.
2016), this increase in Nigerian women entering Italy is due to the strategy applied
by other criminal networks, consequent to the loss of control of Nigerian criminal
networks in Libya.
The report Piccoli Schiavi by Save the Children (2017) tells the story of Faith
who, while in Libya, was asked by the Arabs to provide a payment of 284 euros, to
avoid being sent to a connection house. Her aunt, who had initially suggested her to
go to Europe, when confronted with such a situation in Libya, advised the girl to go
to the connection house in Tripoli, in order to pay for her travel to Italy. The extract
from Faith’s story not only demonstrates that the Nigerian traffickers have lost their
control in Libya to the Arabs, but also that some exploiters no longer pay for the
travel of their ‘merchandise’. On the contrary, the migration flow often pays by itself,
in the different phases of the Libyan route.
Hence, the sponsor no longer brings the victim from Nigeria to Europe and this
means that traffickers profit from the girls’ self-payment, as they cover the cost of
their travel by being sold and sexually exploited during the journey. Furthermore, the
exploiters in Europe are aware of the enormous migration flow exiting from Nigeria
and arriving naturally to Libya, which began after the economic crisis in Nigeria. In
fact, in the same report by Save the Children (2017), some of the narrated stories of
the minors demonstrate exactly that the girls did not have to arrive in Italy as a final
goal or a planned migration project. They met the trafficker, who initially pretended
to be a protective guide and then obliged the girl to engage in prostitution once they
were in Italy.
In the case that recruitment has taken place in Nigeria, the traffickers ensure an
increase of women departing from Nigeria, predicting a loss of the ‘product’ to the
Libyans along the way, and re-collecting some of the women in the Libyan ghettos.
Therefore, the criminal network profits only by selling these women to the Libyan
traffickers. However, as previously mentioned, the first part of the journey, in most
3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability? 45

cases, is not organised by the Nigerian criminal networks operating in the sex
market. On the contrary, it is organised by inexperienced and individual smugglers
who have contacts in Libya, thus they only recruit the women in order to sell them in
Libya. Therefore, the connection between the origin country and the final country
does not exist so predominantly, as it did before, but mainly through a connection
between Libya and Europe as the final destination.
According to the Be Free report (Beretta et al. 2016), the women that pass through
the connection houses can be sexually exploited for months or years. The high level
of violence is evident from cigarette burns and, sometimes, scars from being
stabbed.11 Moreover, the women in these connection houses are often exposed to
unprotected intercourse, leading to unwanted pregnancies. Consequently, the
women are obliged to have abortions with noxious substances. The use of the
girl’s body during the exploitation period serves to pay for the travel to Europe, in
the case that the final exploiter does not have enough money. Therefore, the
exploitation money during travel goes to the exploiters in the transit countries, rather
than the final exploiter in the destination country.
The money goes to the person that manages the house and not to the final madam. Each
person has their own piece of the profit. When the girls arrive in Italy is when the madam
starts to gain the money.12

This use of the girls’ bodies leads us to two conclusions about the traffickers who
are transporting Nigerian women into Europe. The first conclusion is that with the
increase of Nigerian women arriving in recent years in Europe, there was conse-
quently an increase of new exploiters emerging in the Nigerian sexual exploitation
business. In fact, as previously acknowledged, Nigerian traffickers for sexual
exploitation are often former victims that have ascended the trafficking chain
(Lo Iacono 2014).
Therefore, the recent boom of Nigerian women arriving in Italy can also explain
the increase of less experienced traffickers with low economic stability and is
probably not connected to a highly experienced madam, as in the previous years;
this is because victims have transitioned to become ‘early career traffickers’ in a bid
to recruit other girls to help them pay their debt. However, these ‘early career
traffickers’ lack the economic power to recruit the women from Nigeria and pay
for their whole journey. What is more, it is known that many women bring their
co-nationals from Nigeria in order to substitute them and pay a part of the debt for
them (Fernandez et al. 2017). This could also justify why the recent arrivals report
having very small debts.
The second conclusion, which can explain the absence of the madam during the
time in Libya, is that in some cases, the travel is not organised from the origin
country by the trafficker, who is a resident in Europe. On the contrary, the journey
starts with the recruitment by ‘independent entrepreneurial smugglers’, as observed

11
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
12
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
46 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

before, that somehow profit from the transport of migrants from their origin coun-
tries to other countries, by selling them. In fact, according to the testimony of a
member of the Girl Power Initiative,13 the departure can be self-initiated, in the case
that the girl has the means (not only material but also contacts with smuggling
networks) to arrive in Europe, without a trafficker in the destination country.
Therefore, the woman can start her path without being in contact with a particular
trafficker. In fact, in some cases, it seems that the families are able to pay for the first
part of the journey.
Therefore, the madam has a more marginalised role than in the past, in that she
usually comes into contact with the victim towards the end of the journey (Beretta
et al. 2016), and does not often accompany the victim from the origin country to the
destination country, as previously observed (IOM 2015).
Some of the families have paid the first stage of travel for the girls and then the madams take
them from Libya.14

Of course, the question in this case is: how are the women put in contact with the
madam in the destination country? It is not difficult to understand that the madam
somehow contacts the connection houses in Libya in order to recruit women to come
to Italy, paying the debt, and acting as a saviour. How exactly the madam gets in
touch with the smugglers operating in Libya, however, remains a mystery.
There is the story of a girl who was expecting something and the ghetto’s manager said that
there was someone on the phone for her, but it was not the woman that recruited her. The
madam used to be constant, from the recruitment to the end of the exploitation, being a kind
of protection for the girl. Therefore, I believe when the girl says that she has lost the
telephone number and also that the person that has recruited her in Nigeria is not the same
that has taken her from Libya. There is a true selling and buying on the Libyan border and in
fact, the Nigerian traffickers know that in Libya there is panic and that corruption is not
working anymore. The Nigerians that managed in Libya do not exist anymore; the Libyans
do that. Therefore, the Nigerian criminal networks recruit ten times the number of women as
in the past and let the Libyans control the ghettos or the connection houses, since many of
these women are servants in the houses of the rich Libyans.15

This violence suffered in Libya can have two benefits for the traffickers. On one
hand, with the endurance of the exploitation, abuse, violence, and inhumane treat-
ment suffered through the journey, the victim becomes more vulnerable once she
arrives in Italy, thus the victim will not have the strength to rebel against the madam.
On the other hand, it also emerged in the interviews16 that in this situation, the
exploiter appears to the girl as a saviour, by calling directly to the smuggler and
paying for her ransom, and this provokes the girl’s dependence on the trafficker. This
is largely because the madam’s proposal is still based on the jobs that initially drew

13
Public conference ‘Nigerian Human Trafficking for sexual purposes,’ taken by the Nigerian
organisation Girls Power Initiative at Casa della Cooperazione, Palermo, 6 October 2017.
14
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
15
Interview number 26 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
16
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
3.2 Is the Journey a Factor of Vulnerability? 47

the girls to be recruited in Nigeria, mainly as babysitters or hairdressers.17 Hence,

with this action, the trafficker not only obliges the girl to pay the debt after her
release but also gains the eternal loyalty and thankfulness of the girl towards her, as a
saviour. In fact, the consent to be exploited comes from the woman in a highly
vulnerable position, where any proposal is seen with relief and not as recruitment for
sexual exploitation.
Recently we have seen an enormous increase in Nigerian women arriving into
Italy through the Mediterranean central route. In 2016, 11,009 Nigerian girls were
documented, compared to 2013 when only about 434 arrived (IOM 2017). However,
if in the past the recruitment was mainly performed in Nigeria, with the increase of
the African migration flows, nowadays the phase of recruitment has become more
complex to comprehend, in which the girl has no awareness regarding its beginning
and its duration. This confuses the girl, not only about the identification of the
recruiter, but also about her awareness of the network, which has developed several
specific roles during the transporting phase.
The girls say that they have never had contact with the traffickers before. You can speak
about recruitment when it presupposes the awareness in being recruited, thus they say that in
Nigeria there is awareness [about sexual exploitation]. However, it is also rare that the
recruiter is someone unknown to the victim; it is someone that normally presents themselves
as a helper. In this case, it is like the recruiter is the organiser of the travel that gives
indications to the woman who departs, without paying the travel. During this travel, the
woman is not alone, but departs in mixed groups, with other women and men. There is no
awareness of the reasons for the other people to travel, only that their purpose is to find
work.18

Even more concerning than the grey areas between exploitation and recruitment
in alluring girls to go to Europe, some cases have also been reported in which the
girls were directly kidnapped from their school in Nigeria. The recurrence of this
kind of strategy demonstrates the traffickers’ use of extreme actions that have not
been noted in the past (Longo 2017). It has also been observed that, in the last years,
many women arriving in Italy have previously lived in Libya; this means they have
experience of living in an urban conflict zone, leading them to be more rational.
Therefore, this previous experience can trigger survival tools in the women and help
them to exit from the exploitative situation, contrary to the women that have arrived
in the past.19
In the past, the exploitation and recruitment were two well-defined phases, which
did not usually overlap each other. However, the girls that have arrived in recent
years seem to be experiencing everything very rapidly, by accumulating several
experiences in a short period of time. Therefore, there is an overlap of the trafficking
phases, such as the arrival and the installation in the reception centre, the

17
Interview number 26 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
18
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
19
Interview number 3 (expert on THB), 29/11/2016, Italy.
48 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

recruitment, and the abandonment of the centres to go to a specific house, where they
will be exploited.
When the girls arrive in Italy is usually when the female controllers have a main role, such as
proposing to the girls to go to the supermarket and putting them in contact with the madam.
The girl has no idea that this woman knows the madam, so there is always the element of
surprise. There was a job proposal, so they knew they would meet someone, but then, they
are not able to find this person once they arrive in Europe. Therefore, once they arrive, when
they are identified and redirected to the reception centre, for them it is like they have lost
their contact. In fact, they no longer search for this person and undergo all the procedures
without precise indications.20

Typically, the diaspora within the destination countries tends to act as a protection
or a support network to the recently arrived migrants. Nevertheless, in Libya, as in
some European countries with an established criminal network, Nigerian migrants
can often be exploited, tricked, or sold by their co-nationals. In fact, the researcher
Arezo Malakooti (2016) explains how some Nigerian women do not feel safe within
the Nigerian community in Libya. The female diaspora is suspicious of other
Nigerian women because they have heard the stories about women exploiting
other women. However, due to the hard conditions lived in Libya, the women are
often desperate to leave the country and tend to accept any proposals or conditions in
order to depart. Consequently, due to the mistrust of their female co-national,
Nigerian women are more likely to trust a man. For this reason, the main actors in
the transferal of the women are currently men.21
Lately, in women’s narratives, men are the main characters appearing during the
transfer of the women. For instance, in the case that the women are exploited in a
connection house, usually a merciful client pays for the release and the travel costs of
the girl. In the case that the women are able to run from the ghetto, a Nigerian man
also appears as a benefactor, in order to transfer the women (Beretta et al. 2016).
According to the Save the Children report (2017), the men that accompany their
female co-nationals on their journey are defined as black man.
Up until now, men referred to as trolley or boga had the role of accompanying the
girl in the different phases during the journey (IOM 2017). However, these roles
were organised for each stage of the journey, because recruitment took place in the
origin country. Instead, the term black man tends to be more generalised and
therefore includes the different roles that these men assume when they pretend to
appear by chance to the girl, who is unaware that they are in contact with the madam.
Furthermore, although this role has recently been used on the Libyan route, we can
relate it to the term of guidemen, used by the Nigerian criminal networks operating
on the route to Morocco.
Women can also be present during the transfer, as the madams also recruit other
victims as controllers. The controllers profit from a debt reduction, or a relief of
harsh conditions (Beretta et al. 2016). According to the IOM report ( 2015), the

20
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
21
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
3.3 Nigerian Motherhood and the Travel Route 49

women tend to arrive in Italy accompanied by a controller that can be the madam, a
girl who got a discount on the journey, or a man. This last one, as previously
mentioned, is known as a boga or trolley, and often claims to be the girl’s husband
or boyfriend, in order to avoid them being separated. Therefore, due to this claim, the
man is able to be hosted in the same reception centre as the girl, once in Italy, in order
to control her until she is in contact with the madam (Beretta et al. 2016).
There is always a man in Libya, who magically appears on the street and is seen as the
saviour of the moment. In the transferring phase, it is mainly the men that transfer the girls,
while the recruitment is mainly done by women. Some [women] tell of meeting a partner in
Libya, others here [Italy]. There are men involved in the [trafficking] business, but they are
‘experienced’ as boyfriends and this already gives an indication on how you tell your
experience with this man [the woman does not realise he is a trafficker]. The man usually
suggests to transfer to Italy, because he has friends in Italy that can take care of the girls.
Another situation where the men are present is when they encounter the girls inside or
outside the reception centres for migrants and suggest to the girls to move to another city.
Normally, when the girls transfer themselves, they lose contact with the man and it is in this
phase that they enter into contact with the madam. These are not phases that are easily
identified or clear. There are also other men that have this role and put the girl in contact with
the madam, but the girl does not tell the story like that, because the girls do not realise that
this is what happens. Therefore, the responsibility is never given to the men.22

The man gives the girl a cell phone before she enters the boat and says: You will need this
when you arrive in Italy; someone will call you. Then, when the girl arrives, someone says
that a person should give her something to wear, she comes out, the voice on the phone is a
woman voice, but outside, the girl sees a boy and when they speak, the boy takes the girl to
the madam.23

3.3 Nigerian Motherhood and the Travel Route

As previously mentioned, this subchapter only discusses the Nigerian women, as not
only do Romanian women tend to leave their children in the origin country (Pascoal
and Schwartz 2016), but also their migration does not require staying away for long
periods, as they are European Union citizens. Despite the fact that some of the
women already have children when they leave Nigeria (Kastner 2010), for many of
the Nigerian women, motherhood can start during the journey, through Morocco or
through Libya. On both routes many women get pregnant, yet, it is important to
compare both paths, since the Nigerian criminal groups tend to operate differently in
the different transit countries. This difference occurs according to other factors, such
as the sociopolitical contexts of the territory, the presence of the Nigerian diaspora in
the country, and also according to the legal framework for migration in the destina-
tion country (Fernandez et al. 2017).

22
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
23
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
50 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

3.3.1 The Route Through Libya

For the Nigerian diaspora in Libya, the situation has changed in recent years, from a
stable context into a situation of conflict, in which the Nigerian criminal networks
have lost their power within the territory (Beretta et al. 2016). This loss of power has
exposed many of the women, as well as the men, to higher levels of violence,
including sexual abuse. Consequently, this has increased the number of women that
have arrived in Italy pregnant (IOM 2017).
Although in all my interviews an increase of pregnant women arriving in Sicily in
recent years has been reported, I should also put this data within the context that the
number of women arriving in Sicily, in general, has also augmented. Therefore, I
might consider that the increase of pregnant women arriving in Italy could also be
proportionate to the number of Nigerian women arriving in general.
We personally think that it has always been stable [the arrival of pregnant women]. The
augmentation of Nigerian pregnant women in Italy has been verified in 2010, but we did not
understand the reason for this.24

It is important to note that in the past, the number of pregnant women arriving into
Europe was not high enough to be given much attention, whereas, in recent years, the
staff working on disembarkation have had to adapt and have started to be more
attentive to the needs of pregnant women when they arrive on land, especially
regarding their health needs.
There was no immediate medical attention given, but now we have started to work on it,
because the priority is to identify them. Now they are sent to the local hospital, but because
there are no interpreters in the hospital, they are immediately sent back. In fact, there was this
woman who arrived, she was sent to the hospital and they dismissed her in the same night,
but the morning after she started to have contractions. Therefore, she was sent to the hospital
again.25

According to the health care team working in the hotspot of Pozzallo, there is an
increase of transmissible diseases, injuries, and pregnancies that result from the
sexual abuse and violence suffered in Libya (GRETA 2016). Furthermore, despite
the fact that the Libyan route has a shorter duration than the Moroccan route, it has
been verified that longer waits in Libya have psychologically affected the mothers
that need to send money back to their origin country. Besides the psychological
impact regarding the children left behind, it has also been reported that the long
duration in Libya means that many women give birth while in Libya, within the
ghettos, in very undignified conditions (Unicef 2017).
The report Un viaggio fatale per i bambini (Unicef 2017) describes how women
from Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia inject contraceptives or take contraceptive pills
because they are aware of the sexual abuse during the journey and the consequent
possibility of getting pregnant. Staff working with Nigerian women have also

24
Interview number 12 (third sector), 24/07/2017, Italy.
25
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
3.3 Nigerian Motherhood and the Travel Route 51

reported that a small number of Nigerian women have also injected contraceptives.
Some of the Nigerian women are aware of the sexual violence in Libya and have
started to use pills to be temporarily sterile (Alos 2017). In an article by Alos, it is
explained that the women take the pills because they are aware they can get pregnant
in the sex market. In my opinion, this affirmation does not truly reflect the complex-
ity of the situation, since, if the women take pills, this does not necessarily mean that
their aim is to avoid getting pregnant in the prostitution market; it could simply be in
order to avoid being pregnant in general. In fact, this act can be considered a
preventive behaviour for women that want to avoid a pregnancy resulting from a
violent act, but it does not indicate that the women expect to be exploited. The only
case in which the women would take the pills to avoid pregnancies during the
exploitation would be if the pills were given to them by the criminal networks,
and I do not believe they are always automatically being taken by the women.
Managing motherhood with a child that is a result of a situation of abuse can be a
cause of distress, often leading to Post Traumatic Stress, depression, or feelings of
powerlessness. Furthermore, it can also lead to the rejection of the role of the mother.
NGOs working in Sicily with migrants that are victims of torture and violence have
started to conceptualise a programme dedicated to motherhood, considering that
some of the children are born out of traumatic experiences, sometimes leading to the
abandonment of the children in the hospital. Furthermore, motherhood can also have
a double impact on the woman, since she not only arrives pregnant in Italy, but she is
also located in a shelter with people from other countries, not understanding their
language and the cultural customs of the autochthones (Débarge 2017).
A child, who is a result of violence, maybe is easier for women of other nationalities, but we
noticed that it is more difficult for women of Nigerian nationality, due to their character, they
are more distant from their children. So, maybe the other women ask you: ‘Why I cannot
look him in his face?’ Therefore, the woman brings out the problem. While the Nigerians do
not do this, even if she feels estranged, she isn’t concerned. For us, it is important that this
child sees that there is a correspondence in their look.26

Although the 2015 report Rapporto sulle vittime di tratta nell’ambito dei flussi
migratori misti in arrivo via mare aprile 2014 - ottobre 2015 (IOM 2015)
hypothesises that bringing women into Italy pregnant is a criminal network strategy
to avoid deportation, in the 2017 report, the international organisation shares a
different opinion (IOM 2017). In fact, the IOM mentions that, on the contrary,
pregnancy is an obstacle to the madams, and once the trafficker finds out that the
girl is pregnant, she usually abandons the girl in Libya or sells her to another
exploiter in Libya.
In fact, as I have mentioned in the previous chapter, the fact that the majority of
the women ask for asylum, once in Italy, means it is unnecessary for criminal
networks to select vulnerable victims, such as mothers and non-accompanied minors
in order to avoid deportation. In only one of my interviews did I receive an answer
affirming that Nigerian criminal networks use pregnancy to avoid deportation and

26
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
52 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

the majority of interviewees had a different opinion regarding this theory. However,
it is important to consider that the interviewee that did affirm that criminal networks
used pregnancy was interviewed in July 2016, when the criminal networks were only
starting to use the asylum claim. Therefore, the interviewee was probably referring to
a situation before 2016.27
I think that this manipulation of the use of asylum [referring to pregnancy] does not exist
because nowadays the women usually have access to international protection and I think that
the criminal networks are aware of this. I think that it is a part of the journey, also because
they don’t use any contraception, not here, nor during travel.28

Lately, some women have arrived in Italy already pregnant because of the violence that they
suffer on the journey. Therefore, in the recent cases, it has happened frequently [women
arriving pregnant]. I do not know if this is connected to the residence permit. Some in the
past, for instance with Romania, when Romanians were not within the EU, they used this
method, but not in this case, because many of them don’t know about this method and they
do the asylum claim for other reasons. In fact, all of the women that arrive through the
Mediterranean claim asylum. Thus maybe they come with this method and then they get
pregnant.29

What is more, besides the level of sexual violence suffered in Libya, individuals
in the interviews suggested the simple fact that women are staying in Libya for a long
time is one of the main causes for the arrival of pregnant women in Italy. This long
period is either due to Nigerian criminal networks losing control in Libya or because
the women are sold by Nigerian traffickers to a connection house.30 Therefore, after
staying 2 or 3 months in Libya, when the women arrive in Italy sometimes they do
not even realise that they are pregnant, which can mean that they are unable to have
an abortion legally because they are already too far along in their pregnancy.
From the narratives collected by the IOM (2017), it appears that currently there is
no need to use pregnancy to avoid deportation. In the case that the victim has been
recruited directly from the origin country, once the madam is aware that the victim is
pregnant, she often decides to abandon the victim in Libya, because pregnancy can
be an obstacle for sexual exploitation. In some cases, it has been reported that the
madam in Europe sells the girl to another exploiter who manages a connection house
in Libya. This madam, in Libya might oblige the girl to perform a voodoo ritual to
interrupt the pregnancy, so that she can be sexually exploited. During the exploita-
tion time in Libya, the women do not have access to contraceptives, thus they often
use the cotton of the mattresses in the connection houses (Beretta et al. 2016).
My previous research shows that in some cases pregnancy has been used as a
justification for the trafficker to increase the woman’s debt by up to 10,000 euros.
Indeed, as I will further analyse, the trafficker tends to profit by asking the woman for
more money for the expenses of the baby and babysitting (Pascoal 2013).

27
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
28
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
29
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
30
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
3.3 Nigerian Motherhood and the Travel Route 53

Furthermore, this theory is demonstrated in the story of Prudence, detailed in the

Piccoli Schiavi report (Save the Children 2017), where the woman finds a man that
advises her to go to Italy and once she arrives and they realise she is pregnant, her
madam profits from the situation by increasing her debt (1000 euros to be accom-
panied by the staff; 100 euros for the pregnancy test; 100 euros for the pills, etc.). In
other cases, once the woman arrives pregnant in Italy, she can be forced to have an
abortion, usually bypassing the official health services, especially if the time to
perform a legal abortion has already passed (IOM 2017).31
As has already been mentioned in the chapter on the Libyan route, there are
Nigerian men that appear to the girls and establish a relationship. The report Piccoli
Schiavi (Save the Children 2017) details that these are Nigerian men, often
connected to the madam, and in Libya, they are referred to as black men. Similar
to the role of guideman, the man manipulates the woman, from one side playing the
lover and on the other side encouraging the woman to pay the debt to the madam.
Nevertheless, this figure is often simply the girl’s courier, profiting from being a
man, claiming emotional ties with the girl and demonstrating that he cares for her.
There was this girl that was four months pregnant, she was at the disembarkation in the
medical tent and I started to ask: who are you travelling with? – ‘With my husband.’-
‘What’s the name of your husband?’, and she has said the name. ‘How old is he?’- ‘I don’t
remember’.- ‘Where does he come from?’- ‘I don’t remember’. In this moment, I said that it
was strange that she did not remember where her husband was from. Therefore, I have
flagged her as a potential human trafficking victim. There were indicators, but when she
realised that I was asking too many questions she said she had a headache.32

Besides the use of emotional ties in order to be able to escort the girls to their final
destination, some traffickers also get a residence permit for declaring that they are
the father of the baby (Pascoal 2013).
We also have children that have been born during the journey, when the women had a long
stay in Libya. The two or three situations that we had during this period are all born from
their partner. Therefore, they declare to have met their partner there, who might have taken
them out of exploitation and then they got pregnant. They are very ambiguous situations.
Therefore, the partners start to ask for family reunification in Italy. What we see is that the
women are subjected to the demands of the partner, who is not only the partner, but the father
of the child.33

As noticed in the previous statement, the roles within the Nigerian trafficking
network have become naturally separated to provide advantages for each of the
involved members. Therefore, this demonstrates that in many cases there is no
continuous criminal Nigerian network that organises all the travel phases for the
women. Instead, as observed, migration flows leading to exploitation involve
ensemble of exploiters that can benefit from different types of personal advantages,
which are often not connected to the final exploitation of the woman. However, this

31
In Italy, according to Law 194/1978 the legal period to perform an abortion is 90 days.
32
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
33
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
54 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

does not assume that all men during the journey establish only a utilitarian relation-
ship with the women.

3.3.2 The Route Through Morocco

When discussing the route for Nigerian women into Europe, most commonly one
thinks about Libya as the main transit country because the majority of migrants pass
through Libya, due to the instability of the country and due to the high protective
border in Morocco. However, major aspects regarding motherhood during the
journey have been observed when the women are trafficked through Morocco.34
This is not only due to the arguments previously mentioned, but also due to the
establishment of Nigerian communities, women and men, that live in Morocco. The
Nigerian diaspora is mainly concentrated in the cities of Oujda and Nador, where
you can also find a higher concentration of Nigerian criminal networks (Women’s
Link Worldwide 2014). Furthermore, due to the difficulty in travelling to European
territory, women are obliged to stay longer in the country, which consequently
means that there is more time to get pregnant or give birth.
The route to Morocco is not easy and means that the women must pass through
several countries, including Algeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Sierra
Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Senegal, or Mauritania, or instead choose
another route passing through Mali (Tin Zaouaten), Algeria (Tamanrasset) and
then arriving in Morocco (Oujda) (Kastner 2010). Due to the extensive road, as
well as the dangers during the journey, many women prefer to be accompanied by a
man, because it is safer than being alone (Freedman and Jamal 2008). This is where
the figure of a guideman appears. Contrary to the Libyan route, the guideman is
normally a Nigerian migrant that has been stranded in Morocco and has started to
earn money as a smuggler due to his knowledge of the migration route. The role of a
guideman is not only connected to the role of the smuggler, but also to the criminal
network, as they tend to be in contact with the madams who ask them to recruit
women in Nigeria. Their role of partner is also enhanced by their experience in the
Moroccan territory. Therefore, the men take advantage of the element trust in their
relationship with the women, by implementing a false conscience on them, by
misleading information and enhancing their feeling of insecurity.
The women often refer to the guideman as their boyfriend or husband (Real and
Venys 2014), as they tend to create a relationship with the women during the
journey. Despite the fact that the IOM (2015) declared many women to have
reported fake husbands that in reality were their ‘Bogas’ on the route to Libya, the

34
The provided information on motherhood of Nigerian women in Morocco has been transmitted to
the publications of the Spanish NGO Women’s Link Worldwide, predominantly through the
presence of the Activist in the field Elena Garzón, while the situation in Libya does not allow for
the presence of activists or NGOs in the territory.
3.3 Nigerian Motherhood and the Travel Route 55

figure of the boyfriend has only recently been confirmed, as previously mentioned
(IOM 2017). In fact, contrary to the role of guideman in Morocco, in Libya this man
does not take the role of a courier as the guideman does, but of a man that appears
when the girl is in Libya, offering the possibility to escape from the Libyan territory.
Therefore, while in Libya the role of the boyfriend is to transfer the woman to
Europe in a short time, acting as a saviour. In Morocco, however, due to the long
waiting periods in a well-established community, in a politically stable country, the
guideman assumes the role of a lover, often resulting in pregnancies (Women’s Link
Worldwide 2009).
Due to the assumed role within the Nigerian criminal network in Morocco, the
guideman establishes relationships with several women at the same time (Real and
Venys 2014) and can be the father of several newborns. Once in Spain, the women
tend to mention these men as husbands, despite the fact that they did not contract a
legal marriage, but more a survival relationship. Despite the fact that the women are
protected by establishing this kind of relationship, avoiding sexual abuse and other
types of physical violence from other men, the protection is still paid in the exchange
for sexual services and domestic work (Women’s Link Worldwide 2009).
The babies that are born in Morocco also serve as a kind of a ‘residence permit’
for the men, due to Law 02–03, Art.26, comma 7, Art.26, comma 8 and Art.29,
comma c35 that guarantees their legal stay in Morocco. However, the Moroccan
authorities do not always comply with the legal framework on migration. For
instance, the association Women’s Link Worldwide (2009) has reported cases of
women that have been deported from Morocco, even if they are pregnant, with
children, or have refugee status. Furthermore, the deportations in Morocco are
effectuated without any guarantees for the migrant, and sometimes the women are
left in the desert at the Algerian border.
Motherhood is not only exploited by the men and the madams, as we will see, but
also regarded as a way of survival while being in Morocco. According to the
researcher Kristin Kastner (2010), the women also profit from the fact that they
cannot be deported when having babies.
I don’t have papers, but I have a baby. The baby is my paper; you understand? (Kastner
2010:22).

Nigerian women who stay in Morocco are often used by the criminal networks36
in forced begging, especially if they are pregnant or if they have newborns because
this increases the empathy of the Moroccan citizens. The period in Morocco is
usually seen as a period of uncertainty, thus the women give names to the newborns
like Hope and Destiny, while children born in Spain are usually called Success, Will,
or Progress (Kastner 2010). On one side, having a child in Morocco can avoid the

35
Moroccan immigration law prohibits the deportation of pregnant women and minors, according to
the Loi n 02–03 relative à l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers au Royaume du Maroc, à
l’émigration et l’immigration irrégulières, available at http://www.gadem-asso.org/wp-content/
uploads/2016/05/Loi_02-03.pdf
36
AP Pontevedra, sec. 5ª, S 11-6-2015, n 292/2015, rec. 80/2014.
56 3 Sexual Exploitation from Origin Countries to Destination Countries

women being deported and also be used to create sympathy from Moroccan citizens.
On the other side, the presence of the child can increase the difficulties for the
mother, especially considering access to food and water. Furthermore, at this point of
the journey, the women tend to live a double motherhood, since they not only have to
sustain the newborn, but also the children that are left in their origin country (Kastner
2010).
Despite the fact that Nigerian women usually state that they stay in relationships
as a survival tactic, there is still a high record of violence used on the Moroccan route
to Spain, especially where the Nigerian criminal networks are concerned. In fact,
according to a study by Medicos Sin Frontieras (2005), 63% of the women coming
through Morocco declare that they have suffered violence during their journey and
17% claim that they suffered sexual violence. In the article of Martin-Arroyo (2016),
Blessing affirms that women can get pregnant in three different situations: (1) 30%
get pregnant due to sexual abuse en route; (2) 50% get pregnant within the relation-
ship with their boyfriends or husbands; and (3) 20% get pregnant to avoid being
deported.
During the journey, not all women accept being in a relationship, thus the
smugglers rape them and decide if the woman should proceed with the pregnancy
or perform an abortion. For example, in the case that the criminal network does not
need the baby to enter Spain because the network has other babies at their disposal,
the smuggler decides that the woman should have an abortion and provides the
woman with misoprostol, for which he determines the dose without having any
knowledge on the matter (Women’s Link Worldwide 2011). With this lack of
medical knowledge, the women sometimes ingest 30/40 pills of Cytotec that they
buy for 30 euros, and this leads to major health problems (Garzón 2009).

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Chapter 4
Sexual Exploitation in the Destination
Country

When the vulnerability of Nigerian and Romanian women in human trafficking is

concerned, it is not only important to understand the causes that led the victim into a
situation of trafficking, but also to understand the factors that maintain the individual
in a situation of victimisation. However, this does not mean that these factors are
separated according to the different phases of trafficking. On the contrary, it dem-
onstrates that the accumulation of different factors can generate a higher or lower
level of vulnerability, as well as the balance of factors affecting the women during
the different phases. Therefore, in this chapter I will put forward a general analysis of
the different factors that can maintain Romanian and Nigerian women in sexual
exploitation.
According to the researcher Maria João Guia (2008: 71–72), there are several
external factors that can increase the vulnerability of a migrant such as the: ‘labour
market oscillations; economic crisis; the lack of state funds; increase of feeling
unsafe in emarginated neighbourhoods, where migrants are normally pushed in;
increase of rejection and xenophobic feelings normally manipulated by the media,
especially regarding the concepts of migration and crime; increase of crimes related
to drugs’ smuggling; the lack of family support and migrants’ community’. These
factors do not only directly affect the migrant, but also the population’s perception of
immigrants in the destination country. Consequently, because migrants are usually
dependent on the economic situation of the destination country, the migrant com-
munity is often used as a justification for economic instability in the migrant country.
These factors are normally reflected in the difficulty they experience integrating and
finding work in the destination country, often leading to a more rigid legal frame-
work regarding immigration.
The subject of citizenship and the right to mobility leads to one of the main factors
that can distinguish the vulnerability of Nigerian and Romanian victims: the fact that
Romanian citizens have access to free mobility within the Schengen area, while the
Nigerian women have more difficulty entering European territory. Therefore, the
‘extra vulnerability’ of Nigerian women, which was also felt by Romanian women
until Romania became part of the European Union in 2007, shows how the female

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 61

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4_4
62 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

body is controlled by the state, especially through the access to rights and citizen-
ship, as the state decides whether the woman has rights or not (Peano 2012). This
means that Romanian women do not change their administrative status in the
destination country, while Nigerian women often change status from citizen to
non-citizen or vice versa. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, this illegal entrance
into Europe can expose women to violence, which can cause physical and psycho-
logical health issues and of course pregnancy (Pickering 2010).
This lack of access to legal status in the destination territory or the imposition of
legal obstacles to third country citizens leads to an uneven distribution of equality
between Romanian and Nigerian women. Therefore, as well as considering all the
vulnerability factors that were previously mentioned in the subchapter about Vul-
nerability Factors, this chapter will analyse the importance of European citizenship
for migrants, especially regarding their tutorship and structural and institutionalised
discrimination. According to Martha Fineman (2012), individuals who are consid-
ered to belong to vulnerable groups are ‘those who cannot exercise their right to
contract’. Therefore, as third country immigrants in the European Union, many
migrants are non-rights holders and this leads them to being dependent on the
state, which could hinder them in fully exercising their rights within a territory.
Despite the fact that my analysis is based on the comparison of two groups that
are bound by one or more features, in this case citizenship, the present book also
dissects the comparison of the groups according to their background, conditions, and
criminal networks’ modus operandi. Furthermore, the analysis is also based on an
intersectional approach (Crenshaw 1991), as understanding the different layers of
vulnerability, such as race, nationality, physical ability and age, will provide the
reader with a broader vision of the phenomenon.
Considering the mentioned factors, is it enough to consider legal status as the
predominant vulnerability when comparing the two groups? Are the legal obstacles
to full access to citizenship, enforced by the destination State, an added vulnerability
for the Nigerian women? Does this mean that Nigerian women are more vulnerable
to human trafficking than Romanian women? If so, does this mean that the added
vulnerability of Nigerian women is created by the destination State? Can the
vulnerability of Nigerian women be solved by the granting of legal status, such as
international and humanitarian protection or the Art.18 permit for human trafficking
victims?
In order to answer these questions, we should first reflect on the concept of victim
and the granting of rights. According to the institutions, the concept of being a
‘victim’ suggests a situation of suffering and therefore provides the individual with
the rights that should already be guaranteed within the social contract. In fact, the
individual is often a recognisable body of rights only when he/she is considered a
victim (Taliani 2011). Therefore, in order to have access to these rights, the indi-
vidual accepts the role of victim, by for instance, in the case of the asylum system,
accepting the granted status. On this subject, I will further analyse how Art.18 grants
protection to victims of trafficking that have already been exploited in the Italian
territory and consider the new dilemma of women that have recently arrived in Italy
and have not yet been exploited in the national territory, but arrive with a ‘victim
4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country 63

narrative’ and are therefore considered at risk, but are not entitled to be protected by
Art.18.
The ‘victim narrative’ is the instrument that grants rights to the victims, not only
concerning their legal status, but also a ‘reintegration model’ that allows the person
to exit from the state of victimhood, recognised by the destination country. In this
case, the entitled person has access to his/her rights, because he/she belongs to a
category that has the privilege to have more rights than those who do not belong to
this category. Therefore, the individual accepts that they will assume the classifica-
tion of ‘victim’, but this does not always guarantee his/her awareness or acceptance
of such a concept.1 Nevertheless, this concept permits access to certain rights that
would not be provided to a ‘non-victim’.
With this in mind, let us return to the question: are Nigerian women more
vulnerable than Romanian women due to their lack of European Union citizenship?
In this debate, it is impossible not to highlight the previous subchapter Is travel a
factor of vulnerability? Indeed, in the past the majority of the Nigerian women
would arrive directly by plane, so travel could not be considered a vulnerability
factor for Nigerian women. However, arriving by plane is more expensive than the
travelling through Libya, due to the cost of the plane ticket and the fraudulent
documents. Consequently, the way of travelling directly affects the amount of debt
that will be paid by the victim. Hence, if on one hand travelling through Libya causes
an added vulnerability factor due to the violence and the abuse suffered during the
journey, on the other hand travelling by plane would increase the time of exploitation
in the destination country, due to the higher debt (Baye 2012). In the past, Nigerian
women often worked for 8 years to pay their debt (Carchedi 2000). However,
nowadays, with the majority of Nigerian women arriving in Italy through Libya,
even if the ‘victim narrative’ from the origin country is not sufficient to have access

1
Interview number 10 (law enforcement), 04 October 2016. ‘Often individuals feel less like victims
while involved in human trafficking in the destination country than when they were in their origin
countries (not as human trafficking victims), where they had no basic rights or access to food’.
64 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

to an international or humanitarian protection,2 their ‘journey of suffering’ case can

be considered enough to grant them protection through the asylum system.3
Therefore, contrary to the Romanian women, who usually gain access to the
Italian territory without any inhumane treatment or abuse, Nigerian women arrived
in Italy already in a state of victimhood, which often allows them access to
international or humanitarian protection. However, it is important to highlight that
at this stage, their state of victimhood is not a consequence of a trafficking situation,
but a consequence of the denial of legal entrance into Italian territory, which is
evident even before they arrive in the destination country. In fact, in the past, the
‘means’ of ‘deception’ would normally occur when the victim was already in the
destination country (Okojie et al. 2003), while nowadays this ‘means’ has been
almost disguised and replaced with continuous subjection to violence throughout the
transferring and transportation process.
Hence, I would consider that Nigerian women arrived in Italy already more
vulnerable to trafficking than Romanian women, due to their origin country and
their access to rights. However, while in the destination country, it is important to
understand all the factors that influence the continued subjugation of human traf-
ficking victims from Nigeria and Romania, with the aim to understand if the legal
status can be considered a continuous vulnerability. In order to answer this question,
I take into consideration two main issues (1) the Romanian women’s awareness of
their rights as European citizens; (2) the access to legal status for the Nigerian
women.
Being a rights holder is not a synonym of its awareness, thus, even if Romanian
citizens have privileged rights as European citizens, it cannot be assumed that they
are aware of this. In fact, many traffickers tend to take their victims’ identification

2
In Italy there are three types of protection for an asylum seeker:
• Refugee Status: This permit has a duration of 5 years and allows the access to study and work
and is renewable for a work permit. It also allows family reunification and a travelling title with
the same use as the passport (Art.28 of the Geneva convention 1951). Furthermore, the refugee
also has access to treatment as an Italian citizen regarding social and sanitary support and public
accommodation.
• Subsidiary Protection: This permit has a duration of 5 years and allows the access to study and
work, being renewable for a work permit. Access to a travelling permit, in the case that the
asylum seeker does not have access to a passport through the embassy in Italy. Furthermore, the
asylum seeker also has access to treatment as an Italian citizen regarding social and sanitary
support and public accommodation.
• Humanitarian Protection: This permit has a duration of 2 years, allowing access to study and
work and is renewable for a work permit. Access to the right of family reunion according to the
requirements of Decree n. 286/1998. Furthermore, the asylum seeker also has access to
treatment as an Italian citizen regarding social and sanitary support and public accommodation
(according to Art.14, comma 4 of the DPR 12 January 2015, n.21, which previews the biannual
nature of the residence permit for humanitarian purposes, in the case that the asylum seeker is
interested in a working activity as required in the Art.40, comma 6 of Decree n.286/1998, the
asylum seeker can have access to public accommodation).
3
Court of Reggio Calabria RG
2687/2015 18 July 2016.
4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country 65

documents and inform them that, without their ID, the victims are illegal in the
destination territory and thus, they can be detained. Furthermore, even if the victims
are aware of their rights, they can also still succumb to the trafficker for other reasons
such as fear, manipulation, or emotional attachment.
For instance, in one of my interviews,4 a volunteer in the street unit described that
once, one or two weeks before Christmas, one of the girls happily declared that she
would go home for the festivities. Nevertheless, when the street unit visited the girl’s
usual spot during Christmas, they noticed that she was still there. When they asked
her what happened and why she was not at home, she replied that her boyfriend had
taken away her documents and she could not travel anymore. Therefore, despite her
legal ability to press charges against her boyfriend, regarding the confiscation of her
documents, and even being aware that he has committed an offence, she still obeyed
him and remained in Italy for Christmas.
As demonstrated in the case mentioned above, the lack of access to identification
documents is not a vulnerability per se within the European Union, yet, it can be
considered a vulnerability when added to the lack of information about rights or
other factors such as the submission on other fronts to the trafficker. In fact, in the
case that a person is legally in the territory, he/she can always claim that they have
lost their identification document. This leads us to the first question: whether or not
Nigerian women can be considered more vulnerable than Romanian women because
they do not have the same access to legal permits.
You are less exposed to blackmail, if you have the right provided from the State, but at the
same time this is neutralised, because you are a victim of human trafficking, so you have a
right, and you know it. In theory, the expectation is that a citizen is a less vulnerable person.
Therefore, the question is if a person has a right, what leads this person not to use it? My
answer is that, for instance, in the case of the loverboy method, there are many cases similar
to domestic violence. Therefore, in my opinion, we can apply the same literature that we
apply to domestic violence victims that do not escape from a situation of abuse. This is also
gender vulnerability; an Italian victim of domestic violence, who has all the rights and also
speaks the language, why doesn’t she press charges?5

As will be highlighted later, when discussing protection, in Italy, Nigerian

women now have more feasible access to legal status than in the past due to
the overlap between asylum seeker and human trafficking victim. In fact, while in
the past Nigerian women would usually remain illegally in Italy, nowadays most of
the women submit an asylum claim that allows them to be temporarily legal in the
territory or have access to an international or humanitarian protection. The access to
legal permanence on the territory has been given to the thousands of Nigerian
women who have recently arrived, yet as will be further analysed, the access to
the permit has not protected them from being exploited. On the contrary, it has
provided more security to the traffickers to exploit the women while they are legally
residing in Italian territory.

4
Interview number 23 (third sector), 26 July 2016, Italy.
5
Interview number 2 (expert on THB), 12 April 2016, Italy.
66 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

This does not mean that being legal in a country can be more helpful to the
traffickers than to the victims, but it reflects that the legal status of the territory does
not guarantee protection to victims of human trafficking. In fact, many Nigerian
women are not aware that they have presented an asylum claim, since most of the
time they obey the traffickers’ requirements. Furthermore, Nigerian women that
have access to an asylum request are often unaware of the true meaning of the
asylum claim or, even if they have some knowledge of the system, they tend to give
their documentation to the trafficker, since they do not understand its importance
(Skilbrei and Tveit 2007). Therefore, the legal permanence in European territory has
not proven to be a problem per se for Nigerian women. However, the problem can be
the lack of awareness regarding the access to rights or the manipulation that is
exercised by the traffickers, as can also be seen with Romanian women.
Due to the massive increase in Nigerian women arriving in Italy in recent years, a
lot of attention has been given to this group, especially in terms of legalising their
status and recognising them as human trafficking victims. Consequently, the atten-
tion given to Nigerian women has diverted the attention from other nationalities,
such as Romanians. Therefore, while there is a lot of attention on Nigerian women
being regarded as a vulnerable group, Romanian women have been largely regarded
as invulnerable, thus invisible to the institutions.
This leads us to the conclusion that what is important in human trafficking is not
only what is visible to the eyes, but the structural mentality and perspective regard-
ing human trafficking in the destination country. In fact, we only see the problems
that are visible to the eye; that is to say, society has normalised and interiorised a
view of the world, a ‘collective perception’, which means that many problems are
overlooked by the general public. It is in these cases, in which a phenomenon
becomes invisible, that it can lead to a permanent vulnerability for the victims that
society does not consider important enough to solve. Here, maybe it is important to
emphasise that contrary to the majority of the other European Union countries,
Portugal has a high number of victims in labour exploitation, predominantly Portu-
guese nationals, followed in number by European Union citizens such as Romanians
and Bulgarians (OSHT 2017). In fact, it is interesting how the way in which victims
of human trafficking are viewed can be mainly considered dependent on the type of
exploitation; labour exploitation seems to be normalised in society while the sex
market is seen as immoral and therefore, the victims are more readily identified.
In fact, continuous training in anti-trafficking institutions does not only aim to
reduce the vulnerability of the victims during the exploitation period, but also during
and after the protection period, as I will further analyse. However, it is very difficult
to keep track of the victims’ vulnerabilities after they are flagged or even after their
protection path, in order to avoid re-victimisation. With the aim of overcoming this
difficulty at a transnational level, and because many victims escape to other countries
after being flagged, Portugal is trying to keep records of the flagged victims.
However, the Portuguese statistic database does not keep a record of the victims’
personal data. Therefore, the Portuguese National Anti-Trafficking Observatory
wants to broaden their database at a European level, not based on the names of the
victims, but on non-personal data.
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 67

This system can help in understanding how countries can act on the vulnerabil-
ities of the victims after trafficking, or to avoid re-trafficking, especially in the
assisted voluntary return policy. Furthermore, this will help to analyse the process
of the victim’s integration and the different approaches, as well as concepts, of
integration used in different countries. For instance, as I will discuss in the
subchapter of Protection and victim’s assistance, only recently has the Veneto
region defined integration indicators for human trafficking victims that can be used
as a measuring instrument to understand the level of vulnerability of the victim to
re-trafficking.
Following up on a victim not only helps the institutions to evaluate the impact of
the protection paths and the voluntary return, but it can also provide a realistic
estimate on the amount of time that someone can be categorised as a victim. For
instance, in Portugal (where a greater number of the victims are European citizens)
the majority of the human trafficking victims refuse the support available to them,
due to the label of ‘victimhood’. Therefore, the institutions at this level should
inform the victim about her/his rights and duties, but also have to accept if the
victim does not want any kind of support, especially because many of them ask only
to be returned to their families.

4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments

In sexual exploitation, there are various grey zones depending on the level of
autonomy and coercion exercised on the victim and this leads to varied combinations
of the two (Giammarinaro 2000). According to Carchedi (2000), the balance
between coercion and autonomy can determine the freedom of the individual
engaged in the sex market. For instance, if more coercion is exercised on the
individual, she/he has less power, and consequently, less autonomy. Likewise,
more autonomy is a demonstration of less coercion. On this issue, Carchedi (2000)
indicates five levels that balance these two elements that can define the relationship
between the individual and the pimp/exploiter. The relationship where more coer-
cion is exercised is based on emotional relationships (natura compromissoria),
which, according to the level of violence that the victim is subjected to, is a
disadvantage for the women. The second level is based on a contract
(contrattualistica), in which a certain level of autonomy for the women is
recognised, but within the aim of continuing in prostitution. The third is compatible
nature (natura compatibile), where the women obtain a level similar to indepen-
dence, but are still subordinated to the pimp. At this level often more coercion is used
rather than granting more autonomy to the individual. The fourth level is utilitarian
(strumentale), in which both sides are aware that the work can be advantageous for
both, while the fifth level is shared nature (natura condivisa), where there is balanced
consent from both sides.
In order to have a better understanding of the vulnerabilities in the two systems of
exploitation, the Nigerian and the Romanian, it is important to consider Carchedi’s
68 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

theory on the balance between autonomy and coercion, especially the chronological
aspect. This understanding concerns coercion indicators, such as: social agility,
choice of place of prostitution, direct management of gains, self-determination,
subjected sovereignty, freedom of movement, adequate sociability, affection and
freedom to stop the activity (Carchedi et al. 2003). The victims can be controlled
either at home or on the street, where traffickers control them from a distance,
passing by in a car or pretending to be clients. This technique is used predominantly
by the Eastern criminal networks. According to the report Vittime di tratta/
richiedenti/titolari protezione umanitaria (Baldoni et al. 2014), several street units
have identified that the women tend to look in certain directions while speaking with
the volunteers of the street unit and are noticeably agitated.
Generally, violent and coercive ‘means’ directly affect the victim and aim to
maintain the victim in exploitation through the exercise of pressure such as physical
violence, sexual and non-sexual violence, or even forcing the victim to have a tattoo,
have an abortion or to have unprotected sex (Mensenhandel 2012). Being tattooed
can be considered typical of the Eastern criminal networks who mark ‘their’ women,
usually by tattooing them with the initials of the exploiter’s name (Baldoni et al.
2014). Nevertheless, despite the fact that getting the tattoo is considered to be a
violent act, sometimes it can be done with the woman’s consent, usually because she
has an emotional relationship with the exploiter, who uses this to control the victim.
This kind of method has proven to have a greater success than using violence,
since it does not leave physical bruises or scars, and therefore is less likeable to be
used in court. Therefore, the traffickers using softer ‘means’, normally rely on
threats, emotional manipulation, verbal insults and humiliation or psychological
threats by using fictional debts or other excuses. Besides using these methods,
which are more difficult to prove in court, some of the traffickers, as already
explained in the second chapter, start to implement what I have denominated as
active vulnerability (Pascoal 2017b).
The use of active vulnerability is not based on the victim’s background or status,
but is used purposefully to create victims’ dependency on the traffickers during the
phase of recruitment, either by forcing the victim to take drugs or establishing a
relationship of trust. Besides the use of active vulnerability during the recruitment
phase, traffickers tend to abuse the weak economic, psychological, or social position
of the victim, which is usually enhanced by the confiscation of ID documents, illegal
residence, or the language barrier (Government of The Netherlands 2010). For
instance, even if the women are legal in the destination territory, which normally
happens with the Romanian women, the traffickers exercise control over them
through the confiscation of their documents, as previously mentioned. On the
other hand, the Nigerian traffickers normally profit from the women’s poor under-
standing of the asylum claim or administration status (Baldoni et al. 2014).
Despite the fact that traffickers use varied types of violence on the victims, the
consequences of symbolic violence (Bourdieu 1998) and proximity violence
(Bartholini 2013) are not recognised by society or by the court in the way that
physical violence is. It is therefore difficult to compare which type of ‘means’,
manipulative ‘means’ of coercion or physical violence, can have more of an impact
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 69

on the victim. In fact, it has been proven that psychological violence or manipulation
causes as much harm and distress to the victim as physical violence (Mensenhandel
2012). According to the Dutch report on human trafficking (Mensenhandel 2012),
the majority of the traffickers involved in sexual exploitation use manipulation (99%
of the cases), as well as coercion, as a control method. However, when emotional
manipulation is used, the case is usually reliant on the victims’ testimony, which of
course depends on the victims’ cooperation and awareness. Consequently, this
means that less traffickers are convicted (Farrel et al. 2012). Therefore, it is also
important to study the coercive instruments used by each criminal group and the
success of these instruments, not only regarding the submission of the victim to
exploitation, but also the victim’s awareness of her own victimhood.
The two [criminal] organised models [the Nigerian and the Romanian] are totally different.
The Nigerian is less linked to emotional ties, and more linked to religious ties, to the families
that sell the victims, thus there is an emotional tie with the family, since there is a feeling of
duty towards the family. It is not based on emotional ties, but on a sort of business. So, there
are two different models and it is fair to compare them. However, I would look at the time of
exploitation, because the Nigerian one is defined, normally not going more than three, four
years and then there is the possibility to have a step forward in the career.6

The Nigerian and Romanian methods of the human trafficking criminal groups
tend to reflect their own cultural, social, and economic context. For instance, the
imposition of the debt in the Nigerian human trafficking system comes from a habit
of borrowing money from money lenders, family members, social networks and
criminal networks, since it is very difficult to borrow money from the bank in Nigeria
(Pamblech 2014). On the other hand, the Romanian criminal networks have under-
stood that Romania becoming part of the European Union has positively affected the
rights of the victims, which has led to the use of softer coercive methods.
Despite the fact that the IOM (2015) declares that Nigerian traffickers use high
levels of physical abuse, this does not mean that this is their only method; they do not
underestimate the efficiency of coercive instruments. On the contrary, the traffickers
have identified that smoother strategies can be more effective, especially considering
the amount of time they can expect to exploit their victims. For instance, while
madams in the past would use a lot of violence against the women, traffickers now
are more likely to establish a false conscience on the victim, creating a Weberian
trust relationship, where for the trafficker the relationship is based on a value-rational
action (Weber 1922). In this case, the exploiter tends to play the role of a benevolent
person. If in the past the victim’s passport was confiscated through the use of
violence, nowadays traffickers tend to use excuses to gain access to the victim’s
passport, such as the renewal of a residence permit or the application for claiming
asylum. With these mechanisms, the exploiter remains in a grey zone, acting as a
saviour that intends to help the victim and usually profits from the victim’s ignorance
about legal procedures in Italian territory (Baldoni et al. 2014).

6
Interview number 2 (expert on THB), 12 April 2016, Italy.
70 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

The researcher Shelley Cavalieri (2011) perfectly describes the friendship manip-
ulation used in the role of the madam. In her article, she describes a scene she
witnessed at the hospital in Sicily, where a Nigerian exploiter tried to visit a girl with
a heart condition who she was exploiting. Despite the fact that the doctors tried to
stop the exploiter from seeing the victim, the victim appeared and realised that the
staff were reluctant to allow the visitor to see her. Therefore, she asked the staff why
they were trying to separate her from her only friend.
This situation described by Cavalieri reflects the feeling of gratitude that many
victims have towards their traffickers, who have orchestrated their arrival into
Europe. Obviously, this feeling has to be balanced between the conditions that the
victim had in the origin country (some people can improve their situation while
being victims of human trafficking, compared to their situation in the origin coun-
try)7 with the conditions that are offered in the destination country.
Nigerian recruitment is normally based on a deceiving contract that not only
exploits the victim’s lack of knowledge about the European lifestyle (Carling 2006),
but also establishes the amount of debt in Naira, the Nigerian currency, which makes
the value to be returned to the exploiter seem smaller (Skogseth 2006; Baye 2012).
Despite the fact that the debt is pre-established by the exploiter, the madam often
extends the payment of the debt, by using pretexts such as food, accommodation,
and the joint. This aspect will be considered in-depth in the chapter The Motherhood
of Nigerian and Romanian women, where we clearly see the madam’s excuses for
prolonging the debt, using not only the unawareness of the victim, but also the role of
the dominant. Therefore, the exploiter is the one dictating the relationship between
victim and exploiter, and consequently, also the access of the victim to accommo-
dation and food. However, the exploiter and the victim share an unbalanced rela-
tionship, and sometimes the madam feels protective of the victim (Finnish
Immigration Office 2015).
In the book Le ragazze di Benin City, the authors Aikipitanyi and Maragnani
(2007) explain the behaviour of the trafficker as a friend who gives advice, provides
certain advantages, such as sleeping in the madam’s sister’s bed and pretends to call
the girl’s family in Nigeria. According to one of my interviews, the women tend to
care more for their victims than men, who are normally the exploiters in Romanian
human trafficking for sexual exploitation.8 Nevertheless, I would not focus on the
gender characteristics regarding the exploiter, but I would rather specify that each
gender normally profits from their roles and adapts according to the characteristics of
the victims. Therefore, while men tend to use the loverboy method, women use the
older, respectable figure of mother/friend.
According to Carchedi (2000), in the past Nigerian women would be exploited
for at least 4 years, up to a maximum of 8 years. The durée of Nigerian women’s
exploitation not only depends on the ‘debt’, which is often established previous to
departure according to travel conditions and the interest rate, but also on the

7
Interview number 10 (law enforcement), 4 October 2016, Romania.
8
Interview number 3 (THB expert), 29 November 2016, Italy.
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 71

establishment of the relationship and the assumption of roles. Therefore, the assump-
tion of a benevolent role can attract the victim into accepting the relationship’s
conditions and the manipulation of the debt, which activates the victim’s resistance
to exit the exploitation. In this case, factors such as accommodation, pavement
(joint) and food tend to increase the previously contracted debt.
Another issue regarding the durée is the payment’s consistence, considering that
some victims can pay less for rent and living costs, depending on the flexibility of the
madam. For instance, in order to finish paying their debt, many victims in Italy profit
from their connections in other cities by moving to the South, where there is a less
rigid climate and lower economic standards (Candia and Garreffa 2011).
Many women before they finish paying their debts, they move to Palermo. They normally
say that they came through a friend, someone that was able to provide them a house, but they
also mention that in Palermo there is less control in the streets regarding outdoor prostitution
and documents.9

As previously observed, the political context means that a larger number of

victims are now exploited for a shorter period of time, generally up to 3 years.
During one of my interviews, a psychologist mentioned that nowadays, the Nigerian
community tends to help their co-nationals more, so they have more resources
available to escape a situation of trafficking. These resources include the provision
of information, as well as the guarantee of a safe place. Consequently, the women do
not suffer from the effect of a long period of exploitation because the access to more
resources reduces the duration of the exploitation.
Contrary to what happened in the past, when the trafficker used to invest
significant economic and material resources, nowadays, with the constant number
of Nigerian women arriving in Italy, the trafficker does not spend much on a single
victim, as there is always a substitute. This automatic substitution not only reflects
that the amount returned to the trafficker is very small (there are cases that mention a
return of only 300 euros), but that the trafficker does not use the same high levels of
violence and threats on the victim and her family as before. In fact, lately, many
women have escaped declaring that they did not experience any kind of danger and
neither did their families in the origin country.10
The fact that now it is less likely that the victim’s family in the origin country
receives treats, could also be related to what has been previously exposed in the
subchapter the Libyan route, the absence of a sponsor that recruits the victim in the
origin country and follows their journey through to the destination country. There-
fore, contrary to the recruitment strategy in the past, where the sponsor/recruiter was
often a person from the victim’s community of origin, nowadays the continuous
selling of women along the several passages through Africa breaks this tie, and
consequently, the traffickers use of the victim’s family.
While the Nigerian women are attached to their traffickers through their debts
based on an animistic ritual, the Romanian women’s relationship with their

9
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 April 2017, Italy.
10
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 April 2017, Italy.
72 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

traffickers is not based on debt payment, that is a fixed amount, but on a continuous
wage that is normally divided between the trafficker and victims, established under
an emotional relationship. The use of these earnings as a symbol of equality or at
least the presence of non-submission gives the women a false conscience that they
are in a balanced power relationship. Furthermore, the lack of awareness of victim-
hood allows the trafficker a longer period of exploitation. In the next two sub-
chapters, I will further explore the ways in which both nationalities’ criminal
groups use created vulnerability—active vulnerability—as well as the use of voodoo
and the loverboy method.

4.1.1 The Oath and the Link with Religion

As previously mentioned, traffickers tend to foster the conditions that make their
victims vulnerable, based on ‘accepted contracts’ and structured and tolerated norms
under value-rational action (Pascoal 2017b; Pascoal and Schwartz 2016). In fact,
rather than physical violence, other types of coercion, especially at a psychological
level have proven to be efficient. In the Nigerian case, this vulnerability is created
through the use of religion and cultural rites, such as the juju, or the involvement of
priests in the sexual exploitation business. The recourse to sacred symbols and
places, such as the church, intensifies the credence of the woman in the power of
juju. Consequently, this not only means that the victim does not have the power to
overcome the mental and physical barriers it produces, but it also justifies the
exploitation with the willing of God that the debt is paid.
There are Christians that have done the ritual in a church, thus it is even stronger, so they
think that Jesus did not protect them in that moment.11

The ritual is normally performed in the origin country, yet sometimes it is also
reinforced in the destination country through the intervention of a Babaloa, using
some of the girl’s nails, pubic hair or hair, mixed with body fluids, blood, and
menstrual blood, to perform the ritual (Dijck 2001).
When the western anti-trafficking organisations were confronted with the use of
the animistic oath within the sexual exploitation of Nigerian women in the late
1990s, it raised an alarm, because they found themselves unprepared in the face of
this exotic and alien practice (Dijck 2001). Likewise, the voodoo ritual is widely
beneficial for the traffickers in terms of exploitation, because it is also connected to a
divine protection (Beneduce 2009). In fact, for some of the women, voodoo is a
symbol of protection and devotion to the spirits, such as Mami Wata, while other
girls consider the ritual a contractual agreement, without any magical power
(Skilbrei and Tveit 2007).

11
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 73

The ritual binds both parts under a contractual performance that should be
fulfilled by both parties. Therefore, for some women, the ‘deception’ of the trafficker
annuls the contract automatically, and consequently, the effect of the oath. In this
case, the ‘deception’ that is most concerning for the women is related to the nature of
the work and not to the working conditions or the debt.
The curse of the juju only takes effect if the victim prematurely disrupts the
agreement (Carling 2006). In this case, the madam establishes the boundaries of
harm, usually under the supernatural threat of death, pain, or disease (Taliani and
Vacchiani 2006). However, the power of juju is not only based on the ‘harm itself’,
but also on ‘its potential harm’, occurring in a self-fulfilling prophecy (Thomas and
Thomas 1928). In fact, the real psychological influence of the ritual is not based on
the trafficker’s threats, but on the blanks that the juju leaves for the victim to imagine
potential evils coming from inhuman sources (Beneduce 2009). Therefore, it is also
common to see that the influence of juju controls the daily life of the victim, even if
the victim fulfils the agreement.
The continuous presence of juju in the victim’s life is often noted, especially
when the symbols used during the ritual, are encountered in everyday life. For
instance, if the girl sees something like the chicken leg or heart in a soup, her own
underwear or even the soap used for the shower, these objects continuously remind
the girl of the oath that was made and cause her to have panic attacks (Taliani 2016).
Furthermore, the juju comes to explain everything that might have ‘gone wrong’ in
the victim’s life. The power of voodoo on the victim is not only limited to the victim
herself, but also those close to her, including family and friends, who can also be
threatened by the trafficker or through the Babaloa (Mensenhandel 2012). The
inclusion of other people within the victim’s social circle, who did not take the
oath, demonstrates that the juju has embodied the victim and affects every aspect of
her life, independent of the body’s border and national borders.
Despite the fact that the debt can be renegotiated, the oath is still bound to the first
ritual agreement and it is terminated only when the victim complies with the full
agreement. Furthermore, the oath embodies the victim; it accompanies the victim in
her life, wherever she goes. Therefore, the oath has a transnational impact and even if
it is made in the origin country, it binds the trafficker and the victim at a spiritual
level until payment of the debt. The trafficker is not the only person manipulating the
victim using the Juju’s power; the Babaloa, settled in the origin country, can indeed
coerce the girl directly. In the case that the girl decides to stop paying the debt, the
Babaloa sometimes intervenes from the origin country to remind her about the
oath’s consequences. His role helps enhance the impact of the ritual on the victim
or, depending on the relationship between victim and trafficker, to avoid the traf-
ficker taking an evil role.
The bond between the victim and the Babaloa is made through the spiritual oath,
but also takes a physical form when all the collected objects previously mentioned,
such as nails, pubic hair and the blood of the victim (Carchedi et al. 2010), are
gathered in the pack with other objects such as cola nuts, pieces of twisted metal,
powder, and soap (Dijck 2001). The objects acquire a symbolic meaning of death,
evil and pain that connects the symbolic universe with the social universe (Taliani
74 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

and Vacchiani 2006). If the recruiter is the girl’s boyfriend, the package also includes
his items, such as sperm, and in the ritual they both have to eat from the same cola
nut and both utter the oath (Dijck 2001).
Once the victim pays the debt, the pack is normally returned to the victim, as a
symbol that the oath has been respected (Carchedi et al. 2010). As a matter of fact,
some social professionals working with human trafficking victims have accidentally
come across this magic pack that represents the victim’s life (Beneduce 2009).
Sometimes, in order to save the victim from the effect of the voodoo once she
decides to escape the exploiter, the social workers ask the trafficker to return
the pack.
The spiritual bonding between the victim and the trafficker is more efficient than
physical harm as it is a form of psychological control, based on the endless
possibilities of harm, allowing the trafficker to manipulate the victim to suit their
needs. For instance, in an interview a Nigerian priest (Pascoal 2013) stated that the
ritual is not only psychological, but it is also physical. This happens because
‘sickness - when it affects the body, it is because the body and soul are together’.
Therefore, even though westerners often only see the power of juju as a psycholog-
ical coercion instrument, in the Nigerian animism, it is also a physical thing.
Juju can create a lot of distress in the victim, provoking symptoms similar to post-
traumatic stress disorder as they relate events in real life to negative consequence of
the voodoo due to misbehaviour (Agathise 2002). The symptoms are normally
demonstrated as if ‘they have something in their body’, of feeling cold in the
members or formication (Taliani 2016). These symptoms usually have symbolic
references in nature and its composure, such as snakes or worms in the body, the
sound of water or swarms in the head.
This relation is often enhanced by the defective conditions that can affect the
victim’s life, such as working standing up for many hours, pregnancy or sexually
transmitted diseases due to unprotected intercourse. In fact, the power of voodoo has
proven to be so strong that it is often found as the cause of psychiatric concerns that
can last for a long time (Agathise 2002). Furthermore, the oath is inflicted on the
victim as a permanent fear, as much for them as for their family (Danish Immigration
Office 2007). Therefore, many victims, even when they are accompanied by an anti-
trafficking organisation, avoid cooperation with the authorities. Consequently, in
order to have access to an Art.18 permit, the organisations choose the social path,
rather than the judicial path.12 However, in the case that the authorities do not action
the social path, the victim could return to their exploiters (Dijck 2001).
In order to combat the power of juju, some organisations turn to religious or
counter-juju priests. In the operation Kolvis in The Netherlands, the police were able
to obtain the testimonies of 10 girls after calling a Nigerian priest who convinced
them that the juju had been reversed (Rasmussen 2011). Aside from the reversal

12
Art.18 offers two possible paths: the judicial path and the social path. While the judicial path
foresees immediately pressing charges against the perpetrators, the social path allows the victims to
have access to protection without denouncing their exploiters.
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 75

ritual, the voodoo can also be invalidated through the Christian religion. The
Nigerian association working against human trafficking for sexual purposes, Girls’
Power Initiative, affirmed that they use the power of the Christian religion, in order
to contrast the power of juju (Danish Immigration Office 2007). However, Suor
Bonetti (2009), coordinator of the Office ‘Tratta donne e minori’ of the Unione delle
Superiore Maggiori d’Italia, highlights the fact that many health professionals
simply treat the effects of the juju with prescription pills, rather than a religious
accompaniment that makes the women feel safe.
Consider that the religious element is very present in the life of Nigerian women. Thus, it can
be a shield in a protective network that also works in the spiritual path, in order to regain
positive spirituality and to take away the bad one. This is a requirement that is even
spontaneous from the victims once they are aware of their victimhood. In fact, once they
arrive here, they ask immediately for a place to pray.13

Despite the fact that some workers are able to identify the connection between the
psychological distress of the victims with a cultural and religious aspect and try to
soften the effect of voodoo working through religion, it is also known that some
practitioners ignore the relationship between the two issues. In fact, the western
approach for treatment is not always the best method when dealing with this kind of
distress, as it is usually limited to the prescription of medicines. For instance,
according to research conducted by Gruppo Abele, out of 14 cases of psychological
distress, 11 cases were treated with pills (Gerli 2009).
Treatment is usually prescribed according to western cultural patterns, rather than
those of the victim’s origin country. Therefore, when the victim presents a lack of
appetite, troubles, aggressiveness, insomnia, hallucinations, or depression (Gerli
2009), this is often connected to a western perspective of distress, rather than distress
originated from cultural beliefs. Consequently, the analysis can be fallacious, lead-
ing to misinterpretation of the problem. On the other hand, even if the presence of the
juju is considered, the problem’s origin seems to result in a binary inconclusion:
whether it is the influence of the voodoo causing such disturbances or an outcome of
a situation of violence and exploitation.
The world of voodoo does not explain much about the criminal aspect of Nigerian
human trafficking, yet it provides a reading of the symbols and aspects of the
victims’ background (Finnish Immigration Office 2015). According to the
ethnopsychiatrist Roberto Beneduce (2009), overcoming the power of voodoo in
Nigerian human trafficking requires time, so that the individual is able to adapt to a
new ‘language of cultural symbols’. Therefore, when this language of symbols is
used to manipulate the victim into a level of submission by the dominant role, the
individual is able to ‘digest’ her own relationship with the ritual itself through its
acceptance, disconnecting the ritual from the debt.

13
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 April 2017, Italy.
76 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

4.1.2 The Use of Relations of Proximity

Scholar literature usually focuses on the transnational aspect of human trafficking,

often perpetrated by large criminal networks. However, recent reports highlight that
human trafficking also occurs within the private sphere of kinship, mostly founded
on relationships of trust, where the ‘means’ of deception and coercion play a
significant role (Europol 2016; Pascoal and Schwartz 2016). The fact that law
enforcement and academics alike tend to disregard the private sphere of the victims,
neglects the dichotomous perspective of victim-offender, as well as the relationship
between them, which is grounded on their personal aims/attachments.
For instance, in the case of the loverboy method, the offender establishes an
instrumentally rational Weberian relationship (1922), with the goal to sexually
exploit the victim and consequently deduct a substantial economic amount from
the victim’s earnings. On the other hand, since this relationship is bounded by a trust
element, the victim understands the relationship as a value-rational relationship,
under the inculcation of a false conscience, where the advantages are presented as
being equally shared. Therefore, the relationship is not based on a violenza
orroristica (Cavarero 2007), but on a subtle and gradual process that determines
the structural norms of the relationship. As previously mentioned, the loverboy
method is mostly maintained within a natura compromissoria relationship (Carchedi
2000), in an asymmetric balance of autonomy and coercion, where the level of
violence determines the role of the oppressor and the oppressed, creating a violence
of proximity situation (Bartholini 2013). The victim is instructed to a level of learned
helplessness, behaving passively, despite the existence of alternatives (Seligman
1975).
In the book Violenza di Prossimità. La vittima, il carnefice, lo spettatore, il
‘grande occhio’, the sociologist Ignazia Bartholini (2013) details the concept of
proximity violence, where an asymmetric distribution of power determines the
positions of submissive and controller. In this case, the use of symbolic violence
(Bourdieu 1998), as well as the structural violence described by Farmer (2003),
contributes to a traversal and faceless violence that crosses the line between the
private and the public sphere. Therefore, proximity violence is not only accepted and
naturalised by the public sphere, but it is also enhanced by patriarchal social norms
(Bartholini 2013). The identity of the victim is placed and developed within a
situation of power and consequently this also includes the body of the victim. By
establishing strong ties with the victim, the trafficker is able to analyse their needs
and their reactions to events. In this way, the trafficker can decide how to behave in
order to manipulate the victim and they can also anticipate how they will react.
The naturalisation of violence in both spheres, as well as the settled interactive
dynamics, directly influence the relationship’s durée. The violence is perpetrated in
order to achieve power, through the structure of normality (Corradi 2009), becoming
an invisible violence. Within this binary universe, the authors engage in an asym-
metric ritualisation of roles (Goffman 1971), where the oppressor subtly assumes the
role of controller and manipulative habitus. On the other side, the relationship, based
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 77

on a ritual of roles, is accepted and legitimatised by the dominated who unwittingly

assumes the role of the victim. The role ritualisation is indispensable for the
development of ‘couple identity’, that under the false conscience of a marital plan
extends the period of exploitation and consequently the economic advantages for the
offender. In this case, time is the most important factor. Contrary to the exploitation
of Nigerian women, Romanian women are less likely to understand that they are
being exploited, and this contributes to an exploitation sine diem, based on goals that
inculcate the victim with a Butlerian resistance.
Finally, Bartholini (2013) describes how violence is the main pillar of
the relationship, ‘feeding’ the ‘couple’s identity’ and transforming the violence as
the relationship’s main source into an auto-sufficient liaison. Furthermore, under the
agreement of roles perpetrated in continuous ritualisation, the violence avoids
conflict, becoming autoimmune. Consequently, the development of an identity
limited to the relationship, forces the victim to assume a victimised identity that
can only subsist depending on the oppressor’s identity. Therefore, the necessity of a
unitary interaction of roles suppresses other potential identities that would challenge
the victim-oppressor dichotomy.

4.1.2.1 The Loverboy Method

Traffickers from Eastern countries are known for the extreme use of violence on their
victims. The big networks, such as Cap de Porc, use high levels of violence and have
access to electronic platforms, where they keep their victims’ data: identity, desti-
nation country, residence of the family and the victim’s income. The gathered
information provides the traffickers with tools to coerce and menace their victims,
and consequently exercise a higher level of control over them, eliminating physical
and geographic boundaries (Guia 2008). However, in the last decade, small criminal
groups or individual traffickers have reduced their levels of physical violence,
especially after Romania became part of the European Union (Baldoni et al.
2012). In fact, with the increase of tutorship through the European Union citizenship,
the traffickers realised that subtle coercive strategies, grounded in a lack or ‘bal-
anced’ use of physical violence, avoids rebellion, and consequently increases the
durée of the exploitation (OHCHR 2010).
In many situations, it is very difficult to prove human trafficking, because the girl comes as a
victim of human trafficking, yet she cancels her complaint, thus no complaints, no felony.
The number of cases that I treat has decreased, because, I think, it started to be invisible,
since the people managing this are very clever and careful and avoid situations that can put
them under arrest. Knowing the laws, or having friends that deal with law, makes them able
to overcome the legal aspects. So they do it so that it does not look like human trafficking.
Ten years ago, human trafficking was based on kidnapping, crossing the borders and selling
[the woman] to someone else. So many people come to me, where it seems to be [a situation
of] prostitution, but it is human trafficking.14

14
Interview number 11(Law enforcement), 03 April 2017, Romania.
78 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

Currently, the absence of physical violence is substituted by other methods, used

in an emotional and familial context (Aninoșanu et al. 2016). The relationship, based
on trust, inculcated on the archetype of a false consciousness, convinces the victim to
accept the ‘established rules’ of the partner, who becomes the reference for the
woman regarding social norms. The use of such context, grounded on a processual
ritualisation of roles, legitimises the trafficker’s abusive behaviour. In fact, in this
case, the trafficker does not only exploit the victim’s emotional dependency on him,
but he is also the victim’s contact with the public sphere and her reference for
cultural norms.
The element of trust influences the different dimensions of the victim’s life and
allows the trafficker’s control over several aspects therewithin. Therefore, the
trafficker acts as a mediator between the victim and the external world and arranges
a number of situations for her, including accommodation, documents, and lawyers.
In fact, it is based on this blind trust that the perpetrator is able to take money from
the victim, without ‘shaking’ the pillars of confidence. Furthermore, the abuse of
power tends to be enhanced with structural and normalised violence, since cultural
violence leads to cultural vulnerability. Through the intersection of several factors,
between micro and macro levels of relations, the victim can embody overlapped
vulnerabilities, which are purposely targeted by the trafficker.
The loverboy method previously described is frequently used by the traffickers
and has been developed at different levels. Sometimes it is used just during the
recruitment phase, usually by individuals that start a relationship with a woman and
then sell her for 1000–3000 euros, ending the relationship between recruiter and
victim. In this case, due to the short duration of the relationship, the recruiter is not
able to profit from a situation of proximity violence. Instead, the relationship is
mainly based on a romantic illusion and the woman only realises she has been
deceived when she is on the way to another exploiter. Consequently, the deception
marks the victim’s awareness and disrupts the relationship between the recruiter and
the victim. On the other hand, the recruiter can maintain the role and continue with
the woman through the exploitation period and this sometimes even ends in
marriage.
It is not difficult to imagine that the second method is far more efficient than the
first, considering the lack of victim awareness, where time has a determinant role.
When the loverboy method is taken through the exploitation process, it means that
the victim does not immediately realise she has been deceived. On the contrary, this
awareness might never occur or it can be based on a long process (Government of
Netherlands 2014), through verbal and psychological violence often legitimised by
the victim as ‘domestic violence’ (Baldoni et al. 2012). This lack of awareness
within a romantic relationship was very apparent in my participant observation with
Romanian women engaged in outdoor prostitution (Pascoal 2017a).
During my fieldwork in the street unit, I encountered one girl who was unaware of
her state of victimhood, due to the loverboy method. On my first day as a volunteer in
the street unit, this girl complained about a headache and said she would leave early.
This statement alluded to an unrestricted movement condition, thus rejecting the
possibility of victimisation. However, the third time that we encountered the girl, she
4.1 The Main Coercion Instruments 79

told us: ‘the girls left earlier, because they leave at 1am, while me and G. we have to
stay until 3am’ (These two girls were the most recent additions to the group). This
statement, contrary to our first encounter, seems to contradict the previous idea of
unlimited movement. Therefore, I decided to ask her about why she had to stay
longer than the others, to which she abruptly responded that she needed a substantial
amount of money.
Despite this paradoxical situation, the proof of a submissive state only emerged
some months later in a police operation, where two girls and four men were arrested.
The police operation was described in a local newspaper article that contained some
excerpts of wiretapping, reporting the names of the girls, which gave us the possi-
bility to identify them. In particular, the article exposed a wiretapped excerpt
between the girl, who we identified by her name, and her boyfriend. The girl
asked her boyfriend to go home early, as she was feeling sick, to which her boyfriend
replied: ‘you are always asking to go home early, X told me that you are always
unhappy. You should smile more for the clients’. This small excerpt not only
presents a contradictory vision between the victim’s perspective of conditioned
‘willingness’, but it also reports the coercive methods the trafficker uses to keep
the victim in exploitation, disregarding her conditions, including her conscious
consent.
This willingness is developed in a framed setting, where the coercive experience
induces the individual to adopt conditioned behaviour, interiorising, and normalising
the situation until she has a tolerated and accepting perspective (Goffman 1975). The
paradigm of closeness, a perpetrator that plays the role of a saviour, assumes an
important role within the imagination of the victim, who justifies the offender’s
actions. Therefore, the violence becomes the regulator of accepted and unaccepted
behaviour, giving the victim a binary reference of positive and negative norms.
In this setting of normalised violence, the absence of deception perpetrates a sine
diem manipulation of the exploitative situation, leading the victim into a naturalised
acceptance of a submissive role within a situation of proximity violence, which
continues until the victim becomes aware of the deception.
However, the victim’s awareness is not always related to submission to violence,
in some cases it means a path to empowerment, through procedural mechanisms and
a collective identity that are based on the sharing of an emotional experience (Collins
2008). In fact, the development of an identity within the couple’s universe is ‘a force
that structures the personal identity and, in some conditions, fills the gap between
personal identity and collective identity’ (Corradi 2009: 19).
In some cases [violent cases of boyfriends that exploit their girlfriends], the girls prefer this
kind of attachment, rather than returning to their families and this is why they stay in
exploitation for years.15

The project TRACE describes the loverboy’s profile, by presenting an individual

with a low level of education (Weatherburn et al. 2015), but who is ‘street smart’ and

15
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05 October 2016, Romania.
80 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

charismatic.16 Furthermore, loverboys are often narcissistic (75%), with many

human resources, such as social and familial networks (Weatherburn et al. 2015).
Due to their social skills, the traffickers often receive the support of the girl’s
relatives, limiting the victim’s connection to external contacts (Weatherburn et al.
2015).
In the article How Family and Emotional Ties Are Used as Coercive Instruments
by the Exploiters on the Romanian Feminine Migration. The Study Case of Italy
(Pascoal and Schwartz 2016) the authors describe a conversation between the mother
of the trafficker and the trafficker, who was the boyfriend of the victim. In the
telephone conversation, the mother tells the boy that the girl’s mother has been
complaining about how her daughter did not send her any money. The boy tells his
mother that she can take 50 euros from the remittance he has sent to her and give it to
his mother-in-law. With this gesture, the boy not only avoids further complaint from
the mother-in-law and thus potential suspicion, but he is also able to portray the
image of a perfect son-in-law, opposed to the daughter’s image, as she does not send
any money (Pascoal and Schwartz 2016).
As can be observed, the involvement of the trafficker’s social network in the
woman’s life can strengthen the trust between the victim and the trafficker, leaving
more space to manoeuvre in order to extend the manipulation. In the case that the
trafficker is not approved by the woman’s family, then the trafficker pushes the
family away from the girl, creating an inherent and unconditional sense of depen-
dence towards the boyfriend, typical of Stockholm syndrome (Baldoni et al. 2012).
The loverboy creates an environment in which he is the only person that the victim has, it is
very simple, and they are going to the victims that don’t have attachment to other people.
This can be children who have been abused, but also children from very restrictive families.
They are not good or bad families, you will see on the film [speranta la vanzare].17 In the
film, the girl explains very well that the trafficker gave her attention, and he acted like he was
there for her and he was also very open, even by telling her the illegal things that he was
doing. Therefore, she thought that if he was so open, he was the person that she could trust,
even if she was kidnapped. This is more than Stockholm [syndrome], it is more complicated
than this. This is connected to why so many victims don’t see themselves as victims.18

The profile of the victims seems to have a high impact on the trafficker’s choices,
in fact, traffickers tend to target young victims, lacking love, with a difficult familial
background or those with experience growing up in shelters or institutions (Pascoal
and Schwartz 2018).
The relationship with the family members is not healthy. There are a lot of poor people in
Romania, but this does not mean that all of them will become human trafficking victims. The
victims normally have family problems. The traffickers target people who have problems
within their families, but are not necessarily poor. I will give you an example; we have a
16-year-old girl, she was a victim of domestic human trafficking, her father is a policeman
and they are three siblings. However, the father is aggressive, even physically with the girls

16
Interview number 10 (Law enforcement), in 04 October 2016, Romania.
17
You can watch the film on the following website http://www.sperantelavanzare.ro/
18
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05 October 2016, Romania.
4.2 The Use of the Nigerian Motherhood as a Coercive Instrument 81

and not with the boy, because of gender discrimination. So, both girls tried to escape from
the house, because the mother was not supporting them at all; the mother called them
wh*res, and this is another kind of vulnerability. And that is why they were attracted to
the first boy that came and said that they are beautiful.19

Despite the fact that minors are an easy target for traffickers, the fact that they are
underage makes it difficult for the traffickers to bring them across national borders.
Consequently, in Romania minors are often trafficked at a domestic level.20 How-
ever, in order to cross the border, the traffickers can use the following four methods:
(1) exploit the minors at a domestic level until they become adults and can travel
without Child Travel Consent; (2) ask the victim’s family for Child Travel Consent;
(3) counterfeit identity documents, declaring the adulthood of the victim; (4) marry
the minor, which grants the trafficker the minor’s legal tutorship.21 In addition,
marriage concedes to the trafficker the power of attorney, enhancing the influence of
emotional manipulation exercised over the minor.
The trafficker’s assumption of different roles, based on an asymmetrical distri-
bution of power and strongly established on an emotional liaison, augments the
supremacy of the exploiter. Therefore, in sexual exploitation, the girl provides the
money, not by the use of force, but under a conjugal plan, such as saving for a house
or a car benefiting both parties. However, the material benefits are always controlled
by the boyfriend or claimed as his property. Furthermore, the establishment of a
conjugal plan, mostly based on the future, such as building a house, means that the
solution is not immediately ready and also allows the trafficker the opportunity to
postpone the plan’s materialisation and consequently create an eternal exploitative
situation.

4.2 The Use of the Nigerian Motherhood as a Coercive

Instrument

Literature on human trafficking often reflects the trafficker’s threats towards the
victim’s relatives. However, the reference to relatives seems to neglect the victim’s
children, who are often threatened, either with physical harm or with being given to
the social services (Pascoal and Schwartz 2016). In Spain, the subject of the victim’s
children has come to the surface after countless episodes of abused Nigerian children
were reported.

19
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05 October 2016, Romania.
20
This conclusion is an outcome of the analysed data, based on the statistics of SIMEV, the
Romanian statistics system for victims of human trafficking, using the variables of age and
internally exploited victims.
21
Romanian Olt Court, case 2228/54/2008; third instance: High Court of Cassation and Justice,
19 April 2010, Decision n.1491 that can be accessed at https://www.unodc.org/cld/case-law-doc/
criminalgroupcrimetype/rou/2010/2228542008.html?lng¼en&tmpl¼htms
82 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

According to the report Memoria (2013), the Fiscalia of the Spanish government
noted that some victims’ children were controlled and guarded by a member of the
criminal network. In this situation, the traffickers do not allow the mother access to
the child in order to compel her to pay the debt. Furthermore, by controlling the
victim’s child, the trafficker is able to substantially increase the victim’s debt, by
declaring baby expenses. Consequently, the increase of the debt, by use of situa-
tional factors created by the trafficker, leads to an augmentation of the exploitative
continuum.
The use of the Nigerian children as coercive instruments by the exploiters
emerged publicly in 2013, when an eight-month-old baby who was under the care
of the mother’s madam was found dead in Cordoba. The trafficker that transferred
the victim to Barcelona had given the baby a substantial quantity of amphetamines
that resulted in its death. Another madam was also detained, under the accusation of
provoking serious injuries to the seven-month-old baby of a different Nigerian
woman. In addition, the woman was also accused of giving drugs to her son
(RTVE.es 2013).
In the same year, two Nigerian children were found in a room in Toledo tied to the
bed with denoted malnourishment and being subjected to drug assumption.22
Another baby was also found with burns, scars, and with a problem in his right
foot. The authorities identified the children’s mothers as victims of the traffickers
that had transferred them to be sexually exploited. The trafficker exploited the
victim’s lack of awareness regarding the tutorship of the child and claimed that
she could not take the child outside the Spanish territory as she did not have the
identification documents. Therefore, the trafficker decided to keep the child for a
sum of 250 euros per month. While the victim was in France, being sexually
exploited by the trafficker that would often remind her about the owed debt, as
well as the maintenance sum for the child.
By keeping the babies, the traffickers are able to harm them directly, as well as
inflict psychological violence on the mothers by suggesting horrific ideas and
making death threats, such as throwing the babies from the balcony (Foces 2015).
Once the authorities entered the house, they realised the children had been severely
mistreated and presented serious health concerns such as: lack of hygiene, dystrophy
problems and the incapacity to control their sphincter. Influenced by constant
psychological and verbal violence as well as the effective exposure of the children
to harm, the mother developed Post-traumatic stress, which has affected her capacity
to decide. Consequently, the mother suffers from continuously living in fear and
anxiety; her only goal in life is to protect her child.23 The use of children to maintain
and extend the exploitation period is represented by the story of a mother that lived
with her trafficker for 4 years. The woman was forced to pay 400 euros, besides the
agreed debts, in order to visit her child (Real and Venys 2014).

22
See the judge’s statement at AP Pontevedra, sec. 5ª, S 11-6-2015, n
292/2015, rec. 80/2014.
23
See the judge’s statement at AP Pontevedra, sec. 5ª, S 11-6-2015, n
292/2015, rec. 80/2014.
4.2 The Use of the Nigerian Motherhood as a Coercive Instrument 83

As previously observed, the traffickers often use their power over the children to
inflict psychological violence on the victims. One current threat is to flag the child to
the social services as abandoned or mistreated (Estado Fiscalia 2015). The traffickers
report to the social services that the mother has a lack of interest in her child, which
can often be proven by signs of mistreatment, as demonstrated in the previous case.
These menaces involving social services vastly impacted on the judge’s statement of
the Spanish Supreme Court Sala n
23/2015.
In 2010, a Nigerian trafficker forced the victim to leave her child behind in
Madrid with the madam, while the mother was sent to Las Palmas. This constriction
not only meant the victim had more time for work, but would also permit the
trafficker to exercise more control over her. The trafficker threatened the woman
by giving the child to the Spanish authorities and declaring that the child was
abandoned by the mother. These acts permitted the trafficker to continue forcing
the woman to be sexually exploited in order to pay the agreed debt. Besides the debt
that was previously determined, the traffickers required an extra monthly fee of
200 euros, justified by the baby’s expenses, including accommodation, food, and
babysitting. Furthermore, this situation also allowed the trafficker long-distance
control that did not require a physical presence. The mother was only able to see
the child in 2010, when she asked for police intervention. However, at the time,
without the mother’s consent and awareness, the trafficker had already given the
child to the social services, declaring abandonment. Consequently, the minor was
put into a foster family with the aim of pre-adoption.24
Similar cases have been registered in Spain, in which the traffickers would use the
children to coerce the mother to be sexually exploited and augment the debts as well
as the exploitation period. In 2000, a Nigerian woman entered Spain with her son,
who was born in Morocco. The woman was sexually exploited until 2004, when she
was detained and deported. The exploiter advised her not to inform the police about
her child, because even if she would be deported, the exploiter would try to bring her
back to Spain. Therefore, she was deported without her child and the trafficker kept
the child and claimed it was her own, both within the Nigerian community and to the
Spanish authorities. The trafficker used a counterfeit birth certificate, sent to Nigeria
on 19 July 2007, to officially state that she was the mother.
In the same year, the trafficker offered to bring the child’s mother to Spain so that
she could her offspring if she promised to pay the debt. Once the woman arrived in
Spain, the exploiter revealed that the total debt to be paid was 40,000 euros, based on
the payment for the second journey and 3 years of child care. In 2008, the victim was
informed that her child was taken to an institution, and yet, when she confronted the
exploiters about this, they neglected to provide her with any further information. In
2013, the victim pressed charges against the traffickers, in order to gain access to her
child. A year later, the Comisión de Tutela del Menor de la Comunidad de Madrid
put the child in a permanent foster family and stated that the mother would have to
stop being engaged in the sex market in order to get her child back. Finally, the

24
Tribunal Supremo Sala 2ª, S 4-2-2015, n
23/2015, rec. 10,144/2014.
84 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

Supreme Court ordered a penalty of 2 years in jail to the traffickers and compensa-
tion of 6000 euros to the victim.25
The case mentioned above not only evidences the use of children as coercive
instruments, but it also demonstrates the institutions’ inability to identify the bio-
logical parents of the child. In fact, proving biological ties in Nigerian cases has
proven to be a herculean task for the Spanish authorities. Therefore, further verifi-
cation should take place in order to demonstrate the biological ties of the child. An
action plan could prevent the child’s introduction into the social system as well as
potential abandonment traumas. Therefore, the preventive measures could not only
avoid integration into a foster family or adoption, but also activate a support plan for
the biological mother, once she is identified. Furthermore, more awareness on these
particular cases would also aid institutions in understanding problems that mothers
might have within their relationships with their children.
On 14 October 2002, B. gave birth to a child in the hospital. However, because
the trafficker provided false documentation to the hospital, the child was registered
as being the trafficker’s daughter. The trafficker kept the victim’s child and took the
victim’s baby to Nigeria, where she gave the child to her own sister, who was
married to the victim’s relative. This situation generated problems between the two
families, since the trafficker demanded compensation of 15,000 euros from the
victim’s family for economically maintaining the child. In the meantime, she told
the victim in Spain that the child was dead.
The case came to the public attention in 2006, when another woman pressed
charges against the trafficker, claiming that the child’s mother, B., was unaware of
the child’s location. The woman also declared that the madam sexually exploited B.,
using her child as a coercive instrument. The Ministerio Fiscal sentenced the
trafficker to pay 20,000 euros in compensation, due to moral damages and a penalty
of 1 year and 9 months in prison. Furthermore, the victim legalised her administra-
tive status in Spain and she was absolved of the crime of falsifying documents
regarding her daughter.
The B.’s case is relevant to our issue for two reasons. Firstly, one must consider
the ease in which the trafficker was able to provide the hospital with false documen-
tation and subsequently register the child as hers. This meant that the child could be
moved easily between European countries. The second relevant aspect is that,
contrary to other cases where the trafficker tends to justify an augmentation of the
debt based on the child’s maintenance, in this case the madam asked the victim’s
family directly for a ransom of sorts.
While the Spanish authorities have registered numerous reported cases in Spain in
which Nigerian traffickers use the victim’s children as a coercive instrument, in Italy
this issue is still undiscovered. In the past, I have met practitioners that claimed that
traffickers would use these children in order to control the mothers (Pascoal 2013).
However, nowadays, with the current asylum system, the majority of the mothers are
in reception centres with their children, which increases the level of protection and

25
Tribunal Supremo Sala 2ª, S 2-3-2017, n
137/2017, rec. 1617/2016.
4.2 The Use of the Nigerian Motherhood as a Coercive Instrument 85

monitoring. In fact, while in the past the women would probably have an
unauthorised permanence in Italy, remaining invisible, nowadays, pregnancy is
often followed up by the practitioners within the reception centres. Consequently,
this means that the traffickers do not have as much access to the victim’s children as
they had in the past.
Despite the fact that the majority of the cases mentioned were mainly relevant to
Nigerian victims, as they concern their administrative status or the baby’s identifi-
cation document, the children of Romanian women are also often the target of
threats. Furthermore, in the Eastern trafficking networks the situation tends to be
more complex, because it is often the children’s father who is the trafficker and the
proxemic relationship exists between child and father. Consequently, the victim’s
children can be indirect or direct victims of human trafficking, through their expe-
rience of violence, and this can result in future physical and psychological problems
(Brotherton 2016).
I consider them [the children] as direct victims, because they suffer a lot, I told you. There
are three types of situation. The mother is going to another place and she is missed at home,
because they need their mother. Especially when the father is involved in the exploitation,
they say that the mother is sending money, but this is not the first need of a child and of
course, we have children that were born during the exploitation period.26
The traffickers are smart and so they have started to marry their victims and have children,
and exploitation becomes a family business. This is not only in Romania, it starts here, but
then, they go to countries where they can profit more. The children usually go into forced
begging.27
There was this case of two sisters, in which the trafficker was the neighbour and while the
oldest daughter who was in Italy was afraid to tell the truth to her parents, the trafficker
invited the youngest sister to come to Italy. Since the victim’s daughter was 12 years old, the
trafficker also threatened to bring her child into prostitution.28

In fact, a value-rational relationship, based on trust established by a marital plan,

enhances the woman’s resistance (Butler et al. 2016) to exit the exploitation. The
victim’s family also enhances this resistance, because the mother sees her survival as
a sacrifice for the child. Furthermore, the victim’s dependency on the man is created
through the development of marital needs and emotional bonds, which for the
woman justifies the exploitation that she must endure.
Last year we had a situation of a woman who was trafficked to Germany with her partner and
they were in a relationship for 3 years. The child was left with the paternal grandmother and
on her repatriation day, the German police, who proved she was being exploited, had to act
very quickly [to get the child back], because he [the trafficker] was in jail and had already
started pressuring her and threatening her again. The child was ok, because he was a male
and this is important. I see a lot the difference between girls and boys on this.29

26
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05 October 2016, Romania.
27
Interview number 8 (law enforcement), 29 September 2016, Romania.
28
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
29
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05 October 2016, Romania.
86 4 Sexual Exploitation in the Destination Country

The international legal framework on human trafficking tends to focus on the

direct victims of the crime and ignore the issue of motherhood on human trafficking.
In fact, the major legal developments for victims were implemented in the 29/2012
European Directive,30 which also includes indirect victims of violence, such as
family members. Therefore, the Directive assumes that the concept of victim goes
beyond the victim’s embodiment and is also assumed by her dependents, who are
also affected (Alvaro and D’Andrea 2015). However, this notion of victim is mostly
related to interpersonal and intimate violence, rather than human trafficking and,
despite the more recent inclusion of indirect victims, the Directive only recognises
their existence in the case of the death of the direct victim (Sousa 2014).
The Directive 2012/29/EU strongly enhances the rights of the victims of violence,
in all its forms (EWL 2016), including proximity violence. Furthermore, by
expanding the concept of victim, the Directive automatically extends the level of
protection to the ‘indirect victims’ (Alvaro and D’Andrea 2015). In Art.18,31 the
Directive gives special attention to violence occurring within the private sphere,
specifying the particular needs of the victims, including family members.

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Chapter 5
Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian
Women in Sexual Exploitation

5.1 The Role of Motherhood

Motherhood in human trafficking can cause a transition from an invisible individual,

marginalised by their administrative and social status, into a ‘recognised citizen’
(Brouckaert and Longman 2018). This is to do with ‘the constitute maternal act’
(Ruddick 1995), in which the role of care is assumed regarding the child necessities,
bringing with it help for the mother in order to fulfil necessary services (Brouckaert
and Longman 2018). Therefore, motherhood can be perceived, especially by the
trafficker as an added vulnerability factor, due to the responsibility that the victim
feels in protecting the baby. However, on the other hand, the responsibility in
protecting another life can also be a pull factor for the victim in exiting exploitation,
since motherhood can emerge to the surface the exploitative situation of the victim,
by bringing the violence suffered in the private sphere into the public sphere
(Ruddick 1995).
Pregnancy has been identified as a particularly vulnerable stage during exploita-
tion (Gallagher 2012), often increasing the victim’s vulnerability to the exploiter
(Brotherton 2016). Indeed, during motherhood in a situation of sexual exploitation,
the majority of the victims fear for the newborn’s safety, even if up until that moment
they did not fear for themselves (Sloss and Harper 2004). Pregnancy, as such a
particular moment in the woman’s life, can increase the awareness of victimhood
(Levesque and Chamberland 2016), as is also found in domestic violence. The
intersubjective relation is the ‘humus’ for transformation, founded in this case by
the potential risk of injury to the victim’s body broadening to encompass the
offspring’s body. Therefore, the mother’s Butlerian resistance (2016) to suffering
can become a factor of resilience. The resilience is based on the newborn’s depen-
dence on the mother, who in turn begins to fear for her own safety (Sloss and Harper
2004).
It is within the concept of motherhood that the dependence between human
beings can be better understood, especially in terms of age and illness (Fineman

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 91

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4_5
92 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

2004). The social imposition of the paternalistic family, based on the definition of
roles, is the social reflection of derivative dependency. However, despite the fact that
motherhood is placed in a situation of major dependence on social and human assets,
it is highly controlled by the paternalistic state (Fineman 2012).
Therefore, there tends to be a conflict within motherhood, between the other
needs of the woman, such as individual freedom and career goals, and the education
of her children, which is usually the mother’s responsibility. It is on the women’s
reproductive mission, along with the educative moral mission of the offspring, that
socially unconfirmed sexual behaviour clashes with the role of ‘the perfect mother’.
In fact, the role of the mother encompasses her body, the social norms and subjec-
tivity, in a contradistinction between freedom and responsibility (D’Elia and
Serughetti 2017), which is socially opposed to ‘immoral behaviour’, such as adultery
or a non-heterosexual orientation (Fineman 1995). Even in the absence of violent
behaviour, a liberally sexualised woman, non-conforming to the social role of the
mother, is often considered destructive to the child’s education. However, the
authorities appear to believe that the necessity of being a respectable, controlled
mother is essential if one is to ensure ‘the best interest of the child’. This reasoning is
grounded in the responsibility of motherhood as the pillar of all generations and thus
the reproductive channel of social norms.
According to Butler (2004), women are labelled as ‘the symbolic mothers of the
nation’, which justifies the State’s control over women’s bodies, their sexuality and
their reproductive rights. In this case, being engaged in the sex market can be
associated with damaging the reproductive organs and thus a synonym of being
unable to assume the role of a parent in the future (Kohm 2005). Mothers are the base
of a society because all people have or have had a biological mother, but only some
individuals can be mothers (Fineman 1995).
Therefore, motherhood is the symbol of cultural construction, usually dependent
on the roles of a husband and an offspring, forming the concept of a ‘traditional
family’. Family is a primary social group, regarded as the intermediary between
society and the State, facilitating or not the individual’s participation at a structured,
public level (Fineman 1995). Hence, the state’s control over the women’s bodies and
their relationship with the child, especially in cases considered to be ‘deviant
behaviour’, lead to a loss of autonomy, rationalised as acting in ‘the best interest
of the child’ (Kohm 2005); this reason is often put forward to justify the separation of
the offspring from the mother.
Despite the fact that the intersection of motherhood with prostitution has been
approached by academics (Kohm 2005; Sloss and Harper 2004), this intersection has
been scarcely researched within the context of human trafficking (Pascoal 2013). By
analysing motherhood within a situation of human trafficking, the victims’ vulner-
ability not only concerns their embodiment, but it also affects the interactions
between child and mother, as well as both individuals with others. The context can
either increase the victim’s exposure to harm, intensifying her vulnerabilities or, on
the other hand, extend the victim’s social capital, and consequently broaden her
resource network (Ruddick 1995).
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 93

In the context of migration, vulnerabilities are produced, reproduced or attenuated

in a set of interactions between non-state and governmental institutions (Grotti et al.
2017). The interaction with positive networks can become the humus of the trans-
formation of the migrant’s inherent vulnerability into agency, resistance and resil-
ience (Butler et al. 2016). Motherhood in human trafficking can become an
opportunity for contact, based on legal, administrative and health issues due to the
responsibility of the state towards the child (Grotti et al. 2017). In fact, the link
between resilience and relational ties, such as families or social support, has been
proven to be a strong factor of resilience (Schweitzer et al. 2007). Therefore, the
analysis of the concept of vulnerability linked to motherhood in human trafficking
for sexual purposes delimits a binary paradigm between the ‘sacrificed mother’ and
the ‘undeserving mother’. The ‘sacrificed mother’ is determined by their coerced
introduction to the sex market, based on a lack of alternative, that can delimit the
merit of the mother’s role (Peled and Parker 2013).

5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation

During my interviews, motherhood has been presented as a binary influence on the

women’s exploitation. On one hand, it is displayed as a pull factor to sexual
exploitation, especially for the Romanian women, while on the other hand, partic-
ularly in the initial phase, it is identified as an opportune occasion to bring the girl out
of the exploitative situation. According to Kohm (2005), women during pregnancy
are particularly sensitive to their bodily changes, especially regarding the child’s
development.
The importance of motherhood came to light during my participant observation
with Romanian women, emerging as one of the principal motives that attracted the
women into the sex market. In fact, the pursuit of a better future for their children can
often become a trap, leading to human trafficking. On the other hand, the results of
the semi-structured interviews reflected a homogeneous perspective regarding the
positive impact of motherhood and pregnancy in the women’s life. In fact, four
interviewees affirmed that pregnancy or an abortion can mark a prolific moment, in
which the Romanian and the Nigerian women withdraw from exploitation.1
We have had several Romanian women who, by proceeding with the pregnancy, started to
think about their relationship with the exploiter. With the Romanian women we have several
difficulties in hosting them, since they do not recognise the validity of the model that we
propose. However, pregnant women stay more within our protection path, sometimes more
autonomously, others more dependently. Therefore, what we see is that at least, at that time,
the women did not go to the street. Then, we had some women that stopped being engaged in
prostitution.2

1
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy, 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy, 29, 22
(third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
2
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
94 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

As previously mentioned, proximity violence (Bartholini 2013) naturalises the

acceptance archetype on the victim, and this not only avoids full conscience of
victimhood but also rejects standardised protection models. The inherent acceptance
of violence was a long process for the victim, thus the embodied resistance to exit the
exploitation, created in a concordant violent setting, tends to defy the proposed
protection models. The acceptance of these protection models challenges the resis-
tance created by the victim, as they require the adoption of a new identity, where the
exploiter is an exogenous element to the victim’s life. It is specifically on the
espousal of a new identity that motherhood or pregnancy can have a significant
role. In fact, the development of a new identity as a mother, based on the responsi-
bility for another human being, can be the first step in accepting the protection path.
Furthermore, the potential risk to a dependent body becomes a self-reflection of the
victim, regarding her own risk. Therefore, the victim becomes aware of the potential
harm within her exploitative situation because it goes beyond her body alone. In
short, the pregnancy highlights her responsibility towards another human being,
especially as an endogamous element of the victim’s body.
Besides the acquisition of a new role, grounded on being responsible for another
human being, pregnancy, and acting in ‘the best interest of the child’, marks the
passage from invisible to visible. Based on the incompatibility between the role of
the mother or future mother and ‘immoral behaviour’, citizens tend to report
pregnant women who are engaged in outdoor prostitution to state institutions.
Therefore, pregnancy can often bring to light individuals who are recognised as
victims by citizens in the destination country, not due to their rights, but due to their
duties towards another human being.
In these cases, the citizens tend to flag more often and I have to say that this summer we have
had two cases that have arrived, because the women were flagged by the citizens.3

However, can we say that the role of mother is equally relevant to both nation-
alities? According to my interviewees, motherhood has a more substantial impact on
Nigerian women than Romanian women. Hence, for Nigerian women, motherhood
is an important aspect of their role as a female, because it completes the woman’s
identity (Dispositif Ac.sé 2015a, b). This impact is mainly caused by the incompat-
ibility between the role of mother and engagement in the sex market.
I have to say that in the past, this [motherhood] was a very strong motive to leave
exploitation, mainly for the baby’s life and during the period of pregnancy. Many women
say that they exited from their exploitative situation because they were pregnant. The
[Nigerian] women say that they can no longer engage in prostitution while being mothers.
The experience of motherhood for the Nigerians is very strong and it is normally already felt
during the gestation period, thus their behaviour is already connected with this experience.
Hence, they are already protecting the baby and the baby is seen as someone that needs to be
saved.4

3
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
4
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 95

There are so many cases in which pregnancy has helped the women to leave the exploiter,
especially the Nigerians. Because they are afraid for the life of their own child, also because
the babies are not always a result of violence, but from a particular relationship that they
have with a client and this gives them strength to leave the exploiter. What begins as a
situation of vulnerability, can turn into a situation of strength.5

Despite the fact that the interviewees demonstrate a strong perspective regarding
the unequal importance of motherhood, and consequently its discrepant impact on
both nationalities, it is necessary to dissect all potential influential factors. The first
relevant factor is related to the geopolitical element that divides both nationalities
and consequently establishes a binary setting of survival, where motherhood
assumes a dichotomous partition between origin and destination. This binary influ-
ence on the women’s motherhood has a strong impact on both nationalities, Roma-
nian and Nigerian, but in very different ways. Therefore, while motherhood can have
a significant legal influence on third-country nationals, granting them a legal permit,
for European Union citizens, motherhood does not have a significant legal influence
on administrative status.
Consequently, while Nigerian women experience face-to-face motherhood in the
destination country, Romanian women tend to limit their role of mother to a
transnational level, usually attributing this role to another female relative in Roma-
nia, while living in the destination country. Therefore, despite the fact that in the past
a significant number of Nigerians also lived a transnational motherhood, they often
start a binary motherhood in the transit or destination country (Kastner 2010). On the
other hand, the Romanian women normally live a transnational motherhood (Pascoal
and Schwartz 2016), as described in the subchapter Children Left Behind.
The second relevant factor, also influenced by the geopolitical aspect, is the legal
entree mechanisms in the destination countries in the European territory. While
Romanian women have facilitated access to the destination countries, there is a
significant difference for Nigerian women, who have substantially changed their
entry strategies. In this case, while in the past Nigerian women would arrive directly
by plane with counterfeit passports (Carchedi et al. 2003), nowadays, the migration
flows, as well as the asylum claims, have completely changed the motherhood of
Nigerian women. For example, in the past Nigerian women would normally live
with their madams, or at least with the madam’s other victims. However, nowadays,
the women are usually hosted in reception centres with their children, which
influences all the motherhood dynamics during the exploitation period. The experi-
ence of being a full-time mother, lived by the Nigerian women in the destination
country, is the contrary of the experience of the transnational motherhood lived by
the Romanian women. In addition, it is easier for Romanian women to access their
country of origin, and subsequently their families, as much due to the use of low-cost
airline companies, as for the possibility of moving freely across borders between the
European Union states.

5
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
96 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

These are the principal factors that currently define the different motherhood
settings between the two nationalities. The Nigerian mother’s daily experience opens
up a network of contacts to the mother, not only as a mother but also as an asylum
seeker (Brouckaert and Longman 2018). Therefore, ‘the constitute maternal act’
(Ruddick 1995), based on the child’s necessities, extends her contact to a set of
stakeholders that fulfil necessary services. On the other side, Romanian women leave
the task of motherhood to other members of the family in the origin country. Hence,
they are limited in their experience of motherhood, passing the role of mother to
another female within their kinship (Trask 2013), which consequently limits contact
with the local services that can identify the victim and act in ‘the best interest of the
child’.
If until now we have spoken about motherhood in general, it is also important to
remark the occurrence of pregnancy and its consequences. In fact, there was a
substantial difference of opinion between the interviewees in Italy and those in
Romania; those in Italy stated that the pregnant women (predominantly Nigerian)
change considerably during pregnancy, while those working in Romania noted very
little change in their co-nationals’ attitudes due to pregnancy. It is, in fact, at this
moment that the woman tends to restore her identity, in order to protect the baby.
Therefore, the interviewees in each country clearly demonstrated different opinions
regarding the victims’ motherhood. In Italy, interviewees declared that motherhood
was a push factor to exit the exploitative situation, inclusive of Romanian women.
However, in Romania, all interviewees stated that pregnancy had no particular
influence on the women. Furthermore, pregnancy tends to allow Nigerian women
to establish a network of contacts, especially in the social and healthcare services,
whilst Romanian women, living a transnational motherhood, do not have this
advantage. Finally, it is also important to consider the partner and the father of the
child, considering that those situations mentioned by the interviewees in which the
Romanian women in Italy have exited exploitation occurred when their partners
were Italian men.
It is true that the motherhood of Romanian women leads to exploitation, because we have
seen that those who have children in Romania find it more difficult to exit from the situation
of exploitation compared to those who have a child here and get pregnant here [in Italy].
Furthermore, we have also seen that motherhood also coincides with the departure from the
Romanian context. Therefore, they have found an Italian boyfriend and have found a
definitive settlement. It is in this situation that they stop going to the street - the pregnancy
of their first child and an Italian boyfriend. We have seen three situations in which, after the
umpteenth abortion, the women decided to go forward with the pregnancy, but they do it
because they have by their side an Italian man that sometimes is not even the father of the
child, but is someone that has assumed that role.6

Many women fulfil their life dream and find a partner, who is usually native to the
destination country and will probably support them and their family. However, this
mostly happens with the Nigerian women, who see often western men as being
kinder and richer than Nigerian men. They normally see the western men as someone

6
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 97

who can provide them a good life, as well as citizenship. On the other side,
Romanian women do not often fantasise about having an Italian partner, since
most of them perceive Italian men as clients. Furthermore, as previously mentioned,
traffickers tend to establish relationships of dependence with the victims, in order to
manipulate them and make them feel unworthy.
We had the case of a girl, she was 19/20 years old and she grew up in an orphanage, she was
very aggressive, but also towards herself. I remember that she was seven, eight months
pregnant due to exploitation, but she said that she was pregnant from her husband, yet she
did not want the child and she would punch her belly. She only knew that she was pregnant
when she saw her big belly, back then, I asked her, if no one had taught her that if she did not
have the menstrual cycle then this could mean that she was pregnant, but she said no. She
had very naïve behaviours, she got angry with her partner because when he found out that it
was a girl, he said that he did not want wh*res at home. This was the time when she called
me and we were able to transfer her in several shelters, because her partner was looking for
her everywhere, and he even threatened me. However, she did not change, not even for the
love of the baby, since I know that she has now returned to the streets and she left the baby in
the shelter.7

As can be noted, besides the influence of the partner on pregnancy, which often
happens with Romanian women but not often with Nigerian women, the role of the
services connected to a newborn can also be a push factor to leave exploitation.
Actually, in this case, the public assistance for a child not only represents continuous
contact with a network of services (Brotherton 2016) that can identify the particular
situation of the mother and provide the mother with detailed information on the
access to rights but also a threat to the mother/offspring relationship if the best
interest of the child is not fulfilled. Therefore, the social services tend to enhance the
need of the victim to leave the exploitative situation, especially when they perceive
that the level of violence perpetrated against the mother could endanger the safety of
the child. Furthermore, pregnancy is a particular moment in the women’s lives that
has the tendency to trigger a purpose that was absent before. In fact, the responsi-
bility for another human being, embodied in the victim, causes them to feel protec-
tive, and that automatically restores the identity of the victim, and the protection of
the child becomes a goal for the victim (Brotherton 2016).
If you can work it right, it can also be a moment of rupture with the world of exploitation, so
we are also the ones that should give the opportunity. Especially, when we do a follow up
after the birth of the child. This girl, she was very young and she came to Italy pregnant, she
gave birth and she declared immediately to the IOM that she was exploited, thus, as far as we
knew, she has gone through the protection path and she has broken the ties with her
exploiter. However, when the child was 2 years old, the woman abandoned the programme,
which means that the network was probably re-activated. Maybe it was not the same, maybe
it was another exploiter, but she probably got scared because of the age of the child. For this
reason, I have said that it is important to accompany motherhood through the years.8

7
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
8
Interview number 12 (third sector), 24/07/2017, Italy.
98 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

As portrayed, the fact that many women do not have support after the protection
path, especially when they do not have a partner, can lead them to despair and they
can go back to engagement in the sex market. However, this does not necessarily
mean that the women are re-victimised, but that they might seek support for their
children through prostitution, since it is often the only job that they know.9

5.2.1 The Motherhood of the Nigerian Women

Mothering practices in the migration context are systematically affected by

intersectional factors such as social position, ethnicity, religion and access to citi-
zenship, in a binary balance between duties and rights (Brouckaert and Longman
2018). Therefore, motherhood becomes the reflective archetype of different layers,
which allows or neglects the access to citizenship and all its components.
Nigerian motherhood in Italy has suffered two main changes in the last years, the
first one concerns the factor of travel. As aforementioned, many women in previous
years would arrive in Europe by plane, avoiding any kind of violence during the
journey and the possible consequences, such as unwanted pregnancies, yet mother-
hood nowadays can emerge from a situation of violence, especially during
the journey, which sometimes determines the relationship between the mother and
the child. Nowadays, many practitioners report that mothers appear detached from
the child and this can sometimes result in anger.
The second main aspect is the fact that, while in the past many women during
exploitation lived their motherhood in a house with other co-nationals and some-
times with their exploiter, nowadays, by presenting the asylum claim, many mothers
live in the reception centres. This means that Nigerian motherhood tends to be more
accompanied and controlled by the staff and the authorities having a more profound
knowledge of the situation of motherhood during exploitation. Furthermore, the
women in the past tended to be older, which made them go through motherhood in a
more mature way, while nowadays many Nigerian women in Europe are very young
mothers.
Nigerian women in the reception centre tend to base their motherhood on
‘community mothering’ or ‘other mothering’ (Hill-Collins 2000), sharing the child’s
upbringing among a wider group of people, yet some of the women have also started
to adapt to the western approach and request money for babysitting services.
Therefore, the mothers usually have three options when they cannot be with their
children: (1) they leave the children with acquaintances; (2) pay for babysitting
services and leave the children in local social kindergarten; and (3) leave the child
with the exploiter (Fernandez et al. 2017).

9
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 99

We have had in the past mothers that would go to the streets, but in a very non-uniform way.
In that case, the other girls, since they would do shifts, would serve as babysitters.10

It is clear that these days we have to think about the CAS and the other reception centres; in
that place there are the women with their children and sometimes with the husband or the
pseudo-husband. Therefore, it is possible that the girl has to leave the babies with someone
when she has to go to the streets. I remember that a year ago a Nigerian with a 1-year-old
baby in the CAS said that one of the reasons that she fought with her partner is that he
accused the woman of leaving the house to find the clients. The impression that the workers
had was that he did not have a problem with what the woman was doing, but the fact that he
had to stay with the baby.11

Motherhood tends to be the self-affirmation of women in society (D’Elia and

Serughetti 2017) and for Nigerian women, it is a symbol of great importance
(Dispositif Ac.sé 2015a, b). This importance was highlighted during one of my
interviews with one practitioner working with Nigerian women who said: ‘If you
don’t have a child, you are nothing!’.12 In fact, the relevance of being a mother is
reflected in how Nigerian mothers names are often substituted with their child’s
name, preceded by the word ‘Mama’ (Fernandez et al. 2017). The importance of
motherhood is particularly relevant when it is identified in a situation of human
trafficking, since the concept of mother usually opposes the concept of a sex worker.
Furthermore, in Italy, Nigerian women are often identified as prostitutes (Taliani
2012). In fact, according to the researcher Kohm (2005) moral concerns influence
the relationship between motherhood and prostitution, thus women try to work on
the street less because they feel that it is morally wrong.
Usually, the assumption of the role of mother creates social respect for the
woman, as she is seen as a provider to society (Ac.sé 2011). It is exactly in this
sense that the identity of the woman is restored and she plays a different role in
society that is not limited to the role of wife, mostly related to the Romanian women,
or the breadwinner of the family, but also to the contribution to another person’s
development. Furthermore, women tend to feel that exploitation is a dangerous
situation for the baby, especially regarding the conditions that are established by
the trafficker. In the novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl written in 1861, by
Harriet Ann Jacobs, despite the fact that the slave mother perceived the children as
her attachment to life, she was also aware that her exploiter knew that her life was
attached to her children and that he could keep her as a slave by threatening her
children (Sherman 1990). This highlights how motherhood can also increase the
woman’s vulnerability when it is used as coercion (Pascoal 2013).
The women that I met between 2012 and last year, they were older, each one of them with
children, but not always in a single parent situation. They had big issues in talking about their
problems, especially when the subject of motherhood crossed with their exploitative situa-
tion. I can say that only recently women have started to talk more about their condition of

10
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
11
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
12
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
100 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

victims and it is in this moment that the child is a motivation to exit their exploitative
situation.13

Studying Nigerian motherhood in sexual exploitation for several years has led me
to compare the situation in the present with the past (Pascoal 2013), especially due to
the substantial changes in the phenomenon regarding the current overlap between an
asylum seeker and human trafficking victim (Pascoal 2018). As previously men-
tioned, these changes are predominantly related to accommodation and residence
permits. Many women in the past would live with their exploiter or at least with other
women. Sharing a microcosm with the trafficker limited their contact with people
that could help the victim and consequently, the child. This cohabitation among
exploiters, controllers and victims can often lead the child into confusion, as they do
not understand the dynamics of the relationship between the mother and the
housemates.
Despite the fact that the subject of motherhood in human trafficking is not often
mentioned in academic literature (Brotherton 2016), it has been given some attention
in the last years, especially due to the ‘niños-ancla’14 situation in Spain (Fernandez
et al. 2017). Studies in France, within the Association l’Amicale du Nid, have
revealed that the number of women with children in their premises has increased,
reaching 1200 children in 2013, and according to the French Association Dispositif
Ac.sé, 30% of the women that were hosted had at least one child or were pregnant
(CNCDH 2015). In a study taken in the UK (Brotherton 2016) 25–50% of the
trafficking victims were pregnant or had children. Moreover, the study refers to the
scarce mention of motherhood and parenthood in human trafficking in UK legisla-
tion, even though it seems quite impossible not to approach the issue, considering
that the women are pregnant due to a precarious situation.
According to a study by Dispositif Ac.sé (2015a, b), 63% of the practitioners that
work with mothers engaged in prostitution (the study does not state whether these
are situations of human trafficking or not), responded that the women have difficul-
ties dealing with motherhood in prostitution. Furthermore, the relationship between
the child and the mother is usually influenced by the conditions affecting the birth.
For instance, in the case that the baby is the result of a situation of trauma, the baby is
often affected by the distress of the mother during the pregnancy. Furthermore, after
the birth, the women normally associate the child with the trauma, causing psycho-
logical effects, such as depression, suicidal behaviour, anxiety and disturbed sleep,
establishing a love/hate relationship. In fact, the child can be a continuous reminder
of the trauma she has suffered and that can be an obstacle to establishing a bond. On
the other side, in the case that the child is born out of a love story, the mothers are
usually emotionally attached to the child (Brotherton 2016).
The conditions of the woman in sexual exploitation can hinder them in fully
exercising the role of the mother, not only due to the distress felt in such a situation,
but also due to the incompatibility of schedules and availability of services in certain

13
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
14
Lit. ‘anchor babies’, meaning the babies migrant women have to avoid deportation from Spain.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 101

hours.15 Furthermore, the women can live in isolation, which limits the network of
contacts to help with babysitting while they are working. This absence of services
during the night shift can lead to some women giving the children pills to make them
fall asleep in their absence (Pascoal 2013). What is more, Brotherton (2016) affirms
that babysitting services are required, not only when the women are working, but
also when they have meetings with law enforcement and support services. Conse-
quently, the children often accompany their mothers for bureaucratic issues.
According to the Helen Bamber Foundation (2013), the separation of the care-
giver from the child can lead to the child having problems in interpersonal relation-
ships as adults. Moreover, sometimes the children can also be exposed to their
mother’s exploitation, which can lead to the child assuming aggressive or sexualised
behaviours (Brotherton 2016). According to Taliani (2011), Nigerian mothers often
do not have enough resources to explain their situation to their offspring, because
they are afraid that the children will be ashamed of them, and understand that the
discrimination that they have suffered in Italian society is directly related to the
mother’s situation.
The Nigerian diaspora has established themselves in Italy in the past two decades,
thus the Nigerian citizens and their descendants are quite young. According to IOM
(2017), Nigerian victims of human trafficking are nowadays between 14 and
28 years old, thus, as the children are often born in Italy, their children also tend
to be quite young. In fact, during my research (Pascoal 2013), except in just one case,
the children of the women were no more than 4 years old, because the majority of the
women arrived in 2008 and the research was completed in 2012.
Nowadays, the duration of exploitation has been reduced to 2 or 3 years, as we
will see in Chapter 6, thus motherhood is less influenced by the exploitation of the
mother and more influenced by the network of services provided by the asylum
system, anti-trafficking network or the social services. However, despite the fact that
many women are in a reception centre, victims of trafficking are still relocated on a
national and European level, in order to avoid the establishment of contacts within
the territory, as well as to keep renewing the market. Hence, anti-trafficking services
have extra difficulty tracking and accompanying the women, and consequently, the
children, as it is often impossible to share the information of the mother and the child
among the different European states (Fernandez et al. 2017).
While the Romanian children are usually left in the origin country, the children of
the Nigerian women are often obliged to be transferred at a national or international
level, in order to accompany the mother. This creates problems in tackling the
phenomenon due to the heterogeneous domestic laws of the European Member
States on migration policies and referral and monitoring systems. The decision to
go ahead with the pregnancy is often not solely down to the woman, but also to the
trafficker, who often decides for her and establishes the relationship between the
child and the mother. Three situations have been noticed in the case that the girl is a
mother: (1) the girl can be transferred with the child to another city, since the child is

15
Interview number 12 (third sector), 24/07/2017, Italy.
102 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

normally under 4 years old; (2) the madam obliges the woman to give her child to the
social services; and (3) the madam keeps the baby and reports that the child is hers.
In the report Madres en la red de trata: Derechos robados (Fernandez et al.
2017), the authors state that Nigerian mothers, while in countries such as Germany,
Denmark and France, often claim that their children are in European transit coun-
tries, like Spain and Italy. However, apart from some cases that have emerged in
Spain, the instances of children being left with the traffickers are rarely reported. In
fact, according to the Association Amaranta, 60 minors were stolen from within their
centres in 2015 (Malavia 2016). What is more, these children, in the hands of the
traffickers, could be the object of mistreatment and could be used as coercive
instruments, as will be seen in the next subchapter.

5.2.1.1 An Uncertain Motherhood

The Nigerian criminal networks’ control over the pregnant women was confirmed in
2013 in an investigation by the Spanish police that emerged after the authorities
noticed an increase in the arrival of Nigerian women who were pregnant or accom-
panied by children. The women would enter Europe pregnant in order to avoid
deportation, according to the Art.57, Clause 6 of the Organic Law 4/2000 11 January
of the Spanish legal framework. Furthermore, once the women arrived pregnant or
accompanied by the children in Spain, they were normally directed to the reception
centre of the Red Cross, instead of going to the Centro de Internamiento de
Extranjeros, where the mobility of the women is permitted and the traffickers can
have easier access to their victims (Frontex 2016).
It was also noted that Nigerian Criminal networks use motherhood to bring
migrant women into European territory, not only by exploiting pregnant women
but by sharing children among the women. For example, in 2013 there was a case
where a member of the criminal network took one of the twins from one woman and
gave it to another, so that both women entered Spain with one child each. However,
when the biological mother mentioned that one of her twins was missing, and it was
found with the other woman, she was arrested for kidnapping.16
Since the woman was not identified as a human trafficking victim, the Spanish
government did not apply Art.177, Line 11, of Law 10/1995 of 23 November of the
Spanish Penal code, in which victims of human trafficking are exempt from com-
mitted crimes. The woman was only released once she was identified as a human
trafficking victim by an association who visited her in prison. The woman was finally
recognised as a human trafficking victim through her asylum claim.
Another case confirms the use of motherhood by the Nigerian criminal network in
Morocco. Eight women from Puente Genil arrived in Spain as migrants on

16
Gema Fernandéz of the organisation Women’s Link worldwide, at the Conference ‘Traite des
êtres humains et migrations dans le bassin méditerranéen’, 19/05/2016, organised by the
Association ALC.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 103

10 September 2013 and they were sent to the Red Cross centre. One of them was
pregnant and they were accompanied by seven minors, but DNA exams demon-
strated that none of the women were the mothers of the children. However, by the
time the DNA results were available, the women had already disappeared from the
centre (Malavia 2016).
According to the Estado Fiscalia report (2013), the Spanish authorities identified
25 in 100 children who were not related to the women that accompanied them.
However, more recently the Nigerian women arriving in Spain are generally biolog-
ically related to the children that they accompany (Reyero and Adroher 2017). In
2014, 47 Nigerian children arrived in Spain, each of them accompanied by a woman
(Estado Fiscalia 2015). According to the staff of the Spanish Red Cross, 97% of the
minors that arrived in 2014 in the reception centres of the Red Cross disappeared and
were not identified as human trafficking victims (Reyero and Adroher 2017).
Instead, in 2015, a total of 35 mothers disappeared from the reception centres in
Spain with 39 children, as well as 13 pregnant women (Malavia 2016). Despite the
fact that the women have access to certain services within the associations once they
are in Spain with the children, they still lack services specifically aimed at helping
human trafficking victims (Estado Fiscalia 2015).
The women accompanied by their children normally arrive in Spain without any
birth certificates due to their illegal status in Morocco. However, sometimes the
criminal networks are able to arrange illegal birth certificates with false information,
which they use to manipulate the women. Furthermore, the criminal networks also
reuse the birth certificates for several women, in order to always have a child
accompanying the women once they arrive in Spain (Women’s Link Worldwide
2014). The criminal networks’ decision to send women into European territory
accompanied by children is influenced by the number of women that have been
recently deported in the destination country (Women’s Link Worldwide 2011).
These children are often the offspring of the guideman, denominated as the niños
del clan.17
According to the vice president of the social services in Spain, the number of
cases of children whose mothers are human trafficking victims for sexual exploita-
tion purposes is not relevant, as they represent around 8 or 9 out of 15,000 cases
(Carranco 2016). However, by understanding the hidden nature of the phenomenon,
giving it particular attention and taking care to understand the complexity of such
cases, it is possible to fulfil the best interest of the child and support the biological
mother.
The lack of birth certificates has led to Spanish authorities starting to mistrust the
biological ties declared by the Nigerian women arriving in the country. For instance,
in 2012 Laura arrived in Spain without a birth certificate for her child because she
was not able to certify her child while in Morocco. The lack of documents, as well as
the fact that the mother was not certain of some information regarding the child,
raised alarms with the Red Cross. Consequently, this led to guardianship being taken

17
‘The children of the gang’.
104 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

temporarily from the mother, and in 2016 this decision became definitive because the
social services realised that the mother was engaged in the sex market. After a period
of 2 months without being able to see her offspring very often, the social services put
the child in a foster family, and consequently stopped the mother from visiting.
Laura was only able to see her offspring after cutting relations with her trafficker,
yet, she was still illegal in Spain and she was afraid that she would not get a job and
therefore would not be able to keep her residence permit (Carranco 2016).
In 2011, the Spanish Ombudsman Institution stated that minors illegally entering
into the Spanish territory are exposed to risks, thus their case should be reported to
the Public Prosecutor’s Office and child protection. However, this does not mean
that the minor should be separated from the adult, the separation should occur only in
the best interest of the child (Defensor del Pueblo 2012). The Resolution 2/2012 of
the prosecutor of the Supervising Court’s Division for Minors, on the treatment of
unaccompanied foreign minors whose family ties are not verified, indicates that ‘It
must be assumed that two important circumstances occur in these cases: the first is
that if there is not credible documentation of the biological family ties, the Spanish
authorities cannot assume sic et simpliciter that the circumstance is accredited based
solely on the statement of the adults who travel with a minor concerned. The second
is that the act of illegally entering Spain, using dangerous routes or methods, without
documentation, without following the legal channels and without any social ties in
Spain, can be objectively considered as a situation of risk for the minor, which
requires the public powers to address the situation of the minor and guarantee their
security and wellbeing’ (Art.17 LO 1/1996, of 15 January, on the Legal Protection of
Minors—from here on out LOPJM). According to the UNICEF directives on the
protection of child victims of trafficking, the authorities should summarise essential
information of the minor, in order to proceed with registration and fulfil the best
interest of the child.
In recent years, due to the lack of birth certificates available to identify whether
the women who accompany the children are theirs or not, the association DNA Pro
Kids from the University of Granada have started to offer DNA tests, in order to
verify the biological link between the child and the mother. The test is voluntary and
provided by the Comisaría General de Policía científica del Cuerpo Nacional de
Policía; according to the Dictamen 5/2014 of the Spanish Estado Fiscalia, it does not
require a legal order from the judge once there is the consent of the adult.
The DNA test taken by the National Police must be implemented according to
Art.35.10 of the Ley de Extranjería y la Convención de los derechos del niño and
Art.8, which preserves the identity of the child in order to avoid it being used by
different institutions. Whilst awaiting the result of the test, the authorities tend to take
the child away from the mother, without any claim that the child is an orphan or
declaration of the mother’s mistreatment. In this case, the women stay a month apart
from their children until a visitation system is established, usually for 1 hour a week
(Fernandez et al. 2017). Once the biological tie is confirmed, the woman who is
recognised as being ‘a potential human trafficking victim or an individual deprived
of moral and material assets’ should recognise her victimisation and accept a
protection path as a human trafficking victim. Otherwise, the woman will be
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 105

recognised as being illegal, according to Dictamen 5/2014 of the Fiscalia.18 In this

case, it is important to highlight that, as well as the traffickers, the State can also use
the women’s children as a coercive instrument, in order to encourage them to
consent to engage in the protection path. By declaring victimisation, the woman is
able to live with the child in a maternity centre for human trafficking women.
Therefore, according to Art.158 of the Spanish Criminal Code, protection will be
guaranteed for the child and the mother if she admits to being a victim of trafficking.
However, the identification of a human trafficking victim is usually based on
suspicion, without a specific examination of the individual cases and a verification
of whether or not the situation of trafficking directly influences the child (Fernandez
et al. 2017). According to Art.17 of Law LOPJM, regardless of the situation of the
mother, the authorities should guarantee the well-being of the child. Hence, in the
case of imminent danger to the child, such as its abandonment at the reception centre,
the authorities can proceed with a preventive withdrawal of the minor from the
mother’s tutoring. This measure, implemented by the Spanish government, is based
on Art.14, Comma 2 of the European Directive 36/201119 about children who are
victims of trafficking. However, it is important to note that the Directive refers to
cases in which the child is considered a human trafficking victim, and this should not
always be immediately assumed.
In case of suspicion that the mother is a potential human trafficking victim, the
authorities should observe the control of the trafficker on the children and their
exposure to abuse. Furthermore, the Protocol establishes, in Art.158 of the Spanish
Criminal Code, that precautionary measures be taken to avoid the abandonment of
the child at the reception centre, in the case that there is an imminent risk. These
children are normally abandoned at the Red Cross shelters when traffickers pick up
the women, pretending to be their relatives (Estado Fiscalia 2013). According to the
report of Son niños y niñas, son victimas, the women tend to leave the centres when
they stop breastfeeding, in some cases leaving the babies with the practitioners until
they might be able to return (Reyero and Adroher 2017).
In the case that the DNA result confirms that there is no biological relation
between the woman and the child, the Protocol foresees the separation of the child
from the adult (Estado Fiscalia 2015), based on the application of Art.158 of the
Spanish Criminal Code. However, it is also important to point out that sometimes,

18
Unidad de Menores de la Fiscalía de Extranjería. Dictamen 5/2014 sobre protección de menores
extranjeros que acceden irregularmente al territorio en compañía de personas sin vínculo acreditado
de parentesco y/o en riesgo de victimización [en línea]. Página: 25. Disponible en: www.fiscal.es/
fiscal/PA_WebApp_SGNTJ_NFIS/descarga-/DICTAMEN%205-2014%20sobre%20protecci%
C3%B3n%20de%20menores%20extranjeros%20que%20acceden%20irregularmente%20al%
20territorio%20en%20compa%C3%B1%C3%ADa%20de%20personas%20sin%20-v%C3%
ADnculo%20acreditado%20de%20parentesco%20y-o%20en%20riesgo%20de%20victimizaci%
C3-%B3n?idFile¼2b76c647-1b22-4361-ad05-33171de9683a.
19
‘Member States shall appoint a guardian or a representative for a child victim of trafficking in
human beings from the moment the child is identified by the authorities where, by national law, the
holders of parental responsibility are, as a result of a conflict of interest between them and the child
victim, precluded from ensuring the child’s best interest and/or from representing the child’.
106 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

despite the lack of biological ties with the children, the women can have affective
ties, as they can be their ‘aunties’.20 In order to better recognise the family ties of
these children, the Red Cross in Spain gives some indicators on its web page
(Defensor menor Andalucia 2014).
In 2011, a woman entered into Spain with a child, who she claimed was not her
offspring, but her nephew from a sister who died in Morocco. The child was taken
into the Red Cross programme ‘Familias Canguro’ and placed with a Spanish
family. DNA test results showed that there was a scarce genetic compatibility
(92.85%), which neither confirmed nor denied that the boy was her nephew.
Consequently, the child went into pre-adoption, especially considering the lack of
documentation, and the fact that a false birth certificate was presented, supposedly
from Morocco. The Spanish authorities opened a trial for false documentation
against the woman that claimed to be the aunt of the child, yet, at the end of the
judicial process, the woman was considered innocent. Furthermore, in this case, the
woman was not approved to apply for the pre-adoption claim, because she had no
biological relation to the child and was more than 45 years old, as mentioned in
Art.3, 6 and 8 of the law 46/2000, 1 June, on the fostering and adoption of minors.21
Besides the problem of the accompanied Nigerian children that enter Spain, there
are also cases of non-accompanied Nigerian children. According to Reyero and
Adroher (2017), there was a case in which the child crossed the Gibraltar Channel
without the mother, who remained in Morocco with another child. Once in Spain, the
child remained in a children’s residential facility for some time and then, as the child
was quite young, she was homed with a family. Meanwhile, her biological mother
tried to cross the channel several times and still tried to maintain contact with her
child. However, since the child is now with a Spanish family, the toddler has
forgotten the English language, thus contact with the mother has become very
difficult (Reyero and Adroher 2017).
In Spain, a number of babies born in the destination country have also not been
registered because many women arrive in the last months of pregnancy and do not
register their children. These women are not admitted to the immigrant detention
centres but are often referred to humanitarian or social organisations (Defensor del
Pueblo 2012). This problem highlights the lack of coordination among the local
institutions of Andalucía (Defensor menor Andalucía 2014). To prevent the escape
of the women with the children from the reception centres, the Unidad de minors de
la Fiscalia General del Estado implemented the judgement 5/2014 on the protection
of foreign minors that enter in the Spanish territory accompanied by relatives in risk
of victimization,22 in partnership with other institutions, such as Entidades locales y

20
The term ‘auntie’ does not refer exactly to the sister of the mother, but a friend that can be
considered family.
21
AP Asturias, sec. 6ª, S 19-12-2014, n 334/2014, rec. 405/2014.
22
Dictamen Fiscalía 5/2014 sobre protección de menores extranjeros que acceden irregularmente al
territorio en compañía de personas sin vinculo acreditado y/o en riesgo de victimización. See full
text at http://www.bienestaryproteccioninfantil.es/fuentes1.asp?sec¼22&subs¼155&cod¼2196&
page¼
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 107

servicios de protección de las Comunidades Autónomas, in order to act with

collective consent.
The evaluation of risk, according to Art.158 of the Spanish Criminal Code,
requires action without waiting for the confirmation of affiliation from the DNA
test, by asking for a judicial statement of the child’s protection, in order to prevent
risks (Estado Fiscalia 2015). Furthermore, the children’s data, place of origin, their
photo and their fingerprints are included in the Registro de Menores Extranjeros No
Acompañados (Defensor menor Andalucia 2014). Since the fingerprints of the
newborns change with time, they are often recognised by their footprint, while
older babies are recognised by the fingerprint (Reyero and Adroher 2017). Once
the children are identified, they have an identity number (Número de Identidad de
Extranjero), which is inserted into an ADEXTRA database and it is also connected to
the identity of the mother through the recognition of fingerprint.

5.2.1.2 The Residence Permit

It is true that in the past, motherhood and pregnancy in Italy were a ‘well played
card’ to avoid deportation. However nowadays, due to the fact that the majority of
Nigerian women are asylum seekers, motherhood tends to be more a consequence of
a dangerous journey, full of abuse, (Débarge 2017) than an instrument to receive a
residence permit based on Art.31 of Testo Unico sull’Immigrazione. However, the
increase in the arrival of pregnant women has not only been verified in Italy and
Spain but also in other countries, such as France. According to the Dispositif Ac.sé
(2015a, b), in 2012 alone, 48 Nigerian women arrived in France accompanied by
their children, noting an increase in pregnant women of 44% from 2002 to 2012.
Due to the increase of pregnant women in France, in 2012 the Association
Amicale du Nid emitted an official communication on the subject that these
women are in an illegal situation. In fact, Nigerian women are denominated in
France as ‘sans’, referring to their situation as: without papers, without rights,
without employment and resources (Dispositif Ac.sé 2015a, b). Therefore, the
majority of the mothers in France do not normally have access to a residence permit,
as they often arrive in France without any recognition of their status as a victim from
their transit in other countries, such as Italy and Spain (Dispositif Ac.sé 2015a, b).
In countries like Austria and Finland, where women are hardly ever identified as
human trafficking victims, Nigerian women tend to have children in order to have
access to a legal permit within the national territory. In France, the women usually
find local men as a partner, not only to guarantee their permanence in the country but
also to improve their access to rights and especially rights for their children. In fact,
in order to assure their rights, the women usually try to get pregnant by their partner,
so they can give their children French nationality (Fernandez et al. 2017).
In Italy, where most of the women have presented an asylum claim or have access
to international or humanitarian protection, motherhood can play a significant role in
the administration status in two situations. The first situation regards the partner, who
is sometimes the trafficker, declaring to be the father of the child in order to gain a
108 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

residence permit, while the second situation concerns the woman’s need for access to
international or humanitarian protection. Furthermore, it is also important to under-
stand that some of the women who are human trafficking victims do not always
present an asylum claim, especially if they arrive by plane in another country.23
The situation of the residence permit, as well as the problematic journey, is only
relevant for the Nigerian women and not the Romanian women, since they are
European Union citizens. Therefore, as previously observed, for the Nigerian
women who arrive in Italy pregnant due to the sexual abuse suffered during travel,
the Territorial Commission24 often considers the presence of a child25 to be a clear
justification for humanitarian protection.
According to the anthropologist Taliani (2011), despite the fact that the women
are granted protection due to their pregnancy, they feel it is important to speak about
their condition during the interviews with the Territorial Commission, especially
regarding the trauma that they have suffered as a consequence of violence. However,
the ‘western system of hosting’ is very short on time, thus it is not focused on
providing therapy for asylum seekers, but mainly focused on the reasons for the
asylum claim. Consequently, the women often get frustrated when they realise that
the Territorial Commission is only interested in the fact that they are visibly
pregnant, instead of recognising the abuse behind the pregnancy (Taliani 2011). In
Italy, humanitarian protection is granted to pregnant women or women with children
of up to 6 months old; negative results have been reported for women with 2-year-
old children.26
In the case of KAB v. Spain,27 a Nigerian woman was deported from Spain to
Nigeria, even though she declared that she had a child in Spain. The child remained
in Spain with a couple that the woman trusted and who asked to be his foster family
in 2001. The father, who was also in Spain, asked for a paternity test, which he later
refused to take due to its price (1202 euros), and he was not informed that he could
have had financial support for this. A year after, the foster family asked the
Proteccion de menores to start the adoption process, which the father asked to be
halted and requested visitation rights. In 2004, the adoption process was interrupted
and in 2005, the father did the DNA test. However, in 2006 the Court did not accept
the father as the legal guardian, as the applicant had not complied with his fatherly
obligations when the child was taken by the social services, declaring that he had not
lived more than 3 months with the minor and that he had consented to the mother of
the child being engaged in prostitution. The father declared that the institutions did

23
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
24
Territorial Commissions are the designated entities, allocated in different Italian cities, to examine
and take decisions on all international protection requests lodged in Italy. They are coordinated by
the National Commission, under the direct responsibility of the Ministry of Interior.
25
Art.19 of Testo Unico sull’Immigrazione. Women cannot be deported if pregnant or with a
newborn up to 6 months old.
26
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
27
K.A.B. v. Spain, European Court of Human Rights, sec. 3ª, S 10-4-2012, n 59,819/2008.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 109

not inform him about the possibility of being financially supported in order to take
the DNA test. Furthermore, the father did not have any documentation regarding the
child and was referred to an application to the register of foreigners lacking appro-
priate identification. Finally, in 2007 the judge of Murcia authorised the adoption of
the child by the foster family. The case arrived in the European Court of Human
Rights, where they condemned Spain for the Violation of Art.8 of the Convention.28

5.2.1.3 The Father of the Child?

The Patriarchy demonstrates to us that having a child without a partner is normally

not accepted by the community. Thus, when women get pregnant, especially during
the journey, they feel the pressure to find a father to assume their child (Grotti et al.
2017). Furthermore, for the woman’s children to carry the mother’s maiden name
with them for their lives brings them shame, especially if the child is a male (Ac.sé
2011). The importance of carrying a partner’s surname has been mentioned in
Kastner’s research (2010), when the researcher tells the story of a Nigerian woman
who was very proud of having her husband’s name on her daughter’s birth certif-
icate. However, once she got to Spain, she started to change her attitude towards her
partner, due to his ‘demands for luxury items’.
Hence, while the women express a necessity of having a father for the child,
sometimes, the man also profits from the situation, by having access to a residence
permit due to fatherhood, not to mention the economic gains from the woman,
especially if she is engaged in the sex market. The anthropologist Taliani (2012)
in the article I prodotti dell’Italia. Figli nigeriani tra tutela, diritto e amore materno
details the statement of a Nigerian woman, claiming that ‘everything is upside-down
(. . .), since it is the man that expects to be maintained economically by the woman
(. . .), it is not the man that marries the woman anymore, but the woman that marries
the man’.29 This perspective reflects the profit Nigerian men can gain from the
woman’s body, not only regarding the access to a residence permit but also regarding
their economic situation. Therefore, if on the one hand, a partner can often be
advantageous for the women, especially in relation to their children, on the other
hand, partners can also be an economic burden.
If a Nigerian man sees that a Nigerian woman is pregnant, he might suggest that
she declares them married so that they can both benefit from the situation (Europol
2011). In this way, they can fulfil her need to have a companion and spare the
‘embarrassment’ of being pregnant without a partner, while he can have access to a
legal permanence in Italy, since they can ask for their residence permit through
Art.30 of the Testo Unico sull’Immigrazione (286/98). The residence permit guar-
antees the parents the possibility to live legally in Italy if they live together, and if the
aim of marriage is not only to obtain the visa.

28
K.A.B. v. Spain, European Court of Human Rights, sec. 3ª, S 10-4-2012, n 59,819/2008.
29
Free translation of the author.
110 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

The girls also get pregnant during the protection path. We are trying to diffuse the use of
contraception for them to use with their lovers. In fact, we are very strict with the people that
the girl meets, we make preliminary meetings. They don’t have total freedom, but in the
hours that they can leave, it is also important that they are responsible for themselves, thus
sometimes we have surprises [referring to pregnancies]. Some ask to have an abortion, but
not so many, the majority keep the baby.30

As previously referred to in the subchapters regarding the Libyan route, in recent

years the figure of the male in Libya, who presents himself to the girl as a potential
lover has emerged. Obviously, it is not in all cases that the lover of the girl is
someone with ‘other intentions’, otherwise this research would consider every single
relationship based on utilitarian purposes of the man and the ‘naivety’ of the girl.
However, this tendency has been noted, especially in the recent years. The man tends
to send the pregnant woman to Italy first so that he is able to come over and ask for
the residence permit for parenthood. In this case, not only is the man able to exercise
control over the victim, but he is also automatically able to guarantee his legal stay in
Italy.
Regarding the women that are in the CAS, where we go for counselling, we have understood
that in one or two cases the boyfriend, if he is not directly the exploiter, he at least knows
who is and sometimes he can also have the role of mediator. There is also the role of
enhancing the exploitation, by not opposing the situation of exploitation, but also not being
violent. We have seen two cases of Nigerian women with children born in Libya from their
boyfriends, where later they have realised that the boyfriends were connected to the madam.
There is the idea that the boyfriend is the one that gives you gifts, spends time with the baby,
because they [men] know that they will get advantages sooner or later, as much for the
documents as for the money.31

The issue of becoming pregnant is not limited to the journey, but can also occur
during the séjour in Italy. In fact, as previously observed, the women can get
pregnant during their exploitation, since they often do not have access to, or the
possibility to use, contraceptives. In order to avoid feeling inferior in society, the
women tend to seek a partner. According to a practitioner working at a shelter for
Nigerian mothers, who are victims of human trafficking, a male co-national is likely
to approach a woman with children, while in Italy, in order to suggest that he could
recognise her children as his own.32 Even though the women are aware that the men
could be using them in order to get the residence permit, the social worker claims
that the women are not aware of the power that the men might have over the child.
Furthermore, she recognised that the men can also use the child as a coercive
instrument, in order to reintroduce the ex-victim into sexual exploitation.
We have the intuition that the women are ‘put pregnant’ in Italy on purpose. There are
women on the streets that leave exploitation because they are pregnant. Therefore, in these
cases there is a partner that wants a baby, and after he can have access to a legal permit, we
have made this reflection, that they use it as an advantage. We have had women that have left

30
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
31
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
32
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 111

the street because of their conational boyfriends. They support the exit from the situation of
exploitation; thus the boyfriend does not oppose if the girl does the protection path.
Therefore, these are not exploiters, it is also all a matter of advantage.33

We had a case, in which a partner, since he had a negative result from the international
protection, was able to have access to an Art.31, because nowadays the women have
international protection or the humanitarian permit of Art.18.34

As observed in these reflections, the possibility of remaining legal in Italian

territory is not only something the traffickers benefit from but also something the
boyfriends of the victims, who are often their co-nationals, can exploit. However, I
would also like to emphasise that, despite the fact that some practitioners have
defended this theory, it would be wrong to generalise and assume that every single
case is reduced to advantages, by ignoring the possibility of simple love bonds.
Nevertheless, it is important to mention that the loverboy method is not only used in
the Eastern trafficking networks, but it has also lately been verified in the Nigerian
trafficking networks.
I am worried about a girl, because this Nigerian boy that she has met at the train station has
come and he wants to give his surname to her child. She does not say anything, the men are
the ones that decide and do whatever they want, and they can do it. For her, having a child
without a father is embarrassing. Think what a family from the village would say if she is
expecting a child without a father.35

In fact, although in the past the higher roles in the criminal chains were mainly
dedicated to women, the increase of Nigerian male citizens has proportioned an
augmentation of roles within the network for them. Furthermore, due to the guaran-
tee of legal permanence by the asylum claim, the madams are aware that they cannot
rely on using high levels of violence and abuse as they did in the past, thus they have
started to seek help from men, through the loverboy method.

5.2.1.4 The Art.31 del Testo Unico sull’immigrazione

Besides the fact that the partners of the women are now the ones that are interested in
gaining legal residence through parenthood, there are also some situations in which
the women are not able to access another kind of permit, such as international and
humanitarian protection or the permit through Art.18. The women often do not have
access to a residence permit for human trafficking victims, since Art.18 is generally
only conceded by the victim pressing charges. Furthermore, since many victims
suffered exploitation in other territories and therefore had no access to Art.18, my

33
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
34
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
35
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
112 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

interviews also affirmed that the associations tended to replace the permit of Art.18
with the Art.31 permit, integrated with the support services detailed by Art.18.36
The information regarding the possibility of access to an Art.31 permit is nor-
mally given to the women by the associations, especially after a protection path
under Art.18 or when the women have been victims in the past and are no longer in
an exploitative situation. However, some of the women feel reluctant to present the
claim for such permit in the beginning because they are dependent on the control of
the social services and the Juvenile Court. In fact, usually the mothers demonstrate a
certain resistance towards the social services, especially based on the cultural gap
and rumours among their co-nationals. These rumours normally spread prejudice
against social services, which are often seen as a threat to the relationship between
the mother and the child.37
When the Nigerian women are out of the protection system, having a child can be
a herculean task, and in this case, some associations try to act as a mediator between
the Nigerian women and the institutions, so that they have access to subsidies. In
fact, despite the fact that the woman has the right to have access to the same services
as most Italian citizens, it is important to reflect on the lack of information the
woman receives regarding her rights. Furthermore, once they are out of the protec-
tion system, or the asylum seeker system, the women usually need to find accom-
modation immediately.
Normally the women arrive here because they have the contact of a friend, but this is not a
stable contact, in the sense that they are often hosted by the friend, but normally there is a
limited amount of time for their accommodation. Consequently, this leads to the woman
needing to find another accommodation. Therefore, they try to have access to the accom-
modation for free. They arrive here and tell us that they are being hosted by a conational, but
that they cannot stay anymore in that place, so they seek a house urgently. During the
interview with them, we realise that the emergence it is not only regarding the accommo-
dation, but for example, if there is a situation of danger, because the woman for instance
knows that her family back in Nigeria has been contacted by the trafficker. In that case we
contact the anti-trafficking referral association. Then, there are cases where there is no
danger to the girl, since maybe she does not contact the family, or she changed her cell
phone number or she has changed city.38

In the case that the woman is not at risk, the associations try to fulfil the primary
needs of the women, such as providing a health card so that she can be accompanied
through her pregnancy. Although many women stay in a rented room, they often do
not have information on the legal procedures for renting, such as the right to have a
contract. Moreover, a rental contract is also required as proof to the social services of
the conditions in which their children are living, in order to have access to the
residence permit. Besides the legal paperwork for residence, the woman also needs
to provide elements of social and work integration, which usually depends on the
legal situation of the women. However, in the case that the woman is considered to

36
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
37
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
38
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 113

be part of a vulnerable category, such as asylum seekers or human trafficking

victims, they are entitled to an internship after at least 60 days of their asylum
claim. The internship is available, not only if the person is legally considered a
human trafficking victim or an asylum seeker, but also if the individual has legal
residency. However, the internship detailed by the Regional Directive is not
guaranteed to all vulnerable categories, since it does not preview the involvement
of a person with an Art.31 permit, for assistance for minors. At the moment, the
association is also trying to engage individuals who have a permit for minors’
assistance by presenting a formal request to the centre of employment that is the
promoting entity of the programme, in order to include victims with different types
of legal status.
For one case, we were able to manage and insert the woman in our program, but when it
becomes three, four cases, it is difficult to use the ‘extraordinary clause’.39

5.2.2 Transnational Motherhood

The phenomenon of children left behind has been developed hand in hand with the
concept of transnational motherhood (Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avila 1997), based on
families whose breadwinners are separated from their families by international
borders. The breadwinners sustain the families by sending remittances, especially
to maintain the children that remain in the origin country, the so-called children left
behind (Parreñas 2005). Despite the fact that this phenomenon is mainly related to
Eastern European countries, including Romania, Nigerian women arriving in Italy
sometimes also leave their children behind in the origin country. However, contrary
to Nigerian women, who also have children in the destination country, the mother-
hood of Romanian women engaged in sexual exploitation is mostly limited to the
origin country.
Hence, the research on the motherhood of Romanian women is circumscribed to
the phenomenon of children left behind. During the participant observation with
Romanian women engaged in outdoor prostitution, I understood that many had left
their children in the origin countries with their relatives or even husbands. In fact,
usually, whenever they got pregnant, they would leave the city for a period of time.
At first, I thought that it was to get an abortion, especially considering that it is easier
to do this in Romania. However, during an interview, it came out that when
Romanian women are pregnant, they often return to their origin country to give
birth there, because they would not be able to travel with the baby, once born without
the consent of the father. In these cases, the guardianship of the children by the father
in Romania usually inhibits the mother from undertaking a protection path in Italy.
We had a case of a girl who was always sad, but when she had the child, I did not see her on
the street anymore. She already had two children in Romania; the male was with the father he

39
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
114 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

was very violent. The husband did not let her take the children away from Romania and she
had to kidnap the baby, so she went to Romania, without the consent of the father, she spoke
with someone, because when you go by coach or by plane you have to have the consent of
the father, but inside the European Union with a private car you can take the child without
the requirement of any document. So she was able to take the baby girl from the father, but
for the boy she will wait until he turns 18 years old.40

5.2.2.1 The Children Left Behind in Romania

Following the fall of the dictator Ceausescu, a wide Romanian diaspora was
established in countries such as Spain and Italy. The female migration flows were
mainly directed to the segmentation of domestic work, in order to substitute the
empowered Italian and Spanish women in the patriarchal society of the destination
country (Campani 2007). Romanian women tended to work in the domestic sector as
caregivers or domestic employees, which stopped them from taking their children to
the destination country, as often they lived in their workplace (Sciurba 2015). The
children were mainly left with other women that would substitute the role of the
mother, in the patriarchal society (Chodorow 1978).
According to the report of Salvati Copii (2013), in 2007 Romania counted a
minimum of 82,464 children that were left behind, 47,154 of which were children
left in the care of one parent and 35,310 children left with their relatives, while 2500
entered into the social protection system. Despite the fact that the phenomenon has
been widely discussed since the beginning of the 1990s, it reached one of its peaks in
2008, with the global economic crisis (IOM 2008). Consequently, since many
parents would migrate without assigning a legal guardian for the children, in 2010
the lobby of several associations in Romania, including Salvati Copii, led to the
modification of Articles 104–108 of Law 272/2004 on the Protection and Promotion
of Children’s Rights, with the aim to provide more protection to the children of
parents working abroad (Pascoal and Schwartz 2018).
The law was amended and supplemented by Law N.257/2013, which guarantees
special measures regarding the protection of children whose parents work abroad.
Despite the fact that the Legislative Decree is quite strict on the parents that do not
assign a guardian to their children, many parents still do not declare their immigra-
tion status to the municipality and decide to depart without appointing a legal
guardian for their children.
Last year we had a case and also this year, in which the person who was taking care of the
children was a friend of the mother. For instance, it happens if the child has to go to the
hospital, this is the worst problem and when we speak with them, we make them realise that
this is very important and that if the children get sick, no one can sign the papers, but we
never had such a situation.41

40
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
41
Interview number 17 (practitioner), 26/08/2016, Romania.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 115

In 2015, Romania counted 85,194 children registered with a legal guardian, while
the Regional Education Ministry counts a total of 212,352 children left behind
(Administratia Presidentiala Romania 2018). In order to mitigate this problem,
Salvati Copii launched an awareness campaign aimed at informing the parents that
they should protect their children by assigning a legal guardian that can take
responsibility of the children.
No, they don’t want to report it, because they are scared of losing the children and they don’t
understand, as their educational level is very low and they don’t understand lots of things.
For instance, I usually go to the countryside and speak to the parents, within our prevention
campaign for this project and I try to explain to them that there is nothing to be afraid of and
nobody wants to take their children. After the discussion, they usually understand and then
report to the social services.42

Migrant women are often uninformed about the legislation in their country
regarding the pater potestas or the procedure of birth registration. For instance, a
practitioner mentioned that every time the police would come to the anti-trafficking
centre, one of the women would hide herself. Therefore, they asked the woman if she
was afraid of something and she claimed that in Romania, if the woman migrates,
even if the children are with the father, the mother is obliged to send money to the
children, otherwise she would go to jail.43 This kind of myth usually leads to the
women not wanting to ask for support from the authorities and consequently, it
hinders them in having access to their rights.
In the case that there is no family, the woman can leave the child with a
neighbour, as it is previewed in the law that the child can stay with any person
that is from within the contact network of the child. Furthermore, the government
provides the guardian with an amount of 150 euros a month, or 200 euros if the child
has a disability; this should be justified by the presentation of invoices and receipts of
costs related to the child. Therefore, every month a social worker contacts the
guardian to check all the documentation, in order to send it to the institution that is
funding the process. However, despite the fact that most of the time the parents
migrate leaving an adult responsible for the child, during one of my interviews, a law
enforcement agent also declared particular cases in which the children were found
without any adult supervision.
There were also cases, in which the parents left the children of 2 or 3 years old at home. The
children were found by the neighbours after two or three days without eating, so the social
services had to intervene. In these cases, the mother usually does not take the children back,
but if she comes back and she asks for the children, if she is able to demonstrate that she was
a victim of human trafficking, then she is able to take the child again, but these are not all the
cases.44

Although many women leave their children with their relatives, usually to the
females of the kinship (Fan and Parreñas 2018), there were some cases in which the

42
Interview number 17 (practitioner), 26/08/2016, Romania.
43
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
44
Interview number 9 (Law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
116 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

woman had no family to leave the children with, thus they entrusted them to the
social services.
We have different situations, for example, even if the parents are leaving the children; they
are always entitled to have their children back. They have to fulfil some requirements, for
example the house they are living in, that can be rented, they have to be employed or have
some money, they have to have a social security number and then they can have the children
back. They have a temporary period of 6 months of probation and then it is ok. It is not
important if she was a prostitute or not. Nevertheless, sometimes they cannot fulfil all the
requirements and so they blame the authorities, but if you really want your child home, you
can have your child in 2 months and then the file is moved to the judge. In the case that the
parents have no one to leave the child with, we leave them to what is called a single
placement in Romania, the children are coming to the protection system and they are
going to foster families. That is it, so if the mother comes, there are some papers to be
completed. For instance, if it is the father of the child and they are not together, they can go to
the local municipality office and make tutoring, it is simpler for the father or sometimes also
for the grandparents, if it is the same house they are living in.45

In some cases, when the women return to Romania and wish to return to being the
guardian of their children, they are not always able to fulfil all the terms that are
required by the social services. Therefore, not understanding the complexity of the
situation, they tend to blame the foster families for taking the children.
They are always saying that they want their child back, but this takes some requirements
such as a job, adequate living place, but they will not make those efforts. The foster family
didn’t take the children, but they always think that the foster family took the child. It is very
hard for them to understand what really happened and that they also made a mistake.46

Usually, it’s the mother that gives the child to social services before she goes abroad. In the
cases that I have, she decided to give the child up for a period, maybe she left it in a shelter,
but now she does not understand why the child is in a foster family. Sometimes social
services decide that since the child is in the shelter for a long time, it is better to put them in a
foster family. The cases are different from Nigerian women who have their children in the
destination countries, because these mothers leave their children at home.47

If the mother, after a year or after some months, is able to have a residence and an income,
she can take her child back, but it is very difficult for the victim to be able to fulfil all the
requirements to have her children back.48

As they are in another country, transnational communication and intimacy is

mainly established through phone, Facebook and Skype; nowadays it is easier to
have contact with their children than in the beginning of the 1990s (Parreñas 2005).
During my contact with Romanian women engaged in outdoor prostitution, some of
whom I identified as potential human trafficking victims (Pascoal 2017), I discov-
ered that they would have continuous contact with their children and would show me

45
Interview number 16 (Institutional services), 20/09/2016, Romania.
46
Interview number 7 (law enforcement), 28/08/2016, Romania.
47
Interview number 9 (law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
48
Interview number 20 (civil society), 02/03/2017, Romania.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 117

photos of them on their phones. Furthermore, since the traffickers have adopted more
flexible models of exploitation, the women were able to take away almost half of
their profits or dispose of a certain amount of money in order to go home. Therefore,
they are able to perform their role as a mother and also able to return to Romania
more often. The continuous access to their children is part of an exploitation model
based in a relationship contrattualista (Carchedi 2000), in which the victim benefits
from a certain level of autonomy. The trafficker provides the victim with this limited
space of freedom in order to implement a false conscience of autonomy, and
consequently avoid the victim’s rebellion and a potential claim to the police. This
happens mostly when the traffickers employ the loverboy method during exploita-
tion, through an osmotic process based on a relationship of trust, with a view to
manipulate the consent of the woman with the dynamics of male dominance in the
domestic sphere (Pascoal and Schwartz 2016).
Now, because the exploitation is less rigid, the women are able to go home in the summer,
when the children are not in school.49

Despite the fact that the majority of Romanian traffickers lure and maintain the
women in sexual exploitation through the asymmetric distribution of power within
the domestic sphere, exploiting and enhancing the role of female breadwinner within
the sex market, some traffickers also constrain the victims not to contact their
children. According to one of my interviews with the Romanian social services,
15% of women who might be victims of human trafficking take their children to the
social services before they depart.50 Furthermore, practitioners working with poten-
tial human trafficking victims in Italy note that traffickers tend to limit the victims’
travel to the origin country, by taking their identification card.
So many of them have said that they do not miss their parents, but when they call them, the
mothers know that they are missing them. Often, they are not able to return home due to the
exploiter, also because I have understood that many of the girls do not have their ID card
with them. For instance, there was one girl that wanted to go home, but first she said that her
ID card has expired, and I have advised her to go to Rome to the embassy and get the travel
permit. After she said that she had lost it and it is in this moment that you realise that there is
an exploiter. They live in this mental prison.51

During one of my interviews in Romania, the interviewee discussed a conversa-

tion with one of her contacts in the United Kingdom, who informed her that many
women were deprived of contacting their children and families during the exploita-
tion period because their traffickers forbade it.52 This lack of contact with the mother
can have deep consequences for the children, who usually feel that they were
abandoned. Studies on children left behind have demonstrated that they can undergo

49
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
50
Interview number 16 (Institutional services), 20/09/2016, Romania.
51
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
52
Interview number 16 (Institutional services), 20/09/2016, Romania.
118 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

a traumatic process consequent to the separation from their parents and the adaption
to the new primary caregiver (Busch-Armendariz et al. 2011).
The children of the human trafficking victims who have disappeared for so long feel this
separation and think that they have been abandoned. In fact, the children are ‘more like
victims’ than the mothers.53

Women that emigrate and leave their children behind are often an object of
criticism of the patriarchal society, since they do not comply with their role of
mothers and caregivers (Fan and Parreñas 2018). This social repression is often
intensified in rural areas, since there is a major contact with the family left behind.
Therefore, children left behind in small areas of Romania tend to suffer a higher level
of stigmatism and thus are a target of major discrimination, especially when the
community is aware of the involvement of the mother in the sex market.
There are cases of children that knew what their mothers did and in the small villages there is
stigmatisation, thus consequently marginalisation of the children.54

In the case that the community knows that the mother is exploited, she will suffer, because in
some communities the people are on the side of the offenders, since they will judge the child
and the mother, because she is stupid to be exploited. Especially within small communities,
not necessarily rural, but also in Bucharest, in some zones. Even if they know she is not
happy, and she is forced, of course the community will use this against the child.55

Despite the fact that the mothers of children left behind are usually criticised by
the community and identified as bad mothers (Fan and Parreñas 2018), during my
participant observation it emerged that motherhood was actually a push factor for
entering into sexual exploitation. In fact, while pregnancy in the destination country
triggers a maternal reaction in the woman, especially for Nigerian women, osmot-
ically restoring her identity through embodiment protection towards the unborn child
which enhances the will to exit sexual exploitation, for Romanian women, mother-
hood is one of the main reasons that pushes them to engage in sexual exploitation.
This perspective of motherhood within human trafficking for sexual purposes is
what the researchers Peled and Parker (2013) have denominated ‘the sacrificed
mother’, a phenomenon which appeared frequently in their study with women
from the ex-URSS countries. The ‘sacrificed mother’ is one that wants first of all
to do good, providing the child with the opportunities that she was not able to have,
even if this decision is usually connected to a feeling of guilt and criticism from some
of those around her. However, they present the role of ‘good mother’, by sending
their love through gifts and constant contact with their children.
The role of the ‘sacrificed mother’ does not only emerge in the migration project
leading to the separation from the children, but also, sometimes in the town of
residence, where it exposes the children to a feeling of shame. The role of the mother
is also highly criticised, since it can be related to the ‘Madonna’ (Kristeva and

53
Interview number 9 (Law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
54
Interview number 20 (civil society), 02/03/2017, Romania.
55
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05/10/2016, Romania.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 119

Goldhammer 1985), which automatically opposes women being engaged in the sex
market. Therefore, by embracing immoral behaviours these women are socially
recognised as bad mothers (Castañeda et al. 1996), especially in cases where mothers
are identified as potential human trafficking victims by the authorities or civil
society. In this case, the children, while in the same country as the mother when
she is exploited, are often exposed to the violence perpetrated by the trafficker.
There was a case in T., in which the victim had 3 children and the vulnerability factor was
financial, so in order to sustain the children, the mother had engaged in prostitution and the
children were aware that the mother was engaged in prostitution. During the exploitation
period, this situation was very complicated, as protection was not a solution for the children,
because they could not be taken away from their mother, so the only solution was for the
mother to be inserted into a social program. When we managed to separate the mother from
the trafficker, the mother realised the danger for her and for the children, because she was not
previously aware about her position of being a victim.56

Scholars that study transnational families have demonstrated that children left
behind are usually entrusted to female relatives (Fan and Parreñas 2018), a member
of the maternal family or the paternal family. However, in Romanian human
trafficking, the father of the child sometimes is the exploiter, who tends to lure the
mother into immigrating and leaving the children with his family. This automatically
triggers a lever of control, as has been mentioned in the case of Maya (Wong and
Mermin 2016). In this case, the children are used as a coercive tool to maintain the
victim in exploitation, because the father can threaten the victim with sending the
children to the social services, or use the fact that the mother did not assign a legal
guardian to claim that the children were abandoned by the mother and take the pater
potestas from her.
We had a case that after having three children with her husband and after being together for
7 years, the husband proposed to his wife to leave the children with the paternal grandmother
and go to Sweden to work in a house. However, he started to exploit her sexually and then he
came back to Romania in order to make a complaint against the mother to child protection,
saying that she was a bad mother and had abandoned her children. Therefore, he tried to
make her lose custody of the children and it was very difficult, with the lawyer, to prove that
she was a victim of human trafficking. He was involved in human trafficking and at the same
time, he had started a relationship with another woman in order to exploit her as well. In fact,
he was a trafficker before; she just did not know it. It was simple to prove that she was a
victim, since when the trial started in Sweden, she was referred by the International
Organisation of Migration and they communicated all the phases of the trial there, and our
lawyer in child custody had used all the proof of her victimisation when she was in Sweden
under exploitation. She was a witness in a trial in Sweden for the prosecution of the second
trafficker and she received a large amount of compensation. Meanwhile, the children were
with the father and the mother of the father, but now she is fine and she is with the children.57

Having the child with the trafficker can be an arduous task, not only for the victim
who is often unaware of her victimisation but also for the authorities that often
cannot warn the victim about the danger to which she and her children are exposed.

56
Interview number 8 (Law enforcement), 29/09/2016, Romania.
57
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05/10/2016, Romania.
120 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

In fact, the relationship of trust dims the intentions of the trafficker regarding the
victim who convinces herself that the trafficker would not harm the children,
especially when he is the father of the children. One of the interviewees reported a
case in which the children accompanied the parents to the destination country, as the
father was able to stay with the children while the mother was out.
We have had a case of a victim that was in Poland, she had her mouth cut and we had to sew
her mouth in the hospital in Romania. Nevertheless, she had to return to Poland because she
had three children with the trafficker and the children had stayed with the father, when she
came to Romania.58

The dyad of the mother’s victimisation and the father’s exploitation enhances the
precarious situation of the mother and consequently of the children, especially in the
destination country. The isolation in the destination country aggravates the victim’s
situation, since they do not have a network of contacts or their network is mainly
formed by other traffickers and victims. Furthermore, if the father is arrested and the
mother is identified as a potential human trafficking victim, she is often considered
too psychologically vulnerable to take care of the children. In a case reported by one
of the interviewees, the mother was following a protection path in the destination
country, thus the Romanian authorities had to send the children to Romania, to be
protected by the social services until the mother was capable of looking after them
again.
There was another girl who had a baby and she had left the children in Romania with her
parents, but not with the trafficker. When she was in Poland, she sent photos through
WhatsApp and we saw that she was pregnant by the trafficker, in this case we made the
request via Europol and we asked for support from the Polish police in order to make the
children return. This process is very long, the trafficker was arrested in Poland, and now we
are in the bureaucratic phase. The procedure is like this: we make the documents for the
Polish; they have the proof and arrest the person and the children are sent to Romania. First,
they go into the social services and then, if the mother is able to be with them, they can stay
with the mother. In this case, we give more attention to the children, because they are the
ones in a situation of danger. When there are mothers with children in the destination
country, we make a request for them to come back to Romania.59

We had a case that child protection in Sweden found the mother with the child and while the
mother was sexually exploited, the child was in the room. The trafficker took both of them to
Sweden and the child was witnessing everything that happened in the room, and when the
trial procedure started, the authorities in Sweden asked us to escort the child to Romania.
Because the mother was also mentally ill, now the child is in a social house. The mother is
currently in Romania, she came with a private plane, she lost the guardianship of the child,
but she was also aggressive with the child and she did not know how to be a mother. He was
happy when our colleague went to pick him up to come to Romania. Now he is in a family
house that it is called ‘casa di tip familiar’.60

58
Interview number 9 (Law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
59
Interview number 9 (Law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
60
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05/10/2016, Romania; Family Type Children’s Home (Casa
de Copii de Tip Familial) is understood as a type of service provision within a family environment
whereby a maximum of seven children are placed under the care of two foster parent-educator.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 121

During the period of participant observation in the street unit, I realised that the
majority of the women had left their children in Romania with their relatives. Most
of the girls approached their involvement in the sex market as being temporary
(as much for sex workers, as for potential victims of trafficking) because their aim
was to return to Romania to the house that they were building. In fact, as previously
mentioned, Romanian women, contrary to the Nigerian women, rarely lose contact
with the origin country, and usually aim to return in the near future. Generally, the
period of return is marked by the end of the construction of the house, and the girls
often proudly show the photos of their houses on their mobiles to the street unit
volunteers.
The girls are the breadwinners of the house and the family tends to depend on the
remittances sent by them, and even if the women are obliged to give a part of their
earnings to their exploiters, the low GDP of Romania still allows them to send small
amounts of money home. Therefore, the dependence of the families, as well as the
goal of finishing the house, tends to be a push factor to maintain the women in the
exploitative situation. For instance, one of the girls, besides the money that she sends
for the construction of the house, also has to provide 100 euros per month to her
mother, in order to pay rent, as she is the one taking care of her child.

5.2.2.2 The Children Left Behind in Nigeria

Despite the fact that Nigerian motherhood is mainly concentrated on the children
born in the destination country; many Nigerian women that arrive in Italy already
have children in the origin country or in the transit countries. Furthermore, mother-
hood for Nigerian women is often related to their involvement in the sex market or
the violence suffered on the journey to Italy. The perception that Nigerian women do
not have children in the origin country usually comes from the fact that they often do
not mention them, except when they refer the payments that they need to make
regarding their children, such as for school and food. In fact, as for the Romanian
women, one of the main push factors for their immigration path is also related to the
fact that they are single mothers, usually widows, separated or abandoned by their
husband.
We have seen in the last 2 years that even if the women are younger, some of them already
have children. As much for the women in the CAS, as for the women that we encounter in
the street unit, but there are several of them that, even being younger, they already have
children in Nigeria. In fact, they say that one of the motives for their departure is exactly the
fact that there is the absence of a father figure for their children. Maybe I only know one or
two women that have their husbands in Nigeria.61

There is one of them that has four children in Nigeria and her sister [who is taking care of her
children] has three children, and they need the money, thus she is obliged to send the money.
I see that this girl, even if she tries hard, and she says that she is willing to do everything and

61
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
122 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

of course they see the madams with a lot of money. Furthermore, many women were
abandoned by their husbands because they had only girls and then they mistreated them
because they did not have males. When these women are 30 years old, the men search for
another, younger partner.62

As many women do not have a husband, the children tend to stay with their
relatives, usually with the grandmothers or aunts or even with acquaintances,
depending on their nuclear family in Nigeria, but always female caregivers (Fan
and Parreñas 2018). The migration project is normally triggered by the perception of
the economic difficulty in supporting their family, especially for the women that
have big nuclear families.63 Furthermore, Nigeria has a long child-fostering tradi-
tion, since the concept of family is wider than in the western society and the presence
of the role of the mother is not essential, as long as the mother sends the remittances
to keep up the child’s education and welfare (Kastner 2010). In fact, these children
often normalise their parent’s absence (Cebotari et al. 2016).
99% of the asylum seekers or human trafficking victims try to send money home. They have
to send the money to their children or their parents. The children, in general, remain with
their mothers or with the father, otherwise with an aunt.64

Many Nigerian women have their children in the origin country. We often only find this out
later, since it is not the first question that we ask, especially when they are very young, as the
ones that are arriving in Italy, but even though they still have children in their origin country.
This is an element that influences their path, especially in an economic matter, which
normally requires us to accelerate the process, so that they don’t have to wait to send
money home. On the other side, it is also an element of stability, but is always accelerating.
The best thing now is technology, because they can make skype calls and often they see each
other by phone. The grandparents are the ones that are with the children in the origin country.
Nigerians have this thing that they typically also have children here, in fact, while here the
children can be an opportunity to exit the exploitation, in the origin country the children are
almost used as a coercive instrument from the families, thus it is an added element that
affects the serenity of the women. The majority of the women are single mothers.65

As stated by the practitioner, the children in the origin country are often used as a
coercive instrument by the families in order to get more money from the girl
(Agathise 2002). In the book Le Ragazze di Benin City (Aikipitanyi and Maragnani
2007), the authors mention the story of a Nigerian girl, whose family continuously
asked her to send money to her son, using the child’s health as emotional manipu-
lation, even though they were aware of her exploitative condition. The constant
manipulation, often used by the families, has proven to be an obstacle for leaving
sexual exploitation, since it often concerns the mother if the child in Nigeria does not
have the resources to live comfortably. Even if the women do not have children in
the origin country, they are usually the ones who are sacrificed to provide for the
entire family, especially if they are the older sibling or the youngest women in their

62
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
63
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
64
Interview number 12 (third sector), 24/07/2017, Italy.
65
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 123

family.66 Furthermore, many Nigerian families, as has also been observed with
Romanian families, get used to receiving a certain amount of money that the girl
sends monthly through Western Union.
They always speak about the money that they need to send home [the observation was not
only limited to the children in the origin country, but to the entire family]. Anyway, the girls
that decide to maintain the contact with the origin country, continue to support them
economically. This is an element that we often invite them to reflect upon, mainly if they
have also started a family here, so we advise them to put the family [in the destination
country] that was created here in first place.67

According to Kastner (2010), until 2010 there was little regard on the subject of
the Nigerian transnational families and multilocal households. In the article Moving
relationships: Family ties of Nigerian migrants on their way to Europe, the author
divides the Nigerian women’s relationships into three different types of family ties,
referring to: ties to their own children, ties to the family of origin, and ties to the
husband. However, as previously mentioned, many women tend to cease contact
with the family of origin, especially during the post trafficking situation, focusing
more on the family that was created in the destination country. Therefore, when
women are deported, they tend to maintain their children in the destination country,
not only to provide them with the possibility of having a better education and more
access to resources but also to guarantee the women their possible return (Pamblech
2014).

5.2.3 Can the Children of Human Trafficking Victims Be

Also Considered a Victim?

According to the UNICEF 2006 Guidelines on the protection of child victims of

trafficking ‘whenever applicable these guidelines should also apply to children who
are conceived and subsequently born of traffick of person’. In 2017, a report from
UNICEF (Reyero and Adroher 2017) stated, after several episodes in which the
children of human trafficking victims had been used to coerce the mother, that the
children of the victims should also officially be considered human trafficking
victims, instead of indirect victims of the phenomenon. This request was based on
the fact that the children often suffer in the hands of their mothers’ exploiters.
Furthermore, this official requirement would also allow the possibility to provide
statistics in order to bring visibility to the phenomenon.
In fact, the issue of motherhood on human trafficking should be highlighted, not
only in the Scholar debate but also in the implementation of policies. Furthermore,
many victims are obliged to work, even right up to the end of their pregnancy, which
can cause problems for the mother as well as for the child, considering the long hours

66
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
67
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
124 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

of standing or being exposed to violent clients. According to the French National

report on Human Trafficking (CNCDH 2015), due to the high increase of situations
involving the subject of human trafficking and motherhood in recent years, it is
advised that the accompaniment is not only focused on the mothers but also their
children. The fact that these children have witnessed their mother’s situations of lack
of freedom and violence also influences the children psychologically and physically.
In the report Son niños y niñas, son victimas, (Reyero and Adroher 2017) one
Romanian woman, who was escaping from her violent boyfriend, the father of the
child, was able to integrate the child in her protection path. The integration of the
child was possible because in 2011 the Ley de Extranjeria in Spain was amplified to
include the children of human trafficking victims so that they can also receive the
same services of protection and assistance as the mothers.
The children are not considered to be victims, because the victims are the ones that are in a
penal process. We say victimised-person, someone that has lost something, but the child is
an indirect victim.68

Despite the fact that it is important to consider if the children of human trafficking
victims should also have access to protection rights and psychological support, as
detailed in the European Directive 29/2012, this subchapter is not focused on this
particular issue. Here, we consider whether or not the trafficker also uses the victim’s
children as a source of profit. As we will see later, I have encountered some cases
that answer this question in the subchapter Adoptions, where I explain that some
traffickers sell their victims’ children to couples looking to adopt. Furthermore,
traffickers can see victims that are sexually exploited as added profit, since they
can optimise on the situation of pregnancy.
Bulgaria is particularly known for human trafficking for the purpose of adoption.
Data retrieved from the EU anti-trafficking coordinator website shows us a signif-
icant increase in women selling their children in Bulgaria, increasing from
57 women in 2014 to a total of 97 women in 2017.69 According to the GRETA
report on Bulgaria (2016), the victims are mostly recruited in small places and are
usually the Roma population, a highly vulnerable group.
In 2017, a police operation in the United Kingdom has linked the human
trafficking victims from Romania and Slovakia, especially those of Roma back-
ground, with the purpose of sham marriages. The women’s citizenship was a push
factor to be trafficked, since they were lured to marry Pakistani, Indian, African and
Afghani men, in order for them to have European Union citizenship. The traffickers
incentivised the women to get pregnant, aiming to guarantee the European citizen-
ship to the diligent through fatherhood. After the officialisation of the marriage, the
victims would stay under the control of the traffickers and their husbands, being
exploited as domestic servers. They were held captive until their marriage papers
were signed, being abused by their ‘husband’ and friends, used for sex and drug

68
Interview number 9 (Law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
69
Data retrieved from the Anti-Trafficking Coordinator, European Commission, on 06/08/2019
https://ec.europa.eu/anti-trafficking/member-states/bulgaria_en
5.2 Motherhood During Sexual Exploitation 125

trafficking or even obliged to marry more than one man. Moreover, the traffickers
forced the victims not to get a birth certificate for the baby, so that it could be used for
several ‘clients’ (European Parliament 2016). In this case, the exploitation of the
mother directly influences the rights of the children, because the traffickers stop the
women from registering the children, which automatically makes them invisible,
lacking fundamental rights such as identification and all the consequent rights as
European citizens.
According to the report Time to deliver (Brotherton 2016), the majority of the
people who were interviewed were unaware of cases in which the trafficker also
profited from exploiting the women’s children. Nevertheless, some cases have been
reported in which the whole family has been exploited, especially for begging, fraud
and labour exploitation, and the children were victims for the purpose of fraud
benefit (Europol 2018). The victims, as well as the perpetrators, were mainly from
the Roma community in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. During one of my
interviews in Romania, a law enforcement agent explained one of their last opera-
tions in Germany with Romanian citizens where mothers and children were
exploited.
There are so many Roma victims that went to Germany with their children to receive the
subsidies of the children. They have completed all the documents, because the subsidies are
not for the adults, but for the children who are born in Germany and many of these children,
who were not even born in Germany, were registered. Then, the traffickers have taken the
money from the children. The maximum amount given in Germany is 480 euro per person,
thus the traffickers have started to get more women pregnant in order to have more money.
These women left their children in Romania, but after they were transferred to Germany, the
traffickers started to use force and violence in order to get them pregnant, from the trafficker
as well as from their husbands. This is a new type of human trafficking to get social funds,
because in this way the traffickers are able to get 1100/1500 euros per month, since each
family had at least four children. These women are abused and live in situations of
decadence, in filthy barracks without any windows. Furthermore, the social assistant just
checks the documents, for the perpetrators it is better if the public employee sees them in a
bad state, because then they are able to receive the maximum amount provided.70

There was a case with Roma people, in which the mothers were used for sexual exploitation,
while the children were used for forced begging.71

The answer to this subchapter is that, indeed, traffickers might use the children of
the victims of trafficking for profit in various ways, perhaps by selling the children,
as was noted in the subchapter Adoptions, or in some cases using them to get
subsidies or for forced begging. However, in the presented cases there is a common
characteristic that appears in the case of Romanian women; the victims are all of
Roma ethnicity. In 2003, in the book Il lavoro servile e le nuove schiavitù (Carchedi
et al. 2003), the sociologist Francesco Carchedi raises an important question:
whether the case of Roma children being victims of trafficking is an exception or a
representation of normality. In this case, the same question can be applied to this

70
Interview number 9 (Law enforcement), 03/10/2016, Romania.
71
Interview number 8 (Law enforcement), 29/09/2016, Romania.
126 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

subchapter, since the encountered cases in my research tend to refer to Roma

children, yet, due to the lack of knowledge regarding this particular group, I think
it is best to leave this question for a study entirely dedicated to the topic. Further-
more, although I am not an expert in Roma culture, it is important to mention that
new forms of human trafficking, recently recognised by many national legal frame-
works, such as forced begging, pickpocketing and forced marriages, can be verified
in cases regarding Roma people.
We have also seen cases, especially in the Roma community, where the parents went first
alone to the UK, Spain, France or Italy and then they came back to take their children to
make more money. The very small children, babies, they would use to provoke compassion
from the people passing by, and the older ones, 3–7 years old, they would send out alone to
beg, under their supervision and collect the money from them periodically. The young boys
would be forced to commit crimes, like pickpocketing for example. Also, these boys would
be used to wash the windows of the cars or to sell newspapers on the streets. Their living
conditions are very bad, poor hygiene, lack of food and proper clothing, lack of a house to
live in – mostly they live on the streets. However, it is affordable, because they make a lot of
money so this is a situation in which parents exploit their very own children. . . (Pascoal and
Schwartz 2018: 54).

In Italy, the children of Romanian women who work in sexual or labour exploi-
tation in Ragusa are also direct and indirect victims of trafficking (Palumbo and
Sciurba 2015). The children of the Romanian women that work in agriculture, in
isolated areas in Sicily often serve as coercive instruments in order to oblige the
woman to have sexual intercourse with the employer, as well as working in the fields
and the greenhouses.
These people are transferred here in groups, entire families with children. The migration
project is one that even if there is deception at the beginning, we take months to make them
understand about the exploitation. We have taken people to the Guardia di Finanza that later
denied everything, even if they were abused. Furthermore, the presence of minors in the
fields is very high, but not because they have arrived now, but because these children were
born in the fields and most of them do not go to school and they have started to work.72

There is also the problem of the lack of registration of these children with the municipality
services, but it is almost impossible to map all the children in the fields.73

The majority of Romanian women migrated to Italy to work as caregivers, yet the
employer often does not allow the women to bring their children, as they usually live
with their employers. Furthermore, the employers require the women to have no
family ties, so that they are completely available for the employer. On the other hand,
the work in agriculture normally grants the women a chance to bring their children to
Italy. Actually, many of the women who are exploited in agriculture were previous
caregivers that had left their children in the origin country and then decided to work
in agriculture, in order to be able to bring their children with them to the destination
country.

72
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
73
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 127

This subchapter has highlighted that the majority of known cases in which
children were also exploited mainly concern the Romanian nationals and not
Nigerians. However, this does not mean that Nigerian children are not also used
by the traffickers. In fact, in Nigeria, the issue of baby factories (Huntley 2013), in
which they use pregnant women or sexually abuse women in order to sell their
children for adoption or for voodoo rituals, is well established. The lack of known
cases of Nigerian children being used as human trafficking victims can be explained
with three possible reasons: (1) Nigerian criminal networks based in Europe are
more focused on human trafficking or sexual exploitation than other typologies of
exploitation; (2) it is more difficult to identify, as has been seen in the subchapter
Motherhood and the travel route; and (3) Romania, as an origin country, has put
considerable work into collaborating with the destination countries to identify the
children.

5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State

5.3.1 Abortions

Human trafficking victims can be highly pressured by their traffickers to comply

with the clients’ request regarding the use of contraception; this is particularly
prominent for the Nigerians while travelling (Beretta et al. 2016). Furthermore, the
women also can be reluctant to use oral contraception or chemical contraception. Of
the two groups, the Romanian women are the ones that are more likely to use family
planning services. What is more, Nigerian women tend to have more access to family
planning services than before, probably due to their inclusion in the reception centres
or because they are less likely to be moved to another region.
I can tell you that the Nigerian group that lives in Rome, lives mainly in Casalina, where
there is an establishment of the Nigerian community. Therefore, over the years, the girls have
started to go to the local services. If it is not an urgent situation, within the 3 months, we send
the girls to the San Camillo hospital, because many times the women arrive and they are in
the limits of the 3 months. Therefore, we need to accelerate everything, all the exams that
should be done first, they are doing there. In all the other cases we try to send them to the
hospitals where they live. This has worked with the Nigerians, because most of them go to
this hospital.74

Despite the fact that an increase in Nigerian women attending the family planning
clinic has been recorded, these women still often resort to illegal abortion. Further-
more, although pregnancy can be used as a justification to raise the debt or avoid
deportation (Pascoal 2013), some madams might see it as a barrier to engaging the
woman in the sex market (IOM 2017), especially since they usually obtain their legal
administrative status through their asylum claim. Hence, many madams oblige the

74
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
128 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

women to get an abortion, even after the legal period, often turning to illegal
methods. In Italy, abortion became legal in 1978 if performed during the first
90 days of pregnancy. Women are allowed to ask for an abortion free of charge
for health, economic or social reasons under the official law 194/1978.75
Despite the free access to voluntary termination of pregnancy in Italy, many
exploiters often prefer to contact a ‘Nigerian native doctor’, not only to avoid the
contact with public institutions such as hospitals but also to use the price of the
abortion as an excuse to raise the debt. Therefore, as mentioned in the subchapter
Motherhood and the travel route, the exploiters are the ones in control of the
reproductive rights of the women (Fernandez et al. 2017), establishing the prices
according to the term of pregnancy. In Castel Volturno, Campania, a Nigerian man
would ask 300/350 euros to terminate a pregnancy of 4/5 weeks and around 2500
euros for after the 5 month of pregnancy (Repubblica Napoli 2017).
In some African countries, illegal abortions are performed using chloroquine and
soap (Dijck 2001), while in Italy, the abortion consists of administrating a certain
number of pills, mainly Cytotec. Cytotec is a pill used to cure stomach ulcers and has
the contraindication of being used on pregnant women. When induced in large
quantities, it has strong collateral effects, provoking uterine contractions and conse-
quently, vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea and haemorrhage. Many victims can undergo a
homemade abortion without any anaesthetic (Brotherton 2016), mixed with herbs
and blood, and sometimes whilst performing a ritual (Agathise 2002). Besides
turning to ‘native doctors’, traffickers also threaten women with violence and oblige
them to work during the pregnancy in order to induce a miscarriage (Dispositif Ac.sé
2015a, b).
I can say that we have accompanied a woman to abort a pregnancy, but it is also difficult to
establish a relationship with the women. At the moment, there is a high number of human
trafficking victims that are within the reception centre that can easily perform an abortion. In
some cases, the women trust their conational who uses illegal methods, which is very
dangerous for them. We have received warnings from other reception centres and hospitals
of strange methods [of abortion], that are also well known to us.76

Not only do the madams oblige the women to terminate the pregnancy, but the
women’s partners can also do it, using high levels of violence as a way to carry out
the abortion (TG24 2009). The fact that the girl turns to an illegal abortion can lead
her to have serious health problems, as well as legal penalties. Consequently, the
women often arrive at the hospital with serious health conditions, or haemorrhages
and are sometimes in near-death situations. Furthermore, when the women show

75
Clause 4, ‘In order to undergo termination of pregnancy during the first 90 days, women whose
situation is such that continuation of the pregnancy, childbirth, or motherhood would seriously
endanger their physical or mental health, in view of their state of health, their economic, social, or
family circumstances, the circumstances in which conception occurred, or the probability that the
child would be born with abnormalities or malformations, shall apply to a public counselling centre
established under item (a) of Sect. 2 of Law No. 405 of 29 July 1975 or to a fully authorised
medicosocial agency [struttura socio-sanitaria] in the region, or to a physician of her choice’.
76
Interview number 26 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 129

negative consequences of the ‘homemade abortion’, the traffickers often abandon

them in the street or near the hospital. For this reason, when a Nigerian woman
arrives at the hospital in a critical condition, as a consequence of an attempted self-
induced abortion, she is usually considered as a potential human trafficking victim.77
However, not all cases of ‘homemade abortion’ are obliged by the traffickers,
especially when the women arrive from Libya and are pregnant out of a situation
of trauma or from exploitation.
The girls ask to interrupt the pregnancy, especially when they arrive from Libya, but also
while in Italy, there are people that get pregnant and then ask to have the abortion.78

Furthermore, as previously observed, the women often feel ashamed by their

pregnancies and often justify themselves by stating that the amount of contraceptive
taken was not enough for the duration of the journey, as the hormone injection has a
timeline of 3 months (Grotti et al. 2017).
Despite the legal access to a free abortion in a public institution, the women are
not always supported or properly informed by the staff of the reception centre, in this
case the CARA di Mineo. During one of the interviews a practitioner declared that,
although one woman requested an abortion within the legal time, the staff of the
reception centre were not able to properly respond to the woman’s request. Conse-
quently, the woman’s pregnancy continued past the 3 months to legally perform the
abortion.
In this case, the interviewee, who was an employee of an NGO, started to hurry
the procedures by trying to pass a report declaring the risk to the mother’s health,79
as the woman had threatened to commit suicide if she could not have an abortion.
The procedure required having an appointment with the psychiatrist from the local
hospital, who is the only person that can write the required declaration. However,
since the procedure took longer than expected, the woman did not believe that she
would be able to have the abortion. Two days later, she left the reception centre and
when she returned she claimed that she had had a miscarriage.80
It is difficult when we have a girl that says: - ‘This thing inside me, I don’t want it!’. For us, it
is also difficult, since all the doctors in the province are conscientious objectors, for us, it is
very difficult to do this. The girls never say that they have done the abortion by themselves.
There was another situation, in which the girl was pregnant and we organised the papers to
do the voluntary termination of pregnancy, but then the girl went away from the centre and
when she came back, she did not have the baby anymore. I think that they [the girls] do the
abortions along with voodoo rituals, but they never say it. Anyway, normally after the

77
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
78
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05/04/2017, Italy.
79
Law 194/1978, Clause 6. ‘Voluntary termination of pregnancy may be performed after the first
90 days: a) where the pregnancy or childbirth entails a serious threat to the woman’s life; b) where
the pathological processes constituting a serious threat to the woman’s physical or mental health,
such as those associated with serious abnormalities or malformations of the foetus, have been
diagnosed’.
80
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
130 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

abortion, the women disappear, even if we provide them information on the risks of
abortion.81

In 2016, the CARA in Mineo had around 3100 migrants and sometimes they
reach a total number of 4000 migrants, despite the fact that its maximum capacity is
about 3000 people. The majority of the guests are Nigerian citizens, counting
40 families (Stefano and Paleologo 2016). One initiative of the centre is project
Eva, which ensures that potential human trafficking victims are accompanied to
medical visits. Despite the high risk of performing abortions in unsafe conditions,
according to the report Accogliere la vera Emergenza (Stefano and Paleologo 2016),
the staff of the centre declare these situations as miscarriages.
As previously exposed by the interviewee, the lack of trust in the Italian organi-
sations to perform the voluntary termination of pregnancies is based predominantly
on two main aspects: (1) on the high number of conscientious objectors who make
up 80% of the doctors in Sicily (Redazione 2016); (2) that within the Nigerian
community there are some figures that are known for performing illegal abortions,
involving mystic and rudimentary instruments. In 2017, a Nigerian man was arrested
in Palermo for performing illegal abortions within the Nigerian community. The
abortions would consist of the administration of expired pills; the situation came to
light when a woman came to the hospital with injuries because she was obliged to
endure an unsafe abortion (Repubblica Palermo 2017).
The impact of an unsafe abortion is not only physical, but it can also be
psychological. In fact, despite the fact that Nigerian women who are victims of
human trafficking for sexual exploitation tend to have an abortion at least two or
three times in their lives (Save the Children 2017), they normally regard the abortion
as being a sinful act, due to their culture and its relation to motherhood (Agathise
2002). Although women can get up to three abortions, in some of my interviews it
has emerged that Romanian women could exceed three abortions in their lifetime.
However, the number of requests for abortions performed legally by Romanian
women has decreased in some regions of Italy,82 since the women or their exploiters
tend to find alternatives, as mentioned by the practitioners.
The Romanian [women] ask more [to have an abortion] than the Nigerians. The psycholog-
ical aspect of the abortion is relative, in some women is very noticeable, in others not really,
but I think that it is an internal path. I think that the Romanians are the ones that perform
more illegal abortions, or they go to Romania if they discover that they are pregnant after the
legal term to have a legal abortion [in Italy].83

Around 120, 125 people come here, but there was a decrease in the request of this service.
We work with the public, for the service we do the inscription to ENI, thus the registration in
the national system. The problem is that the emission of the ENI card is unusual due to the
budget cuts in the Lazio region. Therefore, the emission of ENI, that is for an under
privileged person, suggests that the reimbursement should be provided by the Romanian

81
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20/02/2016, Italy.
82
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
83
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 131

government. Since Romania has not been responding to this necessity, at the beginning the
registrations did not occur often, but now these mechanisms have entered in the system.
Hence, one that declares to be impoverished here, one should also be impoverished in
Romania, but if after it comes to light that the person has a house, then they are not
impoverished and have to pay 400 euros per year to have access to the Italian health system.
In this case, many of them go to Romania to have the abortion and if you go near the airport
of Bucharest, there are a lot of private clinics. Furthermore, when we say you have to have an
electrocardiogram, the appointment with the anaesthetist and mention that there are different
steps to take, the girls often get nervous. This is because when they go to Romania, they can
do all this in a day and it costs less. Therefore, for this reason I think that the number of
requests has diminished.84

In the report Piccoli Schiavi (Save the Children 2017) some minors declared that
they returned to Romania to perform the voluntary termination of pregnancy in
illegal clinics, showing that they were disturbed by being subjected to the
methods used.
Not many girls ask assistance for that [abortion]. They tend to keep the children, even if the
families try to make them have an abortion. When they are in exploitation the traffickers take
care of the abortions, even in unconventional ways, with doctors and homemade abortions.
In the film Speranta la vanzare, there is a girl who was pregnant with her second child by her
husband and he sold her. He sold her, because she was pregnant with a boy and not a girl,
because they were Roma and it is more important for them to have a girl than a boy. This is
due to arranged marriage, because they can get money from the boy’s family. So he sold her
when she was 5 months pregnant and the second buyer tried to cause the abortion with pills,
but the pills did not work. Consequently, the girl now has health problems and the baby had a
tumour in her head.85

During my experience in the street unit, one of the girls declared that she went to
Romania to get an abortion for 300 euros when she was 4 months pregnant. In fact,
besides the fact that it can be easier to get an abortion in Romania, especially if the
trafficker has the contact for a specific doctor, and that it costs less, another main
reason to perform the abortion in Romania is due to the extended length of time in
which one is able to get a legal abortion; while in Italy the legal time for an abortion
is 90 days, in Romania the legislation in force admits the abortion until the 14th
week,86 which is 2 weeks more than in Italian legislation. Furthermore, according to
the Romanian Criminal Code, in Art.201, Clause 6, it is allowed to go past the legal
limit in case of the mother having a medical condition, without specifying which
medical conditions these might be.87 The Romanian legislation also does not

84
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
85
Interview number 18 (third sector), 05/10/2016, Romania.
86
Romanian Criminal Code, Art.201 clause ‘(c) if the length of pregnancy exceeded 14 weeks, the
punishment shall be of no less than 6 months and no more than 3 years of imprisonment or a fine and
a ban on the exercise of certain rights’.
87
‘Termination of pregnancy for therapeutic purposes performed by a physician specialized in
obstetrics and gynaecology, up to the pregnancy length of 24 weeks, or subsequent termination of
pregnancy for therapeutic purposes, in the interest of the mother or of the foetus, shall not constitute
an offense’.
132 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

incriminate women that provoke the loss of the child, even if it is conducted in the
private sphere.88
A high number of abortions can lead to the women having serious problems in
their reproductive systems, which can have a serious impact on the woman regarding
her exploitative situation and her willingness to leave the sex market. During my
volunteer work with the street unit, one of the girls had some problems and went to
the doctor. The doctor said that she had an infection due to the number of abortions
that she had had in the past, and consequently, she could risk having a miscarriage in
the next pregnancy. After receiving this information and understanding she might
not be able to be a mother, the girl decided that if she got pregnant again, she would
follow through with the pregnancy.
Despite the fact that many women return to Romania to perform the abortions, it
is important to reflect that not all women, especially victims of human trafficking
have the assets, material and social resources, to travel to their origin country. In
Sicily, the zone of Vittoria is known for its high number of abortions, mainly for
Romanian women. According to the researchers Letizia Palumbo and Alessandra
Sciurba (2015), the registered number of abortions is mainly due to the women’s
hard labour and sexual exploitation by their employers.
On average, every week eight abortions are performed at the Vittoria hospital, out
of which six are on Romanian women, who are normally accompanied by men, the
majority of whom are Italians, presented by the women as friends (Palumbo and
Sciurba 2015). This notable presence of Romanian women has also been witnessed
by one of my interviewees, who claims that, since Nigerian women in that area are
within the reception centre, they normally turn to these services accompanied by the
staff at the reception centre, which is not the same for the Romanian women.
We provide services at the clinic of Vittoria, twice a week before the abortion. So, we have a
direct experience with the women. In this area, the majority are Romanian women, because
the Nigerian women, maybe they are all in the reception centre, thus probably they are
accompanied by the Centres’ employees. The Romanian women are accompanied by a man,
sometimes a conational, because maybe they pay for the car. . . Regarding the access to
health they [the Romanian] don’t have access to the health system, there are people that
maybe give birth and they have never had a scan during the pregnancy.89

Despite the fact that the number of legal abortions of Romanian women tends to
be very high in this zone of Italy, it has also been noted that many women self-induce
abortion at home, especially if they realise that they are pregnant after the assigned
legal period. The women turn to rudimentary methods that were used by ‘doctors’ in
Romania during the Communist period (1967–1989), when abortions were forbid-
den. As previewed by the Legislative Decree 770 ‘only women older than
45, women who have already had four children, women who had critical medical
conditions (or the foetuses that were malformed or women who were pregnant based

88
‘A pregnant woman who terminates her own pregnancy shall not be punishable’.
89
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 133

on rape or incest) were allowed to have abortions by request’ (Pascoal and Schwartz
2016: 49).
Contrary to Romanian legislation, the Italian legislation does not mention the
exoneration of the women in the case that the abortion is performed after the
established legal period, without the conditions mentioned in the Law of 22 May
1978, n.194. Therefore, it is important to recognise the victim’s situation, when they
arrive at the hospital after the legal period for abortion has passed.90 In 2017 a
Nigerian girl fainted in the street (TG24 2017) and was found with a foetus in her
bag. She was presumed to be a human trafficking victim, since she was obliged to
work even when pregnant until she was compelled to undergo an abortion. The
presumption of a situation of human trafficking exonerated the woman from being
accused of a ‘homemade abortion’.
With the Casilini Policlinic we have a collaboration, we have had an agreement for years,
with the staff from the triage, the gynaecologists, because also in this situation this entails
responsibility for the doctors, also since some women have committed an offence under the
Italian legislation, but in a complex vulnerable situation. Also, being a human trafficking
victim, there is the principle of non-punishment and protection is activated. Therefore, the
girl is flagged and accompanied and I have to say that this has become a good moment to
take the women out of the trafficker’s hands. For an exploited woman, in the face of such a
traumatic moment, the loss of a child in such a way is painful, it can be a good moment to
break with the organisation. We have had more than one case in which the girl has left the
trafficker after having the abortion. Also, when they become mothers, because they [the
Nigerian] are very religious it becomes more difficult, compared to the Romanians that tend
to be more detached. Instead for the Nigerians it is never painless, but it is still problematic,
when they decide to go ahead with the pregnancy. More than once, we had the occasion to
take the girl away from the exploiter when she was pregnant. At that moment the girl takes
the decision of not only curing herself, but also the person that she is bringing into the
world.91

The reflection of the interviewee on the impact of forcing abortion on the victim
contradicts the previous statements on the necessity of women that have suffered
sexual abuse in Libya to have an abortion. In fact, this affirmation appears to be
particularly relevant to our research, since it relates the abortion to the end of an
embodiment suffering. When the women arrive from Libya, the pregnancy is usually
a result of sexual abuse, thus, as previously explained, the abortion grants a certain
relief to the women from the perpetual reminder of the trauma. On the other hand,
when the termination of the pregnancy is inflicted by the trafficker, the abortion can
mark the rupture with the trafficker, since it marks a point of no return for the victim.
The termination of the pregnancy enhances the awareness of the victim not only

90
Law 194/1974, Clause 19. ‘Any person who induces a voluntary termination of pregnancy while
failing to observe the conditions laid down in Sections 5 or 8 shall be liable to up to 3 years’
imprisonment. The woman shall be liable to a fine of up to 100,000 lire. Where voluntary
termination of pregnancy occurs without the medical examination provided for under items (a)
and (b) of Sect. 6 or in any event without observing the conditions laid down in Sect. 7, the person
bringing about such termination shall be liable to from one to 4 years’ imprisonment. The woman
shall be liable to up to 6 months’ imprisonment’.
91
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
134 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

regarding the total control of her body but also the control of all the upcoming
possibilities for the victim, including motherhood. Therefore, for many women,
abortion causes an implosive saturation that can be a jump-start to restore the
victim’s identity, based on the role of the mother and the protection for the other.

5.3.2 Adoptions

Besides the abortions, unwanted pregnancies can also result in adoptions and forced
adoptions, usually imposed by the traffickers. The decision of going through with the
pregnancy and keeping the baby does not really belong to the woman, but to the
exploiters. Furthermore, as previously mentioned in the subchapter Abortions, some
women arrive in Italy already too far along in the pregnancy to perform a legal
abortion. Another reason why women do not have an abortion, and therefore put the
child up for adoption, is due to the lack of assistance from the staff in the reception
centres, or the fact that the women do not have access to a voluntary interruption of
pregnancy. Therefore, giving the child up for adoption is sometimes the only
possible alternative for a situation of unwanted pregnancy in those circumstances.
We had a case 2 years ago, when the mother did not want to keep the baby, because she was
sexually exploited outside of Romania, so she came to Romania to have the baby, who has
now already been adopted.92
This is a very difficult thing. I have to say that sometimes we propose it [the adoption] to the
women, and I think that in situations that the pregnancy has arrived in a complicated
moment, sometimes the women were already in protection when they got pregnant, and
thus sometimes it creates tension. It is never easy. I remember a case of a girl with a mental
disorder that was very difficult.93

However, in the case of Romanian women, adoption often occurs when the
trafficker, who is also the father of the child, obliges the women to give the child
up for adoption. In this case, the consent of the woman to keep the child depends on
the acceptance of the partner. Thus, in the case that the partner refuses to accept the
child, the mother perceives the child as an obstacle in receiving the love of the
partner.
There is this girl, she has four children, two already in foster care in Romania and the other
two at home, with her mother. She lives with her husband near the station and works almost
24 hours a day. I took her to the doctor, because she thought she was 4/5 weeks pregnant, but
in the end, she was 5 months pregnant, thus she had the baby in the hospital and left the baby
there. Some months after she was pregnant again, she said that she took the pill, but
meanwhile her boyfriend took all the money and some time ago she said that he tried to
suffocate her. She was 26 years old, but she acted like a child. Her boyfriend cut up her ID
card and she had to put it together again with tape. Therefore, she stopped taking the pill,
because she did not have any money, and we are talking about a girl that is on the street at

92
Interview number 16 (Institutional services), 20/09/2016, Romania.
93
Interview number 16 (Institutional services), 20/09/2016, Romania.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 135

9 am, at 3 pm and at 10 pm. She was on the street until the last day of pregnancy and when
she started to feel the contractions, she went to the hospital. We told her that she could stay in
a facility for mothers until the baby was 3 years old, but she abandoned the child again.94

In some cases, adoption occurs from the flagging and intervention of the social
services due to the conditions of the mother as a human trafficking victim. The social
services act on the ‘best interest of the child’, sometimes in a first phase with the
consent of the mother, since the mother is aware that the child is in danger, especially
when the offspring is seen as a hindrance of gain for the traffickers.
On the report of Fernandez et al. (2017) a woman states that while her son was
taken by the social services in Spain, she was obliged by her trafficker to go to
Denmark. Consequently, the woman was not aware that her child had been put up for
adoption without her consent. Other cases also reported that the women entrusted the
child to the trafficker, or the trafficker obliged the women to leave the child with her
and then gave the child to the social services without the consent of the mother.
The researchers Reyero and Adroher (2017) also report cases in Spain of Nigerian
women that have been to the police to claim that a friend has abandoned their
children with them. Consequently, the child enters into the system, not only as an
abandoned child but also without the name of the parents, thus it is quite complicated
for the women to be able to find their children once they return to Spain. According
to one of my interviewees,95 an association in France follows cases in which the
trafficker has obliged the women to give their children to the social services. In one
case, besides obliging the victim to give up the child, she also forced the victim to
stop attending visits, which meant that the child was made available for adoption,
despite the best efforts of the association’s staff in Court. In the same interview, the
worker also exposed the case of a mother of four children who were given to the
social services during her exploitation. Unfortunately, her children, being in a
French environment without their mother and only seeing her on infrequent visits,
started to speak only in French. As she was in an exploitative situation, the woman,
consequently, lost the guardianship of her children.
We had cases in which the babies were given to the social services, because the madam
obliged the mother during the birth to give the child to the social services. A baby has been
declared adoptable, I do not know how the situation is now, because my colleagues made the
appeal. The other case is a baby that was entrusted to the social services, while the mother
was in our reception centre, she was still being exploited and the madam did not allow her to
keep the baby.96

The separation of the child from the mother, even when the visits are guaranteed,
can have serious consequences for their relationship, not only regarding their
emotional ties, but mainly due to the fact that the child starts to be reluctant to
speak the mother’s language, and only develops the language of the destination
country (Fernandez et al. 2017). The mentioned cases that usually aim to achieve

94
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27/07/2016, Italy.
95
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30/05/2016, France.
96
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30/05/2016, France.
136 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

results in ‘the best interest of the child’ only evaluate the situation of the child, and
usually do not recognise the situation of trafficking imposed on the mother. Indeed,
the fact that victims sometimes put children up for adoption ties into the idea that
African mothers are weak and vulnerable, incapable of fulfilling ‘the best interest of
the child’; this judgement is often standardised by western culture (Taliani 2014).
Furthermore, the adoption can be a quick, legal instrument that provides the child
with Italian citizenship, without providing any rights to the mother (Taliani 2014).
The disapproval of the children’s education is often based on the discrepancy of
the cultural background of the mother, especially regarding the Nigerian women.
According to Taliani (2014), the limited western cultural perspective can lead to
maternal deprivation, since the mother is often regarded as being inadequate. This
western approach, that is normally imposed on the African foreign mothers, leads
them to confusion since they try to adopt the western behaviours, but often fall into
their misuse.
Actually, in these cases, social services have the tendency to analyse the rela-
tionship between mother and child by regarding the mother’s situation and the
child’s situation separately, rather than analysing the complexity of situation itself.
The prevalence of the ‘best interest of the child’ does not often include assisting the
mother to escape abuse, even if, as we have seen, many women are willing to leave
the exploitative situation. Therefore, the perspective of ‘the best interest of the child’
should also embrace, contemporarily, the situation of the mother, in an accompani-
ment process for both vulnerable subjects. The identification of the mother as a
human trafficking victim can prevent the separation of the mother and the child,
which can positively impact their relationship, since it avoids further damage,
especially while being in a vulnerable position.
When Lana was 10 years old, she was sold for 1000 euros by her mother for the
purpose of forced marriage. Her trafficker forced her to steal and sleep with two men,
and he also beat her. She was able to return to her mother, who claimed she was
unaware of her situation. Yet, after 15 days the mother decided to sell her again for
another 1000 euros. She was forced into domestic servitude, waking up every day at
6:30 to do the house chores. She was then introduced to her future husband, a
12-year-old boy. The family hid her birth certificate and passport and she was
obliged to lie to the social assistants, saying that the children of the couple were
her brothers. She was also obliged to steal when the State stopped giving her
subsidies. Only in 2014, after Lana complained to one of the neighbours, did the
police came to the house asking for Lana’s documents. After being rescued, Lana
revealed that she had a baby. However, the birth certificate registered the youngest
daughter of the traffickers, Iasmina, as the mother of the child (Caneco 2017). The
story of Lana demonstrates the ease in which some traffickers are able to convince
social services, as well as other public services, about the identity of the parents or
their story, mainly due to the lack of identification documents, or birth certificates.
Besides misleading social services as to the identity of the children, traffickers
also tend to report the mothers as immoral, based on their involvement in the sex
market. Reporting the victim to social services is a strategy often used by the
traffickers as a coercive instrument to maintain the women in prostitution. In fact,
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 137

in certain cases, institutions can perceive this engagement as a contradiction to the

role of the mother, judging the mother as being immoral and not providing adequate
conditions for the children (Kohm 2005). Moreover, their inadequacy is often
enhanced by the conditions the child is subject to as a result of trafficking, which
can be perceived by the social services as a lack of interest from the mother. During
my volunteer work in the street unit, I encountered a similar situation, in which the
trafficker had denounced the mother to the social services, claiming that she had
neglected the child.
M., a Romanian woman, was recruited by a school friend who encouraged her to
go to Italy, where she could receive benefits from the government because she was
deaf. As M. was a recent widower and had three children, this seemed like a good
option. She went to Italy with the youngest of the children, her son who was 1-year
old. She was married to an Italian man, who was also deaf, and eventually her
contacts in Italy coerced her into indoor prostitution. After some time, her son was
seen as a hindrance to the exploiters and they reported her to the authorities for
neglecting her son. M. was unable to explain that she wanted to keep her son because
the social assistant working on her case did not find a cultural mediator for Romanian
sign language and this meant that it was a year before an attentive social worker
recognised the trafficking indicators and M. was moved into a shelter. However, due
to her long traumatic experience, she was still attached to the trafficker, thus she
dismissed the lawyer that was trying to make a case against her husband for human
trafficking (Pascoal and Schwartz 2016).
While in this case, pregnancy was seen as a hindrance to the sexual exploitation,
in some situations, it can be a source of added income to the trafficker. According to
Brotherton (2016) some traffickers impregnate the victims, in order to sell their
children. In fact, during one of my interviews in Romania, it was claimed that some
of the women gave their babies to the exploiters.
The children are given away to the exploiters, we have had three, four cases in which the
women did not know where their babies went and they were obliged to give the children for
adoption, while in Italy, which obviously brings profit to the exploiter.97

During another one of my interviews, other cases have been reported in Italy, in
which the association has understood that a baby was sold in the hospital, through an
intermediary who put a couple that could not have children in contact with the leader
of the Roma community. In this case, the traffickers, in order to avoid any bureau-
cratic problems, asked the man of the couple to assume the paternity of the child, so
the child was directly taken by the fake biological father and adopted by the mother.
The same situation has been reported in other countries (CNCDH 2015), such as
Portugal, where a couple bought a newborn (Coelho 2017), using the same method.
They have seen the girl on the street, so they have approached her, because they have seen
her with a big belly. ‘Do you work here?’ We have understood the methods and she went to
the hospital to give birth. An Italian came to the hospital, the man of the couple, and
officially recognised the baby as his own. Therefore, the adoption was done mainly through

97
Interview number 20 (civil society), 02/03/2017, Romania.
138 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

the father. She gave birth in safety, in a public hospital. This has been told to us more than
once, but always within the Roma ethnicity and with girls no more than 18 years old.98

As discussed in the subchapter Morocco, social services can also lead to the
children being put in the foster system in cases of problems in identifying the
women. Normally in these cases, the presence of anti-trafficking institutions is
often necessary in order to recognise the women, especially when they do not
have identification documents.
We had a case this Summer that was very complex. There was this girl that had problems
with her documents and this girl did not have a passport. Therefore, we were doing the
procedure and trying to organise all the documents and we did not quantify the exact
duration of her pregnancy and we thought that she was in her 7 month. She had her
contractions and the birth, maybe a bit before time. We flagged to the hospital her situation,
that she was a human trafficking victim, thus she did not have a passport and since they did
not give much attention to the subject, the legal identification came only three days after. In
the public hospital there is a judicial entity that is able to recognise the child. Therefore, she
was not identified, except through our identification and they did not warn us about the
problem, that three days after the birth, the identification is possible, but the procedure is
more complex. With the registration office of the municipality there is a different procedure,
thus the woman was having some difficulty and the hospital said that it would be better for
the baby to remain at the hospital. Therefore, we were in a paradoxical situation, in which
she was dismissed from the hospital, while her child was still not identified. In this case,
there was a father, who was Italian and was willing to recognise the child as his own, but he
was in Bari and she did not have any documents, thus there was the risk that the baby would
go up for adoption. We had to go to the registration office with two witnesses, then we had to
go to the hospital in the same day.99

5.3.3 The Role of the State

This is a very delicate subchapter that has been analysed with information from
Romania, Spain, France and Italy; Romania as the origin country, where most
Romanian women leave their children to live a transnational motherhood; and
Spain, France and Italy as destination countries for Nigerian women, where they
usually live with their children. In order to proceed with this chapter in a detailed
manner, I should make a distinction between the past and the present, concerning
motherhood for the Nigerian women in Italy. This distinction is mainly based on the
fact that currently Nigerian women are often in the reception centres, accessing a
network of services, while in the past they were mostly invisible to the eye of the
authorities, as they were living within the trafficking network. Furthermore, the
integration of Nigerian women in the asylum system, a consequence of the massive
migration flows, has monopolised the attention of this particular group, especially
due to the interaction between the women and the practitioners in the reception

98
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
99
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29/11/2016, Italy.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 139

centres. Furthermore, the role of motherhood will also be developed according to the
destination country, in this case Spain, France or Italy, and the legal framework in
these countries. This comparison is based on the difference between the concept of
motherhood and the response of the government in different countries. Some
examples include: Spain, where there is much concern with the problem of the
niños ancla, who have a high probability of disappearing; France, where there is
specific attention on the vulnerability of the children, but less concerning the
mothers; and, of course, the concept of children left behind in Romania.
Although Nigerian women feel that when they become mothers they have a more
relevant role in society, it is important to note that African motherhood can be
viewed negatively in the eyes of western society, sometimes considered as primitive,
as mentioned in the precedent chapter. The role of ‘good European mother’ that
sacrifices herself has modelled the western perspective of the mother (Serughetti
2016). In fact, the lack of awareness of some cultural aspects of the Nigerian society
can implicate conflicts in the role of mothers (Taliani 2016), sometimes leading to
the separation of the child from the mother by the social services. According to the
Women’s Link Worldwide report (Fernandez et al. 2017), associations working with
Nigerian mothers tend to designate the women as authoritarian, demonstrating a
distant relationship with their children or overcome by motherhood. Furthermore,
sometimes it seems that social services only trust European organisations to guar-
antee the capability of the woman in being a mother.
We have had a case of a woman that was identified in the city A. at a nuns’ facility and from
there they have communicated with the Minors’ Court. Therefore, when we took her, we
received a pre-trial order from the Minors’ Court of A. to proceed with an investigation.
Thus, they started to question the pater potestas of the woman, even before the child was
born. However, in this case the solution was easy, since they resolved the problem with our
report claiming that the woman would take care of the child.100

A Nigerian woman had a child in 2006 and in 2007, after several problems with
the mother, the social services claimed automatic tutorship of the child. After 2007,
visits were no longer authorised to the mother and she was admitted to a psychiatric
hospital with persistent delirious disturbance, which originated in episodes of vio-
lence towards the child in public. In 2008, the social services decided to integrate the
child into a provisional foster family with the aim of pre-adoption. Despite the fact
that a simple foster family model was agreed, with a system of visits from the
mother; the child went into a pre-adoption system. The woman took the situation to
the Court and, finally, the court decided to put the child in a simple foster system, in
order to not break the relationship with the mother.101
As previously mentioned in the subchapter Adoptions, besides the lack of a
cultural approach, the social services tend to see the engagement of the women in
the sex market as a detrimental behaviour in relation to their care for the children
(Kohm 2005).

100
Interview number 31 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
101
Tribunal Supremo Sala 1ª, S 17-2-2012, n 60/2012, rec. 1242/2010.
140 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

In France the social services intervene in a protective way, as we try to mediate between the
mothers and the State. Therefore, in the moment that they realise the mother is in
prostitution. . . not all are in favour of leaving the child with the mother. It is up to us to
try to solve the situation, because only once they press charges, can they have access to the
services.102

The critics within the social services emphasise the idea that the engagement in
prostitution and the role of mother are incompatible (Garofalo 2014).
The only Romanian case that I followed was this woman that had a child last year, when she
testified against a criminal network and when she was transferred to another region she was
flagged from the hospital to the Minors’ Court. The Court, instead of expressing that she was
a vulnerable person who did not have many resources, expressly declared that she was a
prostitute. There are many women that had not told their husbands that they were prostitutes,
thus the problem of these women was not to tell their story for the umpteenth time, but to
justify to their husbands what they were doing.103

Women tend to interiorise the folkway regarding the contradiction of motherhood

and the engagement in the sex market. Therefore, many women do not feel like they
are capable of taking care of their children, especially when they lack self-
determination, and usually they leave their children with the social services. One
of the interviewees, a practitioner, exposed a case in which the mother, who was
being hosted by the association, was obligated to give her child temporarily to the
social services, since her madam did not allow the victim to be with her child. The
woman is able to see her daughter every 15 days, yet the child is still in the care of
social services, since the mother is still in an exploitative situation.104
In 2004, Eli saw her offspring being taken by the social services due to under-
nourishment, while the child was in her madam’s care. In a first instance, Eli
constantly visited her child in the hospital. However, once she returned to being
exploited by the traffickers, she was not able to guarantee an incessant assiduity.
Gradually, the social services perceived the decrease in the victim's visits as a lack of
interest from the mother, stating in the child’s trial that ‘the mother does not follow
the visiting period; comes at strange hours when the child is asleep and usually
comes accompanied by a man’. The limited perception of the social services on
the condition of the mother impacted negatively on her assessment, which resulted in
the child being transferred from the minors’ shelter into a foster family. In time, the
family decided to commence the adoption process, that was signed by the mother.
However, the social services did not consider that the mother, under the restriction of
the criminal network, was forced to sign the adoption papers. Consequently, once the
woman finished paying her debt and exited from the network, she was not able to
regain her child’s guardianship (Lucas 2015).
As demonstrated in the story of Eli, the lack of the victims’ self-determination and
self-control over their own lives often affects the relationship between mother and

102
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30/05/2016, France.
103
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
104
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30/05/2016, France.
5.3 Unwanted Pregnancies and the Influence of the State 141

child, negatively influencing on the role of the mother. The mother’s role is often
perceived as precarious, and it is assumed that she deliberately gives the child to the
social services or abandons the offspring in the hospital. Although the abandonment
can be perceived as a definitive decision to not keep the baby, in some cases the
women intend it to be a temporary solution until they achieve their self-
determination and a stable condition.
In 2012, F. was born in Spain and abandoned by her mother at the hospital due to
her personal, economic and social conditions. Despite the abandonment, the woman
never ratified the adoption papers, maintaining that she would try to be with her child
once she had access to better conditions. According to the social services, they
supported the mother for 3 months, the mother claimed the contrary. By the end of
the 3 months, the woman was still not able to offer any alternatives to her child, nor
renounce her. As the mother was also difficult to reach and would barely come to see
her daughter, the social services deduced that the woman had decided to put her child
up for adoption. Consequently, in October the child was housed with an occasional
foster family, with the view for pre-adoption, according to the Resolución 1326/
2012, de 11 Octubre, which lead to the cessation of the visits from the mother to the
child. In 2014, the mother opposed the adoption, asking for the girl to be placed in a
simple foster family, with the goal to be later reintegrated into the biological family.
However, the social services declared that while the foster family was able to provide
stability for the girl, the instability of the biological mother was not in line with ‘the
best interest of the child’. Furthermore, the mother moved to Norway during the trial
and, unaware of the situation, she had signed the papers giving the child to adoption.
Once she returned, she asked to be the guardian of the child and the judge decided
that the child should be with a foster family and not in the pre-adoption process.105
When becoming mothers, human trafficking victims in sexual exploitation tend to
be more visible to society, yet they are not usually seen as people who are in a
difficult situation, but more as ‘bad mothers’. In my previous research (Pascoal
2013), a psychologist mentioned the situations she had witnessed, in which the
children presented irregular and alarming behaviour. Consequently, some of these
cases were mentioned to the social services and the children were taken from the
mothers because the social services did not have the appropriate training to recognise
the victim’s needs and try to help her. In fact, in this case, a further analysis should
have been completed, in order to understand the mothers’ limitations in raising her
children, in order to provide better support to the mothers.
There was also a situation which we had to manage which was connected to the parents’
functionality: A woman enters into contact with a service, such as a school or social service
and this is when situations of risk were noticed, and the children were taken from the families
and put in children’s residential facilities. In that case, we understood that the context was
not healthy for the child, where there was also the exploitation of the mother. If you have to
go to the streets at a certain hour, you have to leave your child with someone.106

105
AP Navarra, sec. 3ª, S 10-11-2015, n 414/2015, rec. 233/2015.
106
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10/04/2017, Italy.
142 5 Motherhood of Nigerian and Romanian Women in Sexual Exploitation

As previously stated, this subchapter is not a critique of the social services, but a
point of reflection, as it is important to have ‘the best interest of the child’ as a
priority, but it is also important to have a full understanding of the situation and the
specificities of the case. Nevertheless, a problem presents itself when the children
pass from provisional situations of foster care into pre-adoption or adoption systems
without the consent of the mother or without any support from the social services
regarding the complex situation of the mother. Furthermore, the mothers are often
unaware of the consequences of cultural discrepancy between the origin and the
destination country. In the Women’s Link Worldwide report, the authors tell the
story of Favour’s mother. The social services considered the possibility that she
might run away, and decided to take the child from her. Consequently, the mother
was constrained to remain in the shelter, without being fully aware of the situation
and with a lack of information on her access to rights. Furthermore, the mother was
psychologically threatened, as the social services threatened that she would not see
her child if she cried during the visits (Fernandez et al. 2017).
In 2012, a Nigerian woman in Spain was accused of not taking proper care of her
child, because she left her 2-year-old child for weeks with another woman, without
any contact, while she practiced prostitution. The child, who was admitted to
hospital with constant vomiting, several injuries, and undernourishment, conse-
quently suffered from a lack of physical and psychological development, as well
as social and emotional consequences. In this case of negligence, the mother was
accused of non-compliance with her role as a parent and was characterised by the
Court as having total disinterest in removing the child from the situation harm. She
declared that it was her exploiter that was stopping her from having contact with her
child, and in the end, she was absolved and identified as a human trafficking
victim.107 As is proven in this case, the imposition of the trafficker towards the
woman led to her being involved in a legal trial for not taking care of her child.
Within the Nigerian human trafficking system, cases have also been registered in
which the trafficker takes the child from the victim in order to control her and
increase the debt, as we have previously seen in the Toledo case. Furthermore, in this
case, the identification of a situation of trafficking, not only prevented the child being
taken from the mother but, due to the non-punishment principle of the victim, meant
that the mother was absolved of the offences that she was accused of under her
exploitation.

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301467/301467.
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prostitute nigeriane, arrestato ‘Doctor Friday’. Repubblica Napoli. Accessed June 14, 2018,
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178238889/.
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05/05/news/palermo_aborti_clandestini_in_casa_nigeriano_arrestato-164656144/.
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Pontificia de Comillas. Accessed December 29, 2019, from https://www.unicef.es/sites/unicef.
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15, 2019, from https://www.savethechildren.it/cosa-facciamo/pubblicazioni/piccoli-schiavi-
invisibili-2017.
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08/31/fertilityday-non-solo-sbagliato-ma-controproducente/.
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Taliani, S. (2012). I prodotti dell’Italia. Figli nigeriani tra tutela, diritto e amore materno. Minori
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Chapter 6
Protection and Victim’s Assistance

6.1 Vulnerability After the Denounce and Secured Rights

Identifying a human trafficking victim can be a herculean task, especially if no path

has been made within a third sector organisation. Therefore, the recognition of a
human trafficking victim is often based on the victim pressing charges; the victim is
then expected to assume the ‘role of the victim’ with ‘misleading and dehumanising
stereotypes’ (Cojocaru 2016). It is, in fact, in the way that law enforcement agents
interrogate the victims that they can cause a secondary victimisation that revives the
victim’s traumas lived during the exploitation period. The process of retelling the
lived experience to law enforcement agents can lead the victim into a secondary
victimisation, by reliving the events of the abuse. Therefore, in order to avoid a
systematic victimisation of the individual, law enforcement agents should allow
recorded interviews to be used in court, also avoiding direct contact between the
victim and the offender. Furthermore, special attention should be given to keeping
victims’ data, by avoiding the disclosure of identifiable data, such as names, phone
numbers, and addresses.
Steps to take in order to prevent inducing repeated victimisation by the exploiters,
through retaliation and intimidation, as well as secondary intimidation, is outlined in
paragraph 9 of the Directive 2012/29/EU, stating that the victim should have access
to facilitate her recovery,1 as well as legal support.2 Retaliation and intimidation are
anticipated to directly affect the victim, but the victim’s family can also be a target of
the exploiters. At this point, family members should also be involved in the

1
‘Victims of crime should be protected from secondary and repeat victimisation, from intimidation
and from retaliation, should receive appropriate support to facilitate their recovery and should be
provided with sufficient access to justice’.
2
Art.13 ‘Member States shall ensure that victims have access to legal aid, where they have the status
of parties to criminal proceedings’.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 149

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4_6
150 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

protection process, according to their needs, anticipated by Art.8 of the Directive

2012/29/EU.
The recognition of human trafficking victims, as cited above, is linked by the
international legal instruments such as the Directive 2012/29/EU; 2011/36/EU and
the European Warsaw Convention to a package of rights that should supply and
support the victim during the identification process. After the identification of the
potential victim, anti-trafficking agents, or third sector practitioners should activate a
vulnerability assessment of needs, in order to fully guarantee the victim, the protec-
tion expected. The protection should be immediate3 as should the investigation of
the case, in order to avoid any potential danger to the victim (Parisi 2016).
The referred assessment, which is based on the personal characteristics of the
victim4, the type or nature of the crime, and the circumstances of the crime, is
mentioned by the Directive 2012/29/EU that intends to ‘extend the benefit of special
measures during the criminal proceedings’.5 Therefore, victims should have access
to an integrated approach, which also considers the relationship ‘between victims,
offenders, children, and their wider social environment’. The immediate needs of the
victim could include safe accommodation and medical support. Yet, it has been
noted that victims, from origin countries in Europe for instance, such as Romania,6
often do not need accommodation, or even legal status in the territory, especially in
the case that the family is not related to the trafficking situation, and many victims
opt to return to their houses.7 Despite the provision of these special measures, due to
their particular vulnerability to secondary victimisation and re-victimisation, the
process of individual assessment should be in accordance with the national
procedures.

3
L.E vs Greece. 21 January 2016. The case of a Nigerian woman, in which Greece was not able to
provide immediate protection to the victim, in this way exposing the victim to danger. The ECHR,
based on Art.4 declared that the States should immediately start the investigations, regardless of
whether or not the victim was pressing charges.
4
‘Personal characteristics; victims whose relationship to and dependence on the offender make them
particularly vulnerable. In this regard, victims of terrorism, organised crime, human trafficking,
gender-based violence, violence in a close relationship, sexual violence, exploitation or hate crime,
and victims with disabilities shall be duly considered’.
5
Art. 23 and 24 of the Directive 2012/29/EU.
6
Art.38 Directive, 2012/29/EU.
7
Interview number 7 (law enforcement), 23 August 2016, Romania.
6.2 The Italian Legislation on the Protection of Human Trafficking Victims 151

6.2 The Italian Legislation on the Protection of Human

Trafficking Victims

6.2.1 The Italian Legal Framework Regarding the Protection

of the Victims

In Italy, the crime of human trafficking is foreseen by the Art.6008 and 6019 of the
Penal Code that previews that ‘a term of imprisonment of from eight to twenty years
shall be applied to whoever recruits, introduces into the territory of the State,
transfers outside said territory, transports, yields authority over a person to another
person, offers lodging to one or more persons who are in the conditions specified in
Article 600, or performs the said conducts against one or more persons by deceit,
violence, threats, abuse of authority or taking advantage of a situation of vulnera-
bility, or of a weaker physical or psychic condition or a condition of need, or by
promising or giving money or of any other advantage to the person having control
over that person, for the purpose of inducing or forcing him/her to perform work, sex
or to beg or, in any case, to perform unlawful activities entailing his/her exploitation
or removal of organs’.
Regulation of the protection of victims of trafficking in Italy began in 1998 with
Art.1810 of Testo Unico sull’Immigrazione. The article previewed that ‘whenever
police operations, investigations or court proceedings involving any of the offences
set out in Articles [inter alia, 600 and 601 CC], or whenever the social services of a
local administration, in the performance of their social assistance work, identify
situations of abuse or severe exploitation of a foreign citizen, and whenever the
safety of the foreign citizen is seen to be endangered as a consequence of attempts to
escape from a criminal organisation which engages in one of the afore-cited
offences, or as a consequence of statements made during preliminary investigations
or in the course of court proceedings, the chief of police, acting on the proposal of the
Public Prosecutor, or with the favourable opinion of the same Public Prosecutor,

8
Legislative Decree N. 24/2014, entered into force on 28 March 2014. Art.600—(Placing or
holding a person in conditions of slavery or servitude). ‘Whoever exerts on any other person
powers and rights corresponding to ownership; places or holds any other person in conditions of
continuing enslavement, sexually exploiting such person, imposing coerced labour or forcing said
person into begging, or exploiting him/her in any other way, shall be punished with imprisonment
from 8 to 20 years. Placement or maintenance in a position of slavery occurs when use is made of
violence, threat, deceit, or abuse of power; or when anyone takes advantage of a situation of
physical or mental inferiority and poverty; or when money is promised, payments are made, or other
kinds of benefits are promised to those who are responsible for the person in question’. ‘The
aforesaid penalty becomes harsher, increasing by one third to 50%, if the offences referred to in the
first paragraph above are perpetrated against minors under eighteen or for sexual exploitation,
prostitution or organ removal purposes’.
9
‘The same penalty shall apply to whoever, even without using the ‘means’ provided for in the first
paragraph, performs conducts set forth therein against a minor’.
10
Legislative Decree 286/98.
152 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

may grant a special residence permit enabling the foreign citizen to escape from the
situation of abuse perpetrated by the criminal organisation and to participate in a
social assistance and integration programme’.
At the time of its conception, Art.18 was considered to be quite advanced
regarding the protection of third country national victims of exploitation in danger
from a criminal organisation.11 The innovative protection measure regarded the
possibility of the victim to choose two possible paths: the judicial path and the
social path. While the judicial path foresees immediately pressing charges against
the perpetrators, the social path allows the victims to have access to protection
without denouncing their exploiters. The protection includes shelter, psychological
and legal support and an integration path based on a language course as well as
specific training. In the social path, associations, NGOs, or public social services
request the issuing of a residence permit from the Chief of Police (Questore) as
mentioned in letter a) of Art.27.12 The permit can be renewed after 6 months, for
another six months. After this period, Art.18 permit is renewable for a work or study
permit. The permit allows the victim to be integrated into the social context, usually
providing a traineeship in the work sector. However, it has been noticed that
sometimes 1 year is not enough for the victim to become independent and overcome
the trauma of the exploitation.
In 2003, by amending the Italian criminal code, with the implementation of the
Law Legislative Decree 228/2003, the Italian government started to apply the
ratification of the UN Protocol on Human Trafficking, proceeded by the revision
of the articles regarding human trafficking, such as Art.600 ‘Placing or holding a
person in a condition of slavery or servitude’, Art.601 ‘Trafficking in human beings’,
and Art.602 ‘Purchase and sale of slaves’. The final application of the Palermo
Protocol was implemented in Italy through the law of 16 March 2006, n.146.
With the same Legislative Decree of 228/2003, the Italian state provided
Art.13,13 which grants the victim the permit ‘or the reflection period’ of 3 months,
and is renewable for another 3 months. This short-term permit is also a supply of
basic needs that includes accommodation, health care, counselling, and legal assis-
tance. However, with the recent implementation of the National Anti-Trafficking
Plan released on 26 February 2016, Art.13 was merged with Art.18.

11
‘and his safety is seriously threatened, as a result of attempting to escape from the control of a
criminal organisation’.
12
Art.27 of the Decree of the President of Republic 394/1999.
13
1. ‘Excepting all cases envisaged by Article 16-bis of decree-law n.8 dated January 15, 1991,
converted and amended by Law n. 82 dated March 15 1991 and subsequent modifications, a special
support program is hereby launched for the victims of the offences envisaged by Articles 600 and
601 of the Penal Code, as replaced by Articles 1 and 2 respectively of this present Act. Said program
shall be carried out within the limits of the resources referred to in Paragraph 3; it shall aim at
temporarily guaranteeing adequate accommodation, food and healthcare conditions to the aforesaid
victims. The above-mentioned program shall be defined by a regulation to be adopted under Article
17, paragraph 1, of Law n. 400 dated August 23, 1988, upon the proposal of the Minister for Gender
Equality, liaising with the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Justice’.
6.2 The Italian Legislation on the Protection of Human Trafficking Victims 153

6.2.2 A Legislative Analysis

As mentioned above, the consideration that Art.18 was avant-garde to the European
legislation was due to the binary grant of a 6 month renewable residence permit in
two different paths (Goodey 2004). With the aim of ensuring the equal standing of
victims, and with the state’s aim to punish perpetrators of serious criminal offences,
the residence permit granted by Art.18 intended to provide the victims safety and
protection. The protection and safety aimed at enhancing a relation of trust that led
the victim to press charges against her/his exploiters and to avoid the offender’s
retaliation. Furthermore, Art.18 permit grants the victim the possibility of pressing
charges without being deported (Giammarinaro 2000). As I will further analyse, at
the time of its implementation, Art.18 was intended to help victims of human
trafficking for sexual purposes that intended to escape the criminal networks
(Carchedi et al. 2000). Therefore, the protective measures provided through Art.18
were mainly created for third country national victims who had already experienced
exploitation and they were principally recognised as a granted prize to the repenting
victims. The foundation of Art.18 has proven to be difficult to implement as a
preventative measure and in cases where the women were not third country nationals
or were within the asylum system.
The integration of such best practice has mainly provided law enforcement agents
with the opportunity to gain the victims’ trust, through the mediation of non-profit
associations, in order to proceed with a further investigation of the traffickers (Kelly
2005). In this case, the associations are normally the first ones to report and prove the
exploitative situation of the victim. At the time, the ‘Rimini case’ was considered a
successful model, as the law enforcement agents understood that the immediate
deportation of third country nationals engaged in the sex market who were not
identified as human trafficking victims, was not an effective instrument to tackle
criminal networks, especially as it often resulted in the immediate return of the
victim to Italy (Ventrella 2010). Therefore, even if at the beginning the witnesses
were reluctant to cooperate with the authorities due to threats from the criminal
networks, after being offered stability the victims started to cooperate and trust in the
authorities.
Despite the innovative aspect of Art.18, including the protection of the victim by
the granting of the residence permit for social reasons, it has been noted that many
Questore is reluctant to grant the permit through the social path, due to the lack of
victims pressing charges (GRETA 2014; OSCE 2013; IOM 2015). In fact, many
women are reluctant to press charges against their exploiter, not only because they
might be afraid of the consequences for them and their family, but also because the
sometimes the woman is not aware of her own victimhood. In the case of Nigerian
women, the lack of awareness is mainly based on the survival ladder that women
have to pursue before achieving a stable situation, such as paying the debt to the
sponsor (Fernandez et al. 2017). Consequent to the inadequate application of Art.18,
especially regarding the application of the ‘social path’, in 2007, the Ministry of
154 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

Internal Affairs sent a circular letter14 to all Prefectures and Questore, asking for a
homogeneous application of the granting of Art.18 residence permit.
As previously mentioned, the protection under Art.18, such as accommodation,
and complementary support, including psychological, legal, and work integration,
was deeply connected with the granting of a residence permit. The merging of Art.13
came to complement the tutoring of human trafficking victims that did not need a
legal administrative status, such as EU citizens. In this way, the victims were able to
access the protection measures provided by Art.18 without the requisite of the
residence permit. In 2007, two of the principal countries of origin for human
trafficking victims, Bulgaria and Romania, entered the European Union. In order
to avoid being confronted with a major number of Romanian and Bulgarian victims
that from 1 January 2007 would be considered EU citizens, the legislators approved
Art.6, comma 4 of the Legislative Decree 300/2006 that separates the victim’s
tutoring from the grant of Art.18 permit. Therefore, with the implementation of
this Legislative Decree, the EU citizen, which also includes Italian citizens, started to
have access to all the protection measures detailed in Art.18, in case of exposure to
risk. In this way, the legislator separates the protection, assistance, and social
integration of the victim from the granting of the permit of Art.18. However, victims
who are European citizens and therefore not in need of a legal administrative status
tend to be reluctant to denounce their traffickers, since they do not see any advantage
in exposing themselves to secondary victimisation by collaborating with the
authorities.
We are fighting for this, clearly the authorities should file a report of the offence, and we are
doing a work of awareness on this, with the Public Prosecutor Office there is an openness
[in giving the humanitarian permit to the women] that is giving us hope. Then, from the
penal point of view, they have to say how to put the types of offence together, but they want
the collaboration with the authorities, also because the women tend to say yes in one day
and, in the next day they change their minds because they are afraid and they do not see the
advantage.15

However, the application for the social path of Art.18 was still based on the
collaboration of the victim and the facilitator of the anti-trafficking referent with the
Questore, in order to demonstrate an imminent situation of danger, and conse-
quently, have access to the social path. With the application of this Legislative
Decree, the main characteristic of Art.18—the granting of protection permit as a sort
of ‘prize’ for the victim, as a result of exiting sexual exploitation—is no longer an
obstacle (Mancini 2007). Therefore, the application of this Legislative Decree not
only means the provision of access to protection measures for the EU citizens who
were not in need of a residence permit, but it also contributes to the separation
between the protection permit and the protection path, as I will analyse further on.

14
Rome, 28 May 2007.
15
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
6.2 The Italian Legislation on the Protection of Human Trafficking Victims 155

6.2.3 The Italian Referral Mechanism

Unfortunately, there is no data regarding the application of Art.18, concerning the

social path and the judicial path individually and this impedes the understanding of
the real influence in collaborating with the authorities for each path (OSCE 2013).
On the other hand, the Department for Equal Opportunities provides statistics on
Art.18 and Art.13, which demonstrate the decline of the number of human traffick-
ing victims.16 The decline is not based on the reduced number of identified victims
but due to the insufficient financing in the last years. Furthermore, the provided data
only demonstrates the numbers of victims that have actually proceeded with Art.18
path, which ignores the cases that did not finalise the protection path, some due to a
lack of victims collaborating with the authorities.
Therefore, in order to have a wide framework of the flagged victims involved in
the protection path of Art.18, it is necessary to separate the number of victims that
finished and that were not able to finish the protection path. Furthermore, the anti-
trafficking referents also complain about the lack of granting the residence permit to
the victims who have chosen the social path (IOM 2015).
In Italy, the official number of human trafficking victims until the publication of
the National Plan in February 2016, that merged Art.13 and Art.18, is provided by
the Ministry of Equal Opportunities. In fact, in 2015, the EUROSTAT report by the
European Commission declared that Italy had around 6572 victims from 2010 to
2012. However, these numbers are not the result of all the individuals that have been
identified as human trafficking victims, but the addition of the human trafficking
victims that have been granted Art.13 and Art.18 permits. Therefore, the statistics
have double-counted the number of victims, since they added the individuals that
have completed Art.13 and then proceeded to Art.18.
It is also important to reflect that the EUROSTAT report (2005) was published
before the increase in the migration flows that arrived in Italy, in which many human
trafficking victims, especially Nigerians started to have access to the protection path
through the granting of international protection and humanitarian protection. Hence,
the number of identified human trafficking victims should include those granted
international and humanitarian protection. Furthermore, the asylum system claims
can provide the exact amount of international protection granted to human traffick-
ing victims. However, until now there has been no monitoring of the amount of
international and humanitarian protection granted to human trafficking victims.
Despite the large number of victims that have benefited from Art.13 and Art.18,17
the funds provided for the protection of victims reduced over the years leading to
2013, which, consequently reduced the number of people assisted. In fact, the

16
2011: 1955 (Art.13 + Art.18); 2012: 1650(Art.13 + Art.18); 2013: 756 (Art.13 + Art.18); 2014:
424 (Art.13 + Art.18).
17
Civil society organisations assisted around 65,000 persons between 2000 and 2012, of whom
21,378 received a residence permit, according to the data from the Department of Equal
Opportunities.
156 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

GRETA group (2014) urged the Italian government to assign the appropriate amount
of protection funding, so that it was relevant to the real number of the victims.
Furthermore, due to the economic crisis in 2013, there was a huge delay on the
allocation of funds, which led the representative of the OSCE for THB to propose the
application of Art.12 of Law 228/2003, which allocates the funds for the social
integration of the victims, through the confiscation of assets from the criminal
networks (OSCE 2013). In 2016, the last call for tenders provided the anti-trafficking
organisations with an amount of 13 million euros, while in 2013 the total amount
was only 8 million. However, despite the increase, the funding provided has still
proven to be insufficient due to the migration crisis in the Mediterranean and the
increase of potential human trafficking victims. This crisis is mainly based on the
increased number of Nigerian women that have arrived in the last 3 years (85 in
2012; 433 in 2013; 1454 in 2015; 5633 in 2015; and 11,009 in 2016).18
At the moment, the demand is very high and the protection paths need to be taken with time.
Some years ago, it was very difficult to find a human trafficking victim, yet, nowadays, there
are so many, that now the funding is not enough and the department of Equal Opportunities
is shocked [that although there was a rise of the funding, in recent year it has demonstrated to
be insufficient for the number of victims seeking protection].19

6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human

Trafficking Victims

As previously mentioned, the granting of Art.18 has been a struggle for human
trafficking victims in Italy who do not want to press charges, especially since Art.600
of the Italian Penal Code considers that the victim is continuously subjected to abuse
by the trafficker, and is therefore at risk. Furthermore, the legislation foresees that the
victim has already been exploited, or at least the demonstration that the trafficker
intended to exploit the victim is clear. With the 80% increase in the number of
Nigerian women reported in 2016 (Sironi 2016), the anti-trafficking system in Italy
was confronted with a new profile of human trafficking victims, who were not yet
exploited in the national territory.
The enhancement of the rescue operations in the Mediterranean, combined with
the intensified coordination system for the identification of vulnerable categories led
to a considerable overlap between potential human trafficking victims and asylum
seekers. The migrants were then temporarily placed in identification centres such as

18
Data provided by the IOM, Italy.
19
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 157

CDA,20 CARA,21 and CIE,22 yet these centres were not prepared to identify human
trafficking victims. The human trafficking representative of OSCE (2013) urged the
Italian authorities to ensure legal counselling and orientation services to asylum
seekers and undocumented foreigners who were hosted in these centres in order to
identify potential human trafficking victims.
The legal and psychological accompaniment of asylum seekers in the reception
centres can facilitate the identification of human trafficking victims, because in the
disembarkation the migrants arrive in Italy highly distressed and victims often do not
trust the anti-trafficking stakeholders. Therefore, the access to civil society stake-
holders in the reception centres is important in identifying potential human traffick-
ing victims, not only through a process of trust but also through the psychological
assessment of the migrant. Indeed, many victims present symptoms of depression
and hyperactivity, anger or dissociative disorder that can come under the complex of
post-traumatic stress.
We work with victims of torture, yet we realise that sometimes the victims of torture are also
potential victims of human trafficking, which normally present relevant dissociative disorder
symptoms, such as the alternation of the state of consciousness, when their mind goes to
another place. In order to understand this, we usually ask the girl: do you often lose yourself
in your thoughts and not realise that an hour has passed then somebody comes and they scare
you, because you did not realise that someone was coming? To which they usually answer:
yes, but I was not here I was in another life!23

There were these three women in whom the Territorial Commission of [the city of] C. had
noticed the indicators of vulnerability, and we analysed the hypothesis of human trafficking,
but this would come out of our certification. Therefore, humanitarian protection was given
on the basis of a psychological evaluation and not regarding the situation of human
trafficking. For instance, girls that have been recognised as human trafficking victims by
the Territorial Commission, they still do not have their protection, because they have not
been formally identified by the anti-trafficking referent.24

Since 2015, the anti-trafficking system has changed due to the increase in
Nigerian human trafficking victims and the inclusion of other stakeholders working
in the asylum system. The identification of asylum seekers as human trafficking
victims has rearranged the bureaucratic procedures, especially after the arrival of the
11,009 Nigerian women in 2016, who were allocated in reception centres for asylum
seekers. Besides accommodation, these reception centres provide the asylum seekers

20
CDA—Reception Centers (Centri Di Accoglienza), Law no. 563/95, emergency and first assis-
tance centres. Migrants are kept in these facilities for the time necessary to establish identity,
legitimacy of entry, and possible immediate removal, being sent back to the country of origin.
21
CARA—Reception Centres for Asylum Seekers (Centro di Accoglienza per Richiedenti Asilo).
22
CIE, Identification and Expulsion Centers (Centri di Identificazione ed. Espulsione), legislative
decree 23 May 2008, no. 92 and Art.14 law n.286/1998, are closed facilities where undocumented
migrants are hosted for between 180 days—18 months, pending their identification prior to their
forced transferal back to the country of origin.
23
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20 February 2016, Italy.
24
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20 February 2016, Italy.
158 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

with other services, such as psychological and legal support and language courses.
Considering the time taken for the completion of the C3 form,25 waiting for the final
decision of the Territorial Commission,26 plus the time for the appeal to the Court in
case of a negative response from the Commission, the asylum claim can take up to
3 years.
The massive migration flows arriving into Italy after the Arab Spring, under the
Dublin Regulation III (N. 604/2013), which obliges the migrant to present the
asylum claim in the first European member state of entrance, has blocked the Italian
asylum system with thousands of asylum claims (Campomori 2016). The emergent
characteristic of the migration flows required an immediate response from the Italian
reception apparatus. Therefore, the Prefecture published a number of ordinances,
Legislative Decrees, and orders to fund reception centres for the migrants (Marchetti
2016). This has allowed the possibility for people who were mainly entrepreneurs in
the tourism industry, who had access to big buildings, like hotels, to be therefore put
in the position of managing the reception centres without the necessary experience,
training, and capabilities. Consequently, a prompt response to the phenomenon has
brought about a business-oriented system, mainly based on the quantity, in this case
the number of migrants, rather than the quality of the services (Marchetti 2016).
Despite the emergence of the CAS in the first phase of the migration crisis, these
centres were only mentioned in Law 142/2015. The first assistance centres were
designed for asylum seekers to stay for a period of 3 months. However, the asylum
seekers started to overstay in the temporary centres due to a delay in the response
from the Territorial Commissions. The lack of regulation and monitoring by the
Prefecture led to many managers not granting the migrants the necessary services
(Cittadinanza attiva et al. 2016). The vulnerability of the migrants was also enhanced
due to the lack of practitioners’ preparation for working with specific cases (March-
etti 2016), especially human trafficking victims.
The described situation facilitated the exploitation of the women while in
the CAS, especially due to the grey areas within the roles of the traffickers and the
controllers. Furthermore, some CAS did not employ night staff, thus many of the
women would go to engage in outdoor prostitution. In some cases, girls, who had
just disembarked in Sicily, and were hosted in a centre, were engaged in outdoor
prostitution. The women declared that people inside the reception centre would mark
their presence during the night, while other people would give them a ride to the
place where they were being exploited.
Once, we had to take the victim away from the CAS, because the exploiter that brought her
to Italy was also in the same CAS.27

25
The template for the asylum claim.
26
Until 2018 the Territorial Commission was composed of: a member of the Prefecture, a member
of the State Police, a member of UNHCR and a member of the local institutions. Currently, the
Territorial Commission is composed by institutional representatives of the Ministry of Internal
Affairs.
27
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 159

In order to better identify victims of human trafficking, the IOM in Italy set two
main teams present at the disembarkation of the rescue boats. Their main goal is to
provide legal information to all the potential human trafficking victims, normally
based on nationality and gender, and so chiefly aimed at Nigerian women. At the
disembarkation, the IOM team is able to identify the traffickers’ collaborators and try
to separate them from the victims, using a health check as an excuse. The team also
separates the potential victims from the trafficker’s collaborator by allocating them
in different regions,28 where usually the potential victims are directed to special
centres (IOM 2015). After the disembarkation, the IOM teams throughout Sicily and
Apulia visit the different reception centres, in order to identify potential human
trafficking victims. The procedure is based on an interview with the potential victim,
in order to identify ‘pattern indicators’ of human trafficking, such as anger, anxiety,
low self-esteem, depression, and mistrust (IOM 2017).
The Territorial Commissions of Bari, Foggia, Lecce, Catania, Palermo, Syracuse,
Trapani, Caltanissetta, and Agrigento,29 in the case of the identification of potential
human trafficking indicators, contact the IOM team who proceed with special
interviews with the potential human trafficking victim. In these cases, the potential
victim is usually accompanied by a protection programme and is able to choose the
protection path, in this case based on international or humanitarian protection or
Art.18 permit (IOM 2015).
The visit to several reception centres permits the IOM team to have a safe and
quiet interview with the asylum seekers, normally paying particular attention to
Nigerian women. Therefore, during the interview, and in order to provide a safe
environment for the victim, the only people allowed are the interviewer, the cultural
mediator, a legal counsellor and in case of a minor, the guardian. The identification
interviews of the asylum seekers have led to an increase in the identification of the
victims before and during their exploitation. According to the IOM report (2015), in
2014 the international organisation was able to identify around 2024 victims in
Sicily and 754 victims in Apulia.30 However, the identification of human trafficking
victims among asylum seekers is still a difficult task, due to the factors of shame,
fear, trauma, subjection or proximity to the traffickers, threats, and lack of effective
information on the procedures (Baldoni et al. 2014).
Despite the large number of potential human trafficking victims identified by the
IOM, the Ministry of the Interior only issued 494 Art.18 permits before August
2016, from which only 139 permits were granted to Nigerian women, out of a total of
9477 Nigerian women that arrived before August 2016 (GRETA 2016a). The lack of
protection paths under Art.18 demonstrates the challenge of adapting to the new

28
When migrants disembark there are several coaches that take the asylum seekers to different
regions in the Italian territory.
29
The number of victims reported by the mentioned Territorial Commissions to the IOM before
October 2015 was 73 (IOM 2015).
30
These numbers are from April 2014 to October 2015.
160 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

trends and the profile of the victims. In fact, the new trends have presented three
main obstacles on the implementation of Art.18.
Migrants arriving in Italy have presented indicators of being potential human
trafficking victims, yet, despite the clear intention of the purpose, many of these
victims have not yet been exploited. In fact, according to Europol (2018), some
Nigerian victims were approached by traffickers while in Italy, who initially posed as
friends and offered their support, while orchestrating their exploitation.
The Italian legal framework on human trafficking considers that the element of
exploitation should occur within the Italian territory, yet many of the victims
presented signs and declared having been previously exploited while in Libya.
From this situation, the difficulty in carrying out a deep investigation of the cases
has also emerged, especially since many victims were very confused and not aware
of their traffickers’ identities.
The last difficulty in accessing a protection path under Art.18 is to prove ‘a
situation of danger in the destination territory’. In fact, since many victims were not
yet in contact with the traffickers, they were not able to prove their situation of
danger, especially since they had not yet refused to be exploited while in Italy. On
the other hand, some victims were able to prove the risk of returning to Nigeria. In
fact, it is based on motives of insecurity in the origin country that the Territorial
Commissions started to grant the international protection to potential human traf-
ficking victims.31
In some Court rulings, Nigeria is considered to be a country in which citizens are
in a position of danger, at risk of inhumane and degrading treatment. Furthermore,
Nigerian women can also be considered a particularly vulnerable group to human
trafficking, as was exposed in the judgement 10,012,810 of the French National
Court for Asylum Rights (La court nationale du droit d’asile).32 The judge declared
that the victim would be exposed to several typologies of risks if she returned to
Nigeria, presenting the following reasons: (1) the juju ritual in front of the Temple of
Ayelala, where a priest will require the victim to pay the total debt owed to the
exploiter; (2) the danger of the victim’s family; (3) the human trafficking victims
coming back from Europe usually being marginalised from society, mainly
recognised as impure and an emarginated group with diseases due to their ‘immoral
behaviour’ in Europe; and (4) the lack of proper protection and the implementation
of effective penal prosecutions due to the high level of corruption in the country. By
considering all of these features, combined within the situation of the Nigerian
human trafficking victims that are deported to the origin country, the National
French Court on the Right of Asylum declared Nigerian women from Benin City
as a vulnerable group.
Although the UNHCR Guidelines (2006) recognise the overlap between human
trafficking and smuggling of migrants, only a reduced number of human trafficking
victims in Italy have been granted international and humanitarian protection on these

31
Please see the Judgment 3236/2015, Trial court of Trieste.
32
Audience, 3 March 2015, Lecture on the 24 March 2015.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 161

grounds. Furthermore, the UNHCR Guidelines are based mainly on the fear of
persecution in the origin country, such as ‘serious human rights violations, including
a threat to life or freedom, as well as other kinds of serious harm or intolerable
predicament, as assessed in the light of the opinions, feelings and psychological
make-up of the asylum applicant’.33 Human trafficking victims can benefit from
international protection based on the motive of race or nationality, since ‘in the
absence of armed conflict, members of one racial group may still be particularly
targeted for trafficking for varied ends, if the State is unable or unwilling to protect
members of that group’.34 The same applies for a particular social group. For
example, ‘women are an example of a social subset of individuals who are defined
by innate and immutable characteristics and are frequently treated differently to men.
As such, they may constitute a particular social group’.35
The UNHCR Guidelines describe that, in spite of the fact that not all human
trafficking victims come under the definition of refugee, as observed on the judicial
statement mentioned earlier ‘the Office has a responsibility to ensure that individuals
who have been trafficked and who fear being subjected to persecution upon return to
their country of origin, or individuals who fear being trafficked, whose claim to
international protection falls within the refugee definition contained in the 1951
Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, are
recognised as refugees and afforded the corresponding international protection’.36
Besides the violence suffered in the origin country, migrants suffered high levels
of violence along the migration path, especially while in Libya (IOM 2017).
Consequently, the extreme violence suffered caused a situation due to the fact that
migrants could fit into all the different categories, asylum seekers, human trafficking
victims, and victims of torture, at the same time. However, despite the presence of
mass gender violence in the migration process, there is no attention given to women
crossing the border and the abuse they suffer in the process, especially in cases of
illegal passage (Pickering 2010). Instead, the asylum narrative tends to be based on
the origin country, often ignoring the shared experiences by the numerous migrant
categories in the transit countries (Serughetti 2018).
The UNHCR Guidelines, in harmony with Art.14 of the Protocol of Palermo as
well as with Art.10 of the 24/2014 Legislative Decree, recognise the need to provide
the victim with the necessary protection and assistance. In fact, the article details the
coordination between institutions working in the asylum system and organisations
working on Art.18.
Whoever has a status, humanitarian or subsidiary protection, the project is always the same
as Art.18 and the protection paths are always personalised. Because, if they don’t have a
migration project, they will do it here [in the protection path].37

33
Paragraph 14, Page 6, UNHCR Guidelines (2006).
34
Paragraph 34, Page 12, UNHCR Guidelines (2006).
35
Paragraph 38, Page 14, UNHCR Guidelines (2006).
36
Paragraph 5, Page 3, UNHCR Guidelines (2006).
37
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
162 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

However, despite the evolution regarding the overlap between human trafficking
victims and asylum seekers or international and humanitarian protection holders,
some Territorial Commissions still interrupt the asylum claim, when verifying the
indicators of human trafficking, in order to proceed with the permit under Art.18. In
this case, despite the fact that the victim still has access to the full protection under
Art.18, the international and humanitarian protection present an added advantage,
because the aid can last from 2 years to 5 years, while Art.18 protection is only for
1 year. On the other hand, it has been noted that some human trafficking victims who
were granted protection by the Territorial Commission did not have access to the
protection path detailed by Art.18, which includes: accommodation, access to legal
and psychological support, and a traineeship. Therefore, even though the women
were recognised as human trafficking victims within the asylum system, they did not
undertake a protection path, often remaining in the same reception centres and being
exploited.
In December 2016, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, along with the UNHCR
(2006), provided the Territorial Commissions with a guideline manual, aiming to
improve the identification of human trafficking victims during the asylum claim.
However, the main problem that emerged was not to do with the identification of
human trafficking victims, but the possibility of providing them with an adequate
protection path. Despite the fact that the manual also provides the Territorial
Commissions with specific guidelines on the procedure, the National Plan had a
heterogeneous application on a national level.
The increase of human trafficking victims in need of a protection path has
challenged the anti-trafficking protection system provided by Art.18, which
predicted a maximum of 3000 victims. Therefore, the provision of a protection
path for human trafficking victims who were asylum seekers or international and
humanitarian protection holders complemented the protection system by enhancing
the number of protection paths, through the funding from the asylum system. For
instance, an association funded by Art.18 stated that they received protection
requests daily. In fact, the National Plan, which was finally published on the
26 February 2016, granted a fund of 15 million euros to the protection of human
trafficking victims. However, due to the increase of human trafficking victims, the
funding has proven to be insufficient.38
The guidelines preview the integration of the asylum seekers under Art.18. Yet,
as previously mentioned, the majority of the identified victims did not fit the profile
of victim detailed by Art.18. This is because they had either not been previously
exploited, not yet been exploited on Italian territory, or they were not in a situation of
danger in the destination country. Art.17 of the Legislative Decree 142/2015, in
force on October 2015, permitted the protection path to human trafficking victims
who were within the asylum system. However, this situation caused parallel circum-
stances, since the protection path detailed by the anti-trafficking system depended on
Art.18, while the international protection provided under Art.17 of the Legislative

38
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 163

Decree 142/2015 is completely separated from the granted protection. Consequently,

the international and humanitarian protection do not oblige the victim to undertake
the full protection programme, since both are totally independent.
As previously mentioned in this chapter, the protection of Art.18 was only
granted in the case that the victim fulfilled the requisite, cutting the ties with the
exploiter, which was often understood with the obligation of the victim to stop
engaging in the sex market. On the other hand, international and humanitarian
protection do not require the victim to stop the relationship with the trafficker.
Thus, even though the victims have access to a legal administrative status, they
can still be in an exploitative situation. This paradox shows the discrepancy between
the ‘polo of rights’ and the ‘polo of tutorship’. Despite the initial challenge of the
overlap between the two systems, the anti-trafficking organisations are currently
more aware and more prepared regarding this situation.
According to a member of the anti-trafficking network,39 some Territorial Com-
missions require the victims to demonstrate their willingness to exit their exploitative
situation.
This is because, only now they [Territorial Commissions] are learning what human traffick-
ing is, since they are composed by members of Police, Prefecture, local entities and
UNHCR. This is all new to them, so they use the same indicators that we had twenty
years ago, when Art.18 started. Like: did she know or did she not know [she was coming for
prostitution]? Did she want it [to be engaged in prostitution]? Therefore, it is like the debate
was still there, so you understand that, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is still there [on the
debate prostitution/human trafficking].40

As a result of this interview, it came to the surface that people who work in the
field still confuse human trafficking for sexual exploitation purposes with prostitu-
tion, identifying prostitution as an exploitative activity per se. In fact, this perception
is still attached to the application of Art.18, which is considered to be a prize for the
exiting of sexual exploitation. The interesting fact is that the organisations focused
on the protection of victims of trafficking by Art.18 lack a uniform approach. In fact,
the call for proposals of Art.18 does not mean that the victim must exit the sex
market, the only reference in this case regards the separation of the victim and the
trafficker.
Despite the fact that some women want to engage in the protection path, they also
want to continue to pay the traffickers, since they are often afraid of reprisals,
especially toward their families in the origin country and the repercussions of threats
and voodoo. Furthermore, some victims also intend to continue being involved in the
sex market, even if they have finished paying their traffickers, as they still need to
send money to their families back in Nigeria. Another common situation is that some
women start Art.18 path, but with time, and due to the long duration of the path, they
quit. According to Caneppele and Mancuso (2013), the statistics report 26.1% of the
victims become integrated, but 9.6% of the people enrolled abandon the programme.

39
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
40
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
164 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

In these cases, sometimes, due to the lack of information about the legal pro-
cedures, the women try to return to the protection path that they have started, but
they are not always accepted. However, even if the woman is not accepted by one
anti-trafficking organisation, sometimes the woman is transferred to another anti-
trafficking organisation in the Italian territory. During my interviews, a referent for
an anti-trafficking project explained that:
We take the woman again, but we try to find another location with another anti-trafficking
network, because this is educational for her, so she can understand that the path will be done
with another structure that is not ours. Therefore, we do it like that, as much from us to the
other organizations, as from the other organizations to us. In fact, we have also taken care of
women that have started with other anti-trafficking organisations and interrupted the path,
and then they finished with us.41

Besides the acceptance of the organisation, the integration in the protection path
also needs to be accepted by the Questore, in order to restart the programme and
have access to Art.18 permit. Some judicial statements have had a positive result
regarding the granting of an Art.18 permit to victims who have interrupted their path,
especially since the Court has decided not to literally interpret clause 4 of Art.18 of
the Legislative Decree 286/98.42 Furthermore, different municipalities and organi-
sations can have different backgrounds and approaches regarding the sex market,
even within the same Art.18 project. In this case, some organisations tolerate or
accept the engagement of the woman who undertook the protection path of Art.18
while in the sex market, once they have broken the relationship with their exploiter,
while other organisations do not accept the engagement of the women in the sex
market.43
The engagement in the sex market is a controversial issue for many organisations
that host human trafficking victims. Therefore, while drafting the call for Art.18,
some organisations proposed the requisite to forbid the women to engage in the sex
market while they undertook the protection path. However, it was considered
invalid, given that prostitution is not considered a crime in Italy. This situation has
caused an internal debate, in which the Prefecture affirms that the woman does not
need an added income since she receives money from the government. As reception
centres for asylum seekers do not allow the women to go out at night, as an
alternative the women started to engage in indoor prostitution during the day.44
As previously mentioned, the CAS detailed in the Art.17 of the Legislative
Decree 142/2015 for vulnerable categories, including potential human trafficking
victims, gives an immediate response to the potential human trafficking victims who
are also asylum seekers. In the case that the issue of sex work is not an obstacle to the

41
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
42
Court of Abruzzo judgement 24 of 12 January 2012; Court of Veneto judgement 1150 of 13/12/
2006 TAR Friuli Venezia Giulia judgement 338 of 19 June 2004; Court of Emilia Romagna
judgement 4155 of 9 December 2004.
43
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
44
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2016, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 165

protection path as an asylum seeker, the reception centres can expect that the woman
might return to sex work and that this does not cause the interruption and abandon-
ment of the protection path, unless the woman abandons the facilities. Therefore, in
accordance to Art.23 of the Legislative Decree 142/2015, asylum seekers who
abandon the reception centre have their access to accommodation suspended. On
the other hand, reception centres for human trafficking victims often offer the
opportunity to continue the protection path, even when the girl leaves the reception
centre.
We had a case of a girl that was pregnant and the street unit took her to have an abortion. This
was a way to take her into protection in B. and thus we were wondering if it was better to take
her to an anti-trafficking structure or if she could go to a reception centre for asylum seekers.
She declared that she wanted to continue her protection path, thus she was able to enter a
CAS. Of course, in these CAS, the managers can decide that the engagement in prostitution
is forbidden and the girl has to go to another CAS. Furthermore, the CAS can demonstrate
that the asylum seeker has access to an income through prostitution, thus they can expel the
person or stop the person receiving pocket money. In fact, the pocket money is given through
material things and not money. When the woman brings material things that were not given
by the CAS, is when the practitioners understand that she has access to money from other
sources.45

Although some reception centres allow women to undertake a protection path

under Art.17 of the Legislative Decree 142/2015, it is not publicly admitted, since
their protection should be applied based on ‘regretting being engaged in the sex
market’. In fact, many Art.18 projects are well aware about the change that Art.18
protection has undergone during the last years. Furthermore, despite the fact that it is
not declared publicly, it is well known that, since 2007 when Romania and Bulgaria
entered the European Union,46 Art.18 permit was separated from the protection path
of the victims. As a matter of fact, at the time of the law, the majority of the identified
victims of human trafficking had Romanian origin (Barberi 2007), thus they did not
need access to a residence permit but only the protection measures. Therefore, since
the implementation of Art.6, clause 4 of the Legislative Decree 300/2006, the
granting of Art.18 is no longer connected with the protection measures provided
by the full package of Art.18.

6.3.1 Difficulties and Best Practices on the Asylum-Seeking

System for Human Trafficking Victims

As previously mentioned, since 2013 the Territorial Commissions have identified an

overlap between the category of asylum seeker and human trafficking victim in
Nigerian women. In fact, of the 11,009 Nigerian women who arrived in Italy, the
IOM declared that 8000 were potential victims of sexual exploitation (Ziniti 2017).

45
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
46
Art.6, clause 4, of Decree 300/2006.
166 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

Due to a large number of requests, the Territorial Commissions extended the wait
time for the decision. In fact, the response time from the Territorial Commission,
including the wait to complete Modulo C3, can last a year, and the asylum procedure
can go up to 2–3 years in the case of appeal to the Court. This long wait for the
international or humanitarian protection normally leads the migrants to search for
underpaid jobs, despite being able to work legally after 2 months in the Italian
territory.47
While male migrants are usually exploited in activities such as agriculture,
construction, or selling on the markets, Nigerian women normally get into prostitu-
tion while they live in the reception centre.
We believe that the people that recruited the girls were within the centre, since there are
3,700 migrants, there is no control, thus you can also find there the exploiter. Often the
women go to C., and they go out wearing a certain type of clothes.48

Micro-criminal activities, such as sexual exploitation and drug trafficking, have

emerged in large centres, such as CARA, where the number of placed migrants
exceeds the capacity of the centre, resulting in a discrepancy between the number of
migrants and the number of practitioners. For instance, near to Rome, some migrants
and social workers have declared that the CARA, managed by the association Arci,
has been a place of sexual exploitation as well as drug trafficking (Baldoni et al.
2014). Another well-known CARA for the overflow of hosted migrants in Italy is the
CARA of Mineo, which is also known for a huge number of Nigerian girls who are
sexually exploited during their stay in the centre (Condorelli 2016). Furthermore, the
CARA of Mineo is also known for a long legal trial of Mafia-Capitale,49 in which the
managers are accused of corruption.
With the opportunity of a residence permit for 6 months granted to the asylum
seekers that attend the decision of the Territorial Commission,50 the Nigerian
criminal networks started to profit from this sponsorship of the Italian government
in order to recruit Nigerian women into prostitution while inside the reception centre.
According to the declarations of a practitioner working in a reception centre, some
cases of potential human trafficking victims for sexual exploitation concerning
Nigerian women have been identified within the reception centre. However, the
women tend not to report the situation, as it is also very difficult to find a good
solution for the situation, especially in the first period of exploitation.

47
Decree, 18 August 2015, n. 142, Art.22, comma 1.
48
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20 February 2016, Italy.
49
Name given to the process with official and political corruption on providing bids to certain
organisations.
50
Decree, 18 August 2015, n.142, implementation of the Directive 2013/33/UE, laying down
standards for the reception of applicants for international protection and implementation of the
Directive 2013/32/UE, on common procedures for granting and withdrawing international protec-
tion (OJ n.214, 15 September 2015). The Decree previews the granting of a permit for 6 months,
renewable until the final judicial result. During the stay in the national territory, the asylum seeker
has the access to sanitary assistance through Art.21.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 167

We are trying to have a direct relationship with the Territorial Commission, since there are
women within the SPRAR that, after a year of the path, have never told their true story.51

The exploitative situation of the victims usually emerges once the women
understand the difficulty in paying the debt or receive a negative response from
the Territorial Commission or the Court. In this case, the lack of alternative for a
legal status can oblige the women to take the protection path. According to the report
Vittime di tratta/richiedenti/titolari protezione umanitaria (Baldoni et al. 2014), all
the girls are instructed to present the asylum claim; in the case that a situation of
trafficking is not identified, the international or humanitarian protection is normally
denied. The second phase normally includes an appeal to the Court, which can take
as long as 2 years. The duration of the entire process of the asylum claim, which can
last up to 3 years, was seen by the traffickers as an opportunity to sexually exploit the
victims, and avoid their deportation.
The gain of the Nigerian exploiters, while the women are in the reception centre,
is not only based on avoiding deportation but also on the provision of accommoda-
tion and other basic services to the victims, while they are being exploited. In fact, it
is also due to this ‘sponsorship’ from the Italian government that the traffickers have
started to decrease the amount of the debt, from 40,000–60,000 euros to an amount
between 15,000–30,000 euros. Furthermore, the current price of the debt, and the
average time taken to repay it, fits perfectly into the two or 3 years of the asylum
procedures,52 contrary to in the past, where it could take up to 6 years.
It is also important to reflect on the profile of the traffickers, especially with such
an augmentation of victims in recent years. In fact, the increase in victims could have
led to an increase in exploiters, especially due to the grey zones between victim and
trafficker, verified in the Nigerian exploitative system (Lo Iacono 2014), considering
that victims have also started to recruit other women to help pay their debt
(Fernandez et al. 2017). Therefore, the provisional emergence of ‘new traffickers’
without the support of a transnational criminal network has led to less pressure on the
victims to pay the debt.
The reduction of the debt also reflects the efficiency of the criminal networks in
having a large quantity of exploited girls who pay less money, rather than a smaller
quantity of girls who have to pay more money. Furthermore, the causes of the large
‘importation’ of girls coming from Nigeria have also influenced the exploiters, in
that they are not so strict with the girls and it is less likely that the family of the victim
in the origin country receives threats. During one of my interviews, a practitioner
declared:
It impresses me the ease in which the girls are able nowadays to run away. Before, there were
more threats to the family in the origin country and more pressure to pay the debt. I think the
exploiters are getting softer, but maybe it is also due to the quantity of the girls that they are
sending from Nigeria. Some of them have paid 300 euros in three months, others 1,500

51
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
52
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
168 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

euros. In the beginning I didn’t think that they were telling the truth, but now I can see that
there is a tendency.53

Given the large number of requests for the protection path and the lack of funding
available under Art.18, the Italian government and the anti-trafficking agency found
a solution in classifying the human trafficking victims as asylum seekers and
granting them international and humanitarian protection. In fact, despite the lack
of accurate data on the granting of international and humanitarian protection based
on human trafficking, in practice, Italy has experienced an increase in the provision
of international and humanitarian protection based on these grounds (Baldoni et al.
2014).
The Legislative Decree 142/2015 for asylum seekers and human trafficking victims has
influenced in the emergence of this category of hybrid CAS, where you make the first
reception centres for migrants that are not CAS nor anti-trafficking services, but that could
serve the women that haven’t yet been exploited, but have already suffered violence in
Libya, so they could not even have access to an Art.18, since there was no exploitation in
Italy.54

However, the granting of international and humanitarian protection permits,

despite guaranteeing more legal rights to the asylum seekers, does not necessarily
mean full protection for the victim.
The girls that have a permit Art.18 have access to the permit only after achieving all the goals
of the protection path. But now, things have been inverted, now you have a permit and then
you do the protection path, while before it was the contrary. The situation of the CAS or of
the SPRAR is that the woman waits a year and a half, without an integration plan on CAS,
only in the SPRAR. The problem is that for those that are in the SPRAR, it has to be the
person to make the request to have access to work integration and not the reception centre,
but of course the people within the SPRAR are often not informed about this possibility. In
fact, they don’t know what a SPRAR means and that they have the right to make a different
path.55

These hybrid CAS are also trying to adapt to confront the overlap between human
trafficking victims and asylum seekers, in order to avoid the old protection model
that has been applied since 1998. However, despite the attention given to vulnerable
categories, these CAS often do not give the women a daily routine.
I asked to two cooperatives to make a plan of how these women pass their days, since their
daily lives are terrible without any kind of stimulation.56

Due to the overlap between the two legal statuses, the organisations working in
the asylum system tend to consider the Nigerian women who have presented the
asylum claim as human trafficking victims, while the organisations that work with
human trafficking victims tend to recognise them as asylum seekers (Baldoni et al.
2014). The confusion and lack of awareness on the overlap of both phenomena, as

53
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 March 2017, Italy.
54
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
55
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
56
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 169

well as the lack of accurate data on asylum seekers who are potential human
trafficking victims, have provided the anti-trafficking system with an unclear frame-
work on the phenomenon at a national level.
The study of NoTratta (Baldoni et al. 2014), on the overlap between human
trafficking victims and asylum seekers, demonstrated that many women have entered
the Art.18 programme following a negative result from the Territorial Commission.
Therefore, the women turn to the protection path of Art.18, if they do not gain access
to legal status through the Territorial Commission. However, it is important to
highlight that the report NoTratta was published in 2014, which was when we
started to see an increase in the arrival of Nigerian women in Italy through the
Mediterranean.
During this research,57 a different situation was found based on the interviews58
with lawyers and social workers employed on the protection of victims of trafficking.
The interviewees affirmed that the majority of the victims were granted with
international or humanitarian protection. This can also be a consequence of the
implementation of Art.17 of the Legislative Decree 142/2015 that foresees the
specific needs for hosting asylum seekers that are considered to be part of a
vulnerable category, such as human trafficking victims. Furthermore, Art.17 of the
Legislative Decree 142/15 also previews the access to an assistance program with the
inclusion of a social integration path, as foreseen by Art.18, Legislative Decree
286/98, as previously described.
In this case, in the last years, some anti-trafficking regional networks have formed
multidisciplinary groups, including the Territorial Commission and law enforce-
ment. For instance, in 2014, the Territorial Commission of Torino along with the
Anti-trafficking Office signed a collaboration Protocol (Ministry of Internal Affairs
2014),59 in which, in case of identification of a potential human trafficking victim
during the asylum claim, the Territorial Commission calls the anti-trafficking net-
work directly, in order to proceed with specific interviews and evaluate the asylum
seeker’s situation. The process includes a cultural mediator as well as two experts on
the subject (Baldoni et al. 2014).
This collaboration between the Territorial Commission and the anti-trafficking
network inserts the victim in a protection path according to Art.17 of the Legislative
Decree 142/2015, even if the identified victim is in the process of filing an asylum
claim. The Prefecture of Milan also signed a Protocol on 30 September 2014, with
the aim to exchange data and information among different stakeholders, as well as
identify potential human trafficking victims, mainly for labour exploitation. While,
in Emilia Romagna, in the project ‘Oltre la Strada’, the two Territorial Commissions
in the territory are also in contact with the regional anti-trafficking network that

57
Regarding the year 2017.
58
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 April 2017, Italy, 25 (third sector), 05 April 2017, Italy,
14 (Law enforcement), 12 April 2017, Italy.
59
For more information, visit the website http://www.prefettura.it/FILES/docs/1233/Protocollo%
20%20Antitratta.pdf
170 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

operates at a regional level, in order to identify potential human trafficking victims

through the asylum-seeking procedures. Furthermore, due to having more experi-
ence in the field, the Territorial Commissions are able to identify fake narratives,
usually provided to the asylum seekers by the traffickers. The narratives are normally
connected to terrorist attacks from Boko Haram in Christian Churches in the North
of Nigeria. However, despite the indicators of a trafficking situation, when asked by
the Territorial Commission, the victims often deny their exploitative situation
(Baldoni et al. 2014).
The emergence of the hybrid CAS has granted human trafficking victims who are
asylum seekers the opportunity to undertake a protection path within the asylum
system, as this is considered best practice. One of the most successful examples of a
hybrid CAS is the Parma model, whose stakeholders are the Prefecture of Parma, the
Questore of Parma and the Municipality of Parma (2016). In this model, the
municipality understands the importance of using a preventative approach, by
identifying potential victims using professional practitioners in human trafficking.
Therefore, the first interview with the asylum seeker is carried out by an anti-
trafficking specialist, who identifies the Nigerian women with trafficking indicators.
The women are directly taken to the reception centre for vulnerable people with
particular attention to human trafficking victims. The structure establishes the rules
as implemented in the protection path of Art.18, such as: not being able to leave the
reception centre without the company of the staff and not being able to have access
to a mobile phone. While in the protection path of Art.18, the victims cannot use a
mobile phone for 3 months, in the case of the hybrid CAS, it is only in the first
month, and so once this period is up, it provides the woman a feeling of freedom.
During the first month, the staff have the opportunity to speak with the potential
victim, immediately mention the issue of human trafficking and once confidence is
established, inform the victim about the international and humanitarian protection
and collect the victim’s narrative.
Once the situation of trafficking is identified, the women are assigned to an anti-
trafficking structure. Therefore, on the contrary of what normally occurs in this
process, the Parma model can often identify the victim even before the potential
exploitation, and then the victim is inserted into a protection path. This procedure
means that the woman can go to the Territorial Commission with a report from the
anti-trafficking network that declares that she is already undertaking a
protection path.
This system has not only been a success in applying preventive measures, mainly
engaging women that have been exploited in Libya and avoiding their exploitation in
Italy, but also in the matter of financial resources, since their protection path is used
under the funding for asylum seekers and not under the financing of Art.18.
However, once they receive a positive result from the Territorial Commission, the
women are obliged to leave the reception centre.60

60
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 171

6.3.2 The Outcasts

Despite the increased number of women who have presented an asylum claim in the
Italian territory and who are hosted at the reception centre, it is not always easy to
identify human trafficking victims during this period. As previously mentioned, this
difficulty was enhanced by the lack of training for staff at the reception centre
regarding the phenomenon of human trafficking. Furthermore, the woman is not
often aware of her own victimisation and, due to her trust in the trafficker, the victim
tends to present the false narrative given by the traffickers. Furthermore, the victims
who have a scarce sense of autonomy and self-esteem tend to isolate themselves and
show mistrust toward the staff of the reception centre, usually by refusing activities
and medical check-ups (Baldoni et al. 2014).
The asylum claims of the Nigerian women engaged in sexual exploitation are
usually managed by the criminal network, sometimes even with the involvement of
lawyers who have been assigned by the traffickers, in order to avoid deportation. In
this case, traffickers are not interested in whether the Territorial Commission grants
the protection to the victim, but that the girl is able to stay in the Italian territory for
2 or 3 years, because that is enough time to pay the debt.
Therefore, during this phase the women are probably not identified by
the reception centres, but by the street units, as they have a larger overview of the
situation. In fact, according to the study NoTratta (Baldoni et al. 2014), 30% of the
women engaged in the outdoor sex market were also identified as asylum seekers.
However, especially due to the misuse of the concept of human trafficking in cases
of prostitution, it is also important to understand whether the analysis was made with
human trafficking victims or sex workers, especially in the absence of indicators.
Although these women are asylum seekers, this does not mean that they are living in
a reception centre. In fact, many organisations that work on the protection of human
trafficking victims have received Nigerian women that have subsequently left the
reception centres, due to the pressure of the madam.61
There was this girl that we found in the CARA who was taken by a conational to Milan,
where she was obliged to be engaged in prostitution. After being mistreated by a client, her
trafficker came and hit the girl with a bottle. At this point, since the CARA was her only
point of reference, she decided to return to the CARA without having a permit to get into the
CARA.62

In fact, due to the high number of Nigerian women who leave the reception
centres, several organisations working against human trafficking63 presented a letter
highlighting the problematic situation (PIAM et al. 2017) to different Prefectures and

61
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 March 2017, Italy, interview number 14 (law enforcement),
12 May 2017 and interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
62
Interview number 24 (third sector), 20 February2016, Italy.
63
PIAM onlus—Asti; Tampep—Torino; Gruppo Abele—Torino; Liberazione e Speranza—
Novara; Comunità San Benedetto al Porto—Alessandria, Genova; CISSACA—Alessandria.
172 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

Territorial Commissions,64 on the 31 January 2017. The concern was raised during
interviews with social workers, that Nigerian women are often contacted by the
exploiters once they are within the reception centre and obliged to leave the centre
for the purpose of forced prostitution, normally before filling out the C3 form, which
makes them invisible and illegal in the territory.
Many women stated that they left the reception centres for migrants due to the fact that they
have been contacted inside the centre by someone from the criminal network, which is
usually a woman, but also sometimes a man. Therefore, the women are not directly contacted
by the exploiter, as in previous years, but by someone who is in contact with the trafficker. In
other cases, the women are contacted directly on the phone by someone who is in contact
with the madam or with some woman who also lives in the centre and leads the girl to the
madam outside of the centre.65

The major problem in this case is that when these women decide to leave their
exploiter and try to formally present their asylum claim to the immigration offices, it
can lead to an expulsion, based on the fact that they have left the reception centre
before completing the C3 form. Therefore, the associations ask the Questore to
facilitate the asylum claim, as it is legally required, or to identify them as potential
human trafficking victims and direct them to the anti-trafficking referent, where they
can proceed with a permit through Art.18. Once the women abandon their exploiters,
they try to reconstruct their legal path, also going to organisations outside of Art.18
system; these are usually religious organisations that offer a protection path.
Once they arrive, the victims undergo an initial interview in order to understand their general
situation, especially regarding their legal status, identify the main priorities and understand
the background of the victim. For instance, many women arrive with a temporary asylum
claim, that has already passed the deadline or that is near to the deadline. Other women also
arrive with a negative responsive from the Commission, in this case we continue with the
legal support, in order to proceed with an appeal. In cases that the permit is still valid, we
support the person and wait for the final response of the Territorial Commission. Among the
asylum seekers there is a high number of negative responses.66

As previously mentioned, the negative responses of the Territorial Commission

are often an outcome of the narratives given by the criminal networks. Therefore,
when the woman leaves the reception centre and arrives at the organisation asking
for support, the organisation has to check the real story with the victim, in order to
provide the victim with a supportive report.
The problem is this: when the woman arrives with a temporary permit and has already been
seen by the Territorial Commission, we are not aware of the story that she has told to the
Territorial Commission or if she has told them the same story that she is telling us. For
instance, there was a case in which the woman had brought the minutes of the Territorial

64
Sent to the Prefettura di Torino; Prefettura di Asti; Prefettura di Alessandria; Prefettura di Novara;
Commissione Territoriale per il riconoscimento della protezione internazionale di Torino;
Commissione Territoriale per il riconoscimento della protezione internazionale di Genova;
Commissione Territoriale per il riconoscimento della protezione internazionale di Novara.
65
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 March 2017, Italy.
66
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 March 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 173

Commission and we noticed that what was written on the minutes was incongruent with
what she had told us. Therefore, I deduce that the women usually do not tell the true story to
the Territorial Commission. However, in the phase of the asylum claim, we might have an
opportunity to make the victim tell the truth to the Territorial Commission. Otherwise, we
have to wait for the appeal.67

Normally when the women arrive in Italy, they present signs of confusion, not
only due to the travelling, in which maybe there is more awareness about the danger,
but also on the situation of exploitation in the destination country. Moreover, the
women suffering a situation of exploitation also tend to demonstrate psychological
problems such as anxiety, low self-esteem, or depression (IOM 2015), which can
influence their narrative, especially due to memory gaps. Besides the confusion of
the victim, consequent to the exploitation, some women also arrive unaware of their
legal status and the possibility of the asylum claim.
There are rare cases in which the woman comes without any kind of permit, since this
hosting system is working and thus, we are able to do the identification. Sometimes the
woman can come with an out of date permit, or she has presented the asylum claim, but it is
on standby and she has to take the documents to the Questor. We ask if they have a lawyer
and if they need a mediator to interact with the lawyer, in order to understand the situation.
One of the biggest problems is the person cannot prove that she is a resident in this city.
There is no point in accompanying the person to the Questor, if the problem, for instance,
concerns the housing contract or the passport and the person is not able to go to Rome, in this
situation we begin the process of extraordinary assistance.68

One continuous problem experienced by the anti-trafficking associations is the

Nigerian Embassy’s reluctance to issue passports. This is particularly concerning
because the passport is required to proceed with Art.18 permit. For instance, when
the women ask for a passport, which normally happens once they undertake the
protection path, the Office of the embassy finds several obstacles regarding the
passport, normally connected to the exploitative situation of the victim (Nicodemi
2016).

6.3.3 The Full Protection Package Under Art.18

The funding for Art.18 of the Legislative Decree 286/1998 is granted through a call
for proposals that is renewed annually, by the Ministry of Equal Opportunities.
The coordination of the projects is centralised by the municipality of Venice, through
the anti-trafficking hotline that works 7 days a week and 24 hours a day and puts the
local anti-trafficking association in contact with the identified potential victim. The
majority of the calls to the hotline, around 60%, are from Nigerian women involved
in sexual exploitation, mainly between 18–24 years old.69

67
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 March 2017, Italy.
68
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 March 2017, Italy.
69
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 March 2017, Italy.
174 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

As previously discussed, the application of Art.18 has changed and no longer

requires full consciousness of the victim, willing to exit from her exploitative
situation. The protection paths are directed to a high number of potential human
trafficking victims before and during the exploitation. Therefore, anti-trafficking
organisations started to work with the reception centres in order to identify potential
human trafficking cases. If the situation of trafficking is confirmed, the organisation
tries to provide the best solution for the victim, especially according to her legal
situation, which usually implies the application of the full package of Art.18. Since
2006, (Avviso 8) in order to collect data on the victims, the Department of Equal
Opportunities started asking associations to complete ‘entrance forms’ and ‘exit
forms’. The information on the form concerns the past experiences of the victims,
during and before the exploitation (Caneppele and Mancuso 2013).
The victim is accompanied by the social worker and the mediator to evaluate her
personal situation, which is based on their personal characteristics, such as age,
gender identity, or expression, ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, health,
disability, residence status, communication difficulties, relationship with or depen-
dence on the offender, and previous experience of crime.70 It is important during this
phase to avoid the exposure of the victim to secondary victimisation, according to
Art.55 and Art.57 of the Directive 2012/29 EU.71 Furthermore, at the beginning of
the project, the anti-trafficking organisations also proceed with a psychosocial
evaluation of the victim, in order to understand the specific needs of the victim
and how to supply these needs, which continues until the end of the project.72
All entities within the national network complete an evaluation of the request of the victim
who presents human trafficking indicators and has other types of permit [international and
humanitarian protection], also because the call for proposals [of Art.18] required specifically
to study the grey zones between human trafficking and asylum seekers. Then, every
association made their own proposals. For instance, we are doing training with the CAS
and the reception centres for non-accompanied minors, and it is highly attended. We have
become a reference for human trafficking cases that they find within their own structures.
Therefore, we try to do a mediation and give advice and it has been a very positive
experience. Then, there are the CAS that are not adequate for human trafficking victims
and we understand that there is no will, so we don’t even have a relationship with them. On
the other side, others call us and attend and this is one of the goals that we have achieved.73

70
Art.56 of the Directive 2012/29/EU.
71
Directive 2012/29/EU of the European Parliament and of the council of 25 October 2012,
establishing minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime, and
replacing the Council Framework Decision 2001/220/JHA: (Art.57) ‘Victims of human trafficking,
terrorism, organised crime, violence in close relationships, sexual violence or exploitation, gender-
based violence, hate crime, and victims with disabilities and child victims tend to experience a high
rate of secondary and repeat victimisation, of intimidation and of retaliation. Particular care should
be taken when assessing whether such victims are at risk of such victimisation, intimidation and of
retaliation and there should be a strong presumption that those victims will benefit from special
protection measures’.
72
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
73
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 175

While Art.18 can offer a better protection path to the victim, it can spark
prejudices, since the employers associate this residence permit with ex-victims of
sexual exploitation. On the other hand, the international or humanitarian protection
can be attributed in several cases, thus it is not often associated with sexual
exploitation. Furthermore, many victims start Art.18 with a social path, but usually
only Romanian citizens can proceed with it, since the Questor does not always
guarantee the grant of the residence permit without the collaboration of the victim.
The social path is usually granted to Nigerian women when the anti-trafficking
associations establish a relationship of trust with the Questor. As previously men-
tioned, Art.18 grants the victim a residence permit of 6 months, which is then
renewable for another 6 months, while international protection grants 5 years, and
humanitarian protection a total of 2 years. However, despite the longer duration of
legal status, victims can have quicker access to the Art.18 residence permit, than the
final response of the asylum claim.
It is true that the international protection provides more rights to the woman in terms of more
time in Italy, but it is also true that more time is needed to grant the victim international
protection, while Art.18 can be issued in two months.74

Currently, with the high number of potential victims within the reception centres,
especially regarding the number of Nigerian women,75 the organisations are obliged
to give priority to the victims that are more at risk, or the ones in the situation before
exploitation, especially when the victim arrives with a phone number, ready to
contact her exploiter.
Therefore, if within a structure of a SPRAR the situation is less dangerous, maybe the
protection path is done first within the SPRAR structure and then in a structure for Art.18.
These situations [women who do their protection path within the reception structure, but
receiving support from the anti-trafficking organisation] are statistically recorded, so we are
responsible for a certain area and we try to identify potential human trafficking victims
within the reception centres.76

Despite the efforts of anti-trafficking organisations, victims tend to demonstrate

resistance to undergo the protection path, especially in a first phase. In fact, as
previously mentioned, the element of trust plays a key role in engaging the victim.
The trust is not only based on the intimacy shared between the victim and the
practitioners, but also on the expectation of the victim regarding the safety provided
by the anti-trafficking services.
The victim needs to feel safe, in order to start her path with serenity. We start by supplying
the primary needs like health services, even if it is not easy to make them realise that this is a
primary need. Normally, sexual exploitation produces more difficulties than labour exploi-
tation, therefore the psychological support for victims who were sexually exploited tends to
take longer. However, also when there was isolation during the labour exploitation also the

74
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
75
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
76
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
176 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

psychological support is longer. In these cases, normally there is a dependency on the

exploiter, a deception, and there is the need to rebuild an identity.77

In the protection path, a certain number of rules and limitations of mobility,

schedule, and social contact are imposed on the women. In fact, there is limited
access to telephone calls, initially, which is one of the principal motives of resis-
tance, especially for the Nigerian victims. However, the regulations can be facilitated
according to the evaluation of the vulnerability risk of the victim, initially completed
at the beginning of the protection path, despite the fact that most of the measures
within the structure are applied to all the victims that are on a protection path.78
Victims often demonstrate some renitence in accepting these rules, which can lead to
a feeling of frustration and consequently to the abandoning of the protection path. In
this case, the cultural mediator plays a fundamental role in explaining the purpose of
the established measures. In a second phase, the cultural mediator progressively
facilitates the comprehension of cultural behaviours, as much from the victim as
from the anti-trafficking practitioners.
In a third phase of the project, the woman starts an Italian course or an
alphabetisation course that allows her to slowly be integrated into the cultural and
social context of the destination country. The last phase regards work integration,
prepared by a specialised group of people who identifies the capabilities of the victim
and cross-checks it with the market demand. Finally, a range of possible internships
is offered to the individual.
The schedule, the dress code, how to be at work, these are the things that are learned during
the internship, first an observation internship and then a practical internship, and in Veneto
we take advantage of the tourism sector. We have protocols with services agencies that ask
for cleaners, people for the restaurants or, in case the person has knowledge of more
languages, even for receptionists.79

As well as the lack of preparation many women have regarding the job market in
the Western context, due to a cultural discrepancy, once they start to work, the
women are often confronted with prejudice and xenophobic attitudes from some of
the potential employers. However, Romanian women usually benefit from the ‘white
Christian hard working woman’s’ stereotype that is mostly dispersed due to the
migration flows of Romanian women, working in Italy in the domestic sector
(Barberi 2007).
Seven years ago, it was impossible to speak about work integration for a Nigerian woman in
the tourism sector, yet we have done a lot of work on the integration of Nigerian women in
this sector in these last years. Because we were able to do an important follow-up, since there
were a lot of prejudices. For instance, there was an agency that every time we went there,
they would say that they were not interested, until we went with a lawyer and we made them

77
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 02/2017, Italy.
78
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February /2017, Italy.
79
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 177

understand that what they were doing was not legal and now we have many Nigerian women
that have worked in the hotels in V. for a long time.80

Not all victims have access to an internship, as they are only reserved for human
trafficking victims that were granted with an Art.18 permit or international and
humanitarian Protection. This excludes human trafficking victims that have been
identified by organisations but did not undertake the protection path.
The internship is previewed by the Regional Directive81 that, despite guaranteeing the
training to the so-called vulnerable categories, does not require the involvement of a permit
Art.31, for assistance of minors. Therefore, we almost always involve individuals, either
with an international protection or with an Art.18 permit.82

The internship lasts for 3 months and provides a work grant and also pocket
money for the expenses. In the case that the employer has the intention to employ the
intern, an extension is conceded, so that the intern may gain more experience.
Usually the aims of the protection project are determined by the typology of work
that is given to the person, especially since it is connected to the residence permit.
Therefore, the individual can only be considered autonomous when they achieve a
full-time contract that provides enough money to be autonomous.
Our projects have a success rate of around 90%. If you are able to give a concrete alternative,
people stay; the motivation is always economic. Unfortunately, the ones that leave the
protection path are the weaker ones, the less capable or the ones that were exploited for a
longer time. The moment of work integration, is when more things emerge, everything that
we were not aware of during the hosting period. When they start their internship, they
receive a work grant. However, the contracting depends on the labour market, in Rome most
of the economy is in the third sector, there are no factories. For instance, many Nigerian
women want to work in a factory. So, maybe it is easier to integrate them in the North of the
country. There is mainly a requirement for manual work, with precise schedules, because we
know that for Nigerian women, Sunday must be free, thus there are requirements to their
well-being.83

After interviewing four practitioners from different projects of Art.18, in four

different regions, including Veneto, Lazio, Campania, and Sicily, I have noted that
the integration in the labour market also depends on the economic welfare of the
region. For instance, according to my interviews, the North of the country tends to
offer more opportunities to integrate the women into the labour market. Furthermore,
while the predominant work sector in Veneto is tourism, in the region of Lazio, the
majority of the victims are inserted within the services sector.84
The Nigerian women always want to be hairdressers and in the last years, we were able to
make agreements with the hairdressing schools. We are able to offer a training experience of
4/5 months that is far beyond what is required for Italians, since usually for Italians, it is

80
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
81
Legislative Decree, 15 May 2013, n.9.
82
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 April 2017, Italy.
83
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29 November 2016, Italy.
84
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29 November 2016, Italy.
178 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

required to have three years of school to be a hairdresser. We realised that it is a context that
the girls are easily integrated in. For instance, we now have one girl that is training in a
bakery, but there you don’t have much contact with the public, since there is still a lot of
racism. Another has made a nice experience in a plant nursery, since she already had
experience in the agriculture sector and she was older. For instance, for the moment, many
are doing the integration internship in the canteens and we have noticed that it can work, due
to the contact with children. At last, the dressmakers, but then it is difficult to find a tailor that
will employ them. Furthermore, tailoring in Italy is normally at a high standard, therefore
even if they already have experience from their origin country, in Italy we see that this kind
of sector normally does not offer a job.85

It is interesting that in the examples cited above, the women are usually integrated
into a market that somehow still has a demand for workers. However, in Italy there is
a huge segmentation of work for immigrant women, who are often required in
domestic work, as caregivers, babysitters, or cleaners (Ambrosini 2012). This type
of job is highly characterised by long work hours, lack of privacy and social
networks, low income, and lack of formal contracts, and this does not allow the
person to renew Art.18 permit. Therefore, the women can find themselves in new
forms of exploitation, meaning that sometimes they prefer to return to sex work.
The caregiver as a typology of work, even if they ask, we avoid. Because for a person who
has already had her freedom violated or received an income, it does not guarantee a stable
economic situation, because sometimes they [employers] don’t pay the taxes or you have to
sleep in the same house as your employer.86

Despite the fact that sewing and domestic services have been avoided by the anti-
trafficking networks in the North and the Central region of Italy, in the South of Italy,
many women are still integrated into this kind of sector. Exploitation has been
verified in the domestic sector (Sciurba 2015), as well as the agricultural sector
(Palumbo and Sciurba 2015), yet, it is one of the few work segments in the Southern
regions of Italy that still offers work opportunities to immigrant women. The
difficulty of renewing the residence permit with a work permit has been enhanced
by the high rate of unemployment, especially in the Southern regions. Furthermore,
the labour market in the Southern regions is often categorised by parallel economies,
lack of contract, and exploitative conditions (Palumbo and Sciurba 2018). Therefore,
in the past sometimes the people have been displaced and moved to other structures,
especially in the North of Italy, in order to have an easier work integration in the
labour market.87
Some years ago, before this situation with the Nigerian women, 10% of the women within
the anti-trafficking network would come here to the North of Italy, mainly from Apulia,
Sicily and Campania, not due to matters of safety, but to have a wider access to work.
However, nowadays this matter has started to be more difficult. We are still able to find work

85
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29 November 2016, Italy.
86
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29 November 2016, Italy.
87
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 179

because there is a small number of women. Many women have started the programme, but
only a small number is able to finish it.88

The big problem in Sicily is to find work, in fact, we have noticed that in recent years there
were some transfers to the North of the country. In this, we have accompanied them through
the orientation phase, by helping them write their CV, or directing the person to the
recruitment channels or answering some job offers, yet the interest from the other part is
very low. Our colleague has personally dedicated herself to helping a woman by doing the
CV and sending it, but then, there was not even the possibility of an interview. Furthermore,
they ask for experience or at least that the candidate speaks Italian. Therefore, two years of
training are not enough for these women. Normally the women find jobs in the South as
caregivers or cleaning ladies, without any contract and living with the families that employ
them.89

Besides the lack of employment, the anti-trafficking organisations also find that
they experience other problems connected to cultural aspects and prejudices. For
instance, Romanian women tend to find a job quicker, due to similarities in the
culture and the language and their age, as the Romanian women tend to be older and
come with work experience.90 Furthermore, due to the high level of racism, Italians
tend to employ more Romanian women, because they are white and Christian.
While, on the other side, Nigerian women only have experience in selling in the
market, which normally requires more time for them to adapt to a certain pattern of
western behaviours. The problem is not only the lack of work in general, but that the
little work available is usually the sort of work in which one can easily find oneself in
exploitative situations, usually working in the fields or as service staff in houses
(Anderson 2004). However, contrary to sexual exploitation, the exploitation of
domestic work tends to be more culturally accepted and more difficult to define
and identify, since it occurs within the private sphere (Palumbo 2017).
The fact that the person finishes the project without a stable job, normally leads to
problems regarding their legal status, since Art.18 can only be renewed by a work or
a study permit (Andreatta 2015). Furthermore, the person also has to show certain
living conditions, such as having a contract, and demonstrate that their habitation has
the dimensions required by the legal framework.91 However, as previously men-
tioned, the majority of the projects in human trafficking do not require a follow-up of
the victims once the individual finishes the protection path. In fact, usually, the only
contact between the association and the victim is based on the assistance in finding a
residence and legal counselling, which is the only service provided beyond the
protection path, until the reception of the identification document.92

88
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
89
Interview number 5 (third sector), 10 April 2017, Italy.
90
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February /2017, Italy.
91
Circular Minute 7170 of 18 November 2009 that provides the Decree of 5 June 1975 of the
Ministry of Health.
92
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
180 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

They make the request at the embassy, usually in a very autonomous way; they do the
passport because, when you renew the permit of Art.18 for a work permit, you have to have a
job, a passport, a house, a positive report from the anti-trafficking referral. However, all these
are propaedeutic actions, because if you don’t have a job, you can’t have the house and if you
don’t speak Italian you cannot do the internship.93

In fact, besides the 1 year follow-up, to certify renewal of the legal status to a
work permit, the projects do not carry out a later follow-up, due to the high numbers
of victims who participate in the projects (Caneppele and Mancuso 2013). Therefore,
the individual projects are not evaluated long term, because they are only limited to
the protection path. However, the Venice Municipality has recently decided to insert
some follow-up indicators for each phase of the protection path, such as: the
typology of residence (room, shared house), the acquisition of a legal status (work
permit), the improvement of the Italian language, and the improvement of the
education level.94

6.3.4 Non-accompanied Minors and Human Trafficking

Victims

Besides the increment of Nigerian women arriving in the Italian territory, the local
authorities have also identified an increase of female Nigerian non-accompanied
minors. A letter sent to several Prefectures, by several organisations working against
human trafficking (PIAM et al. 2017), highlighted the increase in minors registered
by the IOM in the Italian territory and urged the state to improve the protection
measures, detailed in the Italian legal framework. The urgency of an adequate legal
framework on non-accompanied minors came from the noticeable increase of
non-accompanied minors being exploited in the last years. According to the mapping
on outdoor prostitution, the Anti-Trafficking Platform has identified that, out of a
total number of 3280 minors across Italy, 167 were potential human trafficking
victims. According to the IOM, in 2016 3040 Nigerian unaccompanied minors
arrived in Italy, with an increase of 197% compared to the preceding year, when
the numbers were 1022. In 2016, in Italy, 524 Nigerian girls arrived, of whom 40%
were non-accompanied minors (IOM 2017). With the increase of non-accompanied
minors, the organisations have urged the Italian government to inform
non-accompanied minors about their rights and the procedures of the asylum
claim. Furthermore, they have also urged the government to comply with the
adequate protection of minors, according to Art.4 of the Legislative Decree 24/14,
in case of doubt of age, until its final verification.

93
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
94
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 181

In fact, recently, the Italian Government has approved the Legislative Decree
234/201695 on the new proceedings of the identification of a non-accompanied
minor in case of doubt, entered into force on 6 January 2017. The Legislative Decree
previews the assessment by a multidisciplinary team at a public health facility, with
professionals from the health system, whose aim is to complete a social interaction, a
paediatric evaluation and a psychological or neuropsychiatric evaluation, in the
presence of a cultural mediator. The age assessment has to be followed with the
appropriate measures and conduct, according to the origin culture and ethnicity of
the non-accompanied minor. The procedure that respects the tutoring of religion,
gender, and culture starts 3 days after the authorisation and can be contested.
On 28 March 2017, the Italian Chamber of Deputies approved the Legislative
Decree 47/2017, with 375 positive votes against 13 negative votes. The law, through
Art.17, specifies the protection programme, which must include adequate conditions
of assistance at a psychological, social, health, and legal level to the minors who are
human trafficking victims, innovating Art.13 of the Legislative Decree 228/2003,
and foreseeing its development after the minor turns 18 years old. Furthermore, the
minors who are victims of human trafficking have the right to access compensation
and legal support; the government will allocate a total amount of 15,080 euros, per
person per year, in order to fulfil their right to compensation.
According to the report Piccoli Schiavi (Save the Children 2017), Nigerian
minors, victims of human trafficking that arrived in 2016, were generally younger
than those seen in previous years, with an increase in13–14-year olds, mainly
coming from Benin City, Lagos, and Anambra. Because these girls have a low
level of education and are very poor, they tend to be sacrificed for the benefit of the
entire family, and are usually the oldest or the youngest daughter of the first wife of
the father, since he is not obligated to provide for the children of his first wife (IOM
2017). The increase of minors is also due to the fact that they tend to be more naïve
and ignorant about their rights, thus it is easier for the exploiter to extend their debt
and have more control over them (Fernandez et al. 2017).
In this case, the pressure on the girl goes beyond the power of juju, since she is responsible
for her entire family. The Nigerian girls nowadays, it is more difficult to make them exit the
exploitative situation, also because they do not have a migration project. The Nigerian
women of some years ago, they had a migration project, economic, their goal was to pay the
debt and then have an economic income. Furthermore, the women inside the criminal
organisation, they knew how to behave, they honoured the debt, while the women today,
no. Nevertheless, the women today do not even have respect for their madams, they look like
our teenagers. First, we mainly had women of 24-34 years, now the majority are 18 years
old. Very Americanised and overbearing, since they assert that you have to host them and
provide them with all the necessary services.96

In order to avoid the victims being tutored by the State, criminal networks usually
advise the girls to declare that they are older than 18 when they arrive in Italy, saying
that if they declare that they are minors they will be deported or go to prison (IOM

95
See further at http://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2016/12/22/16G00248/sg
96
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
182 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

2017). In fact, many minors declare that they turned 18 some days before arriving in
Italy. The allocation in a reception centre for adults facilitates the escape of the
minor, because they are less protected and guarded in these centres. Consequently,
once the minors escape, they are usually impossible to trace (GRETA 2014).
When the victim is a minor, usually the degree of vulnerability toward the
criminal network as well as the difficulty in exiting the exploitative situation,
makes undertaking the protection path a family decision. In fact, sometimes the
victim’s family disapproves of the integration into a protection programme, since not
only does it expose the minor and the family to threats from the trafficker, but also
the family also has an interest in being economically supported by the minor.
Consequently, when the minor finds out that her family is opposed to her taking
the protection path, it is necessary to break the relationship with the family in the
origin country, in order to proceed with the protection of the minor (IOM 2017).
The migration flows coming from the Mediterranean Central route have caught
the attention of institutions, non-governmental organisations, and law enforcement
due to the increase of Nigerian minors entering the Italian territory. However, the
Piccoli Schiavi Report (Save the Children 2017) has highlighted the exploitation of
Romanian minors, counting a total of 376 minors, only in the first trimester of 2017.
Despite the relevant number of Romanian minors flagged as human trafficking
victims in Italy, Europol (2018) states that the majority of the Romanian minors
are exploited a national level, due to the difficulty in getting them across the
international borders. In fact, the traffickers prefer to exploit the minors internally
until they turn 18 years old and do not need parental authorisation to cross national
borders. In other situations, to avoid the necessity of parental authorisation to cross
the border, the traffickers marry the minors in order to be their legal tutor abroad97 or
they declare false familial ties with the victims.
The Romanian minors are usually 16 and 17-year olds and come from the
counties of Bacau, Braila, Neamt, and Suceava (Save the Children 2017). They
are often recruited through the loverboy method as previously described in the fourth
chapter of the book. Traffickers usually target minors without family ties, who are
recruited in children’s institutions (Pascoal and Schwartz 2018), as they are consid-
ered a high-risk, vulnerable group (European Commission 2015).
Despite the augment of non-accompanied minors who are victims of trafficking,98
legislation in Italy does not indicate specific protection houses for minors who are

97
Romanian High Court of Cassation and Justice, 19 April 2010, Decision n.149, https://www.
unodc.org/cld/case-law-doc/criminalgroupcrimetype/rou/2010/2228542008.html?lng¼en&
tmpl¼htms
98
The protection services, for instance the association Penelope, witnessed an increase in minors;
having dealt predominantly with adults up until 2013, they reported a 1:1 ratio of adults to children
in 2016. Furthermore, the association reported that, despite the average age in the past was around
17/18, nowadays there has also been an increase in young girls of 13/14 years old, which also
requires more funding and services in the long term. Information given by the Speaker Orianna
Cannavò during the Seminar ‘Catania non tratta: esperienze di contrasto della tratta di esseri umani
a scopo di sfruttamento sessuale e lavorativo’ of the Association Penelope, 09/11/2017, Catania,
Sicily.
6.3 The Overlap between Asylum Seeker and Human Trafficking Victims 183

victims of human trafficking. Therefore, when the minor arrives in Italy, he/she is
usually inserted in a facility of so-called first assistance (prima accoglienza), which
tends to host large numbers of migrants. They should then be moved to a reception
centre of second assistance (seconda accoglienza), in order to receive an intensive
follow-up. Furthermore, some of the regions, especially due to the costs regarding
the tutorship of the minor victim of trafficking, tend to transfer the responsibility
over non-accompanied minors to the municipality. The minors usually undertake the
protection path in centres for minors, with the accompaniment of the services of the
anti-trafficking platform.
We have decided that all non-accompanied minors would be the responsibility of the
Municipalities, because in our opinion the funding of Art.18 should not be redirected to
the minors. In this case, it should be the municipality that provides the facilities and the anti-
trafficking network provides the services. The tutorship of a minor costs a lot, compared to
the protection of an adult.99

The city of Bologna, for instance, has implemented an experimental model for
minors who are victims of human trafficking, in which the facilities for minors had to
adapt to the situation of human trafficking victims. Consequently, the concentration
of minors who are victims of human trafficking in the municipality, and are also
within the asylum system, facilitates the process of integration of the minor. How-
ever, in other Italian regions, especially in Southern Italy, the associations respon-
sible for the anti-trafficking projects are supported by the cooperatives that host the
non-accompanied minors.
The protection of non-accompanied minors tends to be different from that of the
adults, mainly regarding education, since the minors should continue in education
until they reach at least 16 years old. Nevertheless, many minors are illiterate. In
addition, they have to learn the language of the destination country, which is
normally difficult to acquire, since the minors usually only communicate with their
co-nationals.100
The Italian Legislation foresees that a guardian can be responsible for many
non-accompanied minors. Until the implementation of the 47/2017 Legislative

99
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06/03/2017, Italy.
100
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22/02/2017, Italy.
184 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

Decree—that has introduced the possibility to assign trained voluntary guardians to

the non-accompanied minors—this role was often given to the Mayor or one of the
municipality’s counsellors, responsible for hundreds of non-accompanied minors.
Therefore, the guardian is not able to adequately accompany the minor and is often
represented by a practitioner. The lack of trained guardians impacts the identification
of potential human trafficking victims, as well as on the legal representation of the
minor, as some guardians can decide the future of the minor according to their own
moral values. For instance, in Sicily, some cases have been reported of guardians
denying access to abortion to underage girls that have suffered sexual abuse during
the journey and have arrived in Italy pregnant.101

101
Law 194/1974, clause 12. ‘Where the woman is under 18 years of age, the consent of the person
exercising parental authority over the woman or her guardian shall be required for the termination of
pregnancy. However, during the first 90 days, if there are serious grounds rendering it impossible or
inadvisable to consult the persons exercising parental authority or the guardian, or if those persons
are consulted but refuse their consent or express conflicting opinions, the counselling centre or
medicosocial agency, or the physician of the woman’s choice, shall carry out the duties and
procedures set out in Sect. 5 and submit to the magistrate responsible for matters of guardianship
[giudice tutelare] in the locality in which it (he) operates, not later than 7 days following the request,
a report giving its (his) views on the matter. Within 5 days, after interviewing the woman and taking
account of her wishes, the grounds which she puts forward, and the report submitted to him, the
magistrate may issue a decision, which shall not be subject to appeal, authorizing the woman to
have her pregnancy terminated. Where the physician finds that termination is urgently required in
view of a serious threat to the health of a woman under 18 years of age, he shall make out a
certificate indicating the conditions justifying the termination of pregnancy, without requesting the
consent of the persons exercising parental authority or the guardian and without applying to the
magistrate. The certificate shall entitle the woman to obtain, on an emergency basis, the termination
and, where necessary, hospitalization. In the case of a pregnancy termination after the first 90 days,
the procedures referred to in Sect. 7 shall likewise be applicable to women under 18 years of age,
without regard to the consent of the persons exercising parental authority or the guardian’.
6.4 The Protection of the Romanian Women 185

6.4 The Protection of the Romanian Women

The observation of data regarding the granting of Art.18102 and Art.13103 shows us a
major change between 2006 and 2008, with an increase of Art.18 permits given to
Nigerian women (+72.3%), in comparison to a drastic and significant reduction of
Art.18 permits granted to Romanian victims (34.1%) (Caneppele and Mancuso

102
1) Art.18 of the Consolidated Act of measures regulating immigration and the norms on the
condition of foreign citizens (hereinafter referred to as Legislative Decree No. 286 of 1998) foresees
the granting of a special residence permit for victims of trafficking for reasons of social protection.
The main objective of this law is to allow trafficked or exploited persons to escape from the
conditioning of the criminal organisation or individual exploiters they are subjected to and to offer
them the possibility to start a new life in Italy or in their country of origin. The granting of the
special residence permit is independent from the victim reporting the traffickers/exploiters to the
law enforcement authorities. The only necessary condition to obtain the permit is to meet the
requirements provided for by the law, to participate in the ‘article 18’ assistance programme and
complete it. The residence permit can be issued on the basis of two procedures: The ‘judicial path’,
when a report to the police has been made or when criminal proceedings have been started. It
implies that the victim will cooperate with the police and public prosecutor. They will be instru-
mental in bringing charges against the perpetrator; The ‘social path’, when the NGOs or public
social service assisting the trafficked persons consider that they are in immediate danger. The
trafficked person is not obliged to report traffickers to the police, but is expected to give extensive
information (‘statement’) to law enforcement agencies through the public social services or the
private sector accredited NGOs. The requirements for the issuing of a residence permit can be
summarised as follows: existence of situation of violence or serious exploitation and of concrete
danger for the personal safety of the foreigner because of his/her attempt to escape from the criminal
organisation the aforementioned situation can be identified during police operations, investigations
or proceedings, or in the course of social service assistance provided by local authorities or NGOs
the proposal for granting a residence permit can be made both by the District Attorney—if a
prosecution has already been started—and by the Local Authorities’ social services or NGOs in
charge of social protection projects. The permit is issued for 6 months and may be renewed for an
additional year; it does not oblige the person to go back home once the programme is over.
Furthermore, the residence permit for humanitarian reasons can be converted into a residence
permit for education or for work, allowing the foreigner to remain in Italy in accordance with the
regulations governing the presence of foreigners on the national territory. In 2007, a law came into
force that extended the target group for Article 18 provisions: Law 17/2007 turning Law Decree
No. 300 of 28 December 2006 into law and containing the extension of limits provided for by
legislative provisions. Article 6, para. 4, provides that Article 18 shall also be applied to victims of
trafficking that are EU-nationals. They can therefore access the Programme of social assistance and
protection and benefit from all services offered.
103
Law No. 228 of 2003 ‘Provisions against Trafficking in Human Beings’. The law acknowledges
the definition of trafficking provided in the Palermo Protocol. The law introduces the offences of
‘Reducing to or keeping in slavery or servitude’, ‘Trafficking in persons’, and ‘Trading in slaves’,
amending the related provisions of the Criminal Code (Art. 600, 601, 602). For these offences, the
law establishes harsh penalties, ranging from 8–20 years imprisonment, with an increase of one
third to a half when the victims are minors, or when reduction into slavery or servitude condition
aims at further sexual exploitation or removal of organs. Furthermore, within Article 13, Law
No. 228/2003 is included a provision for the creation of a short-term protection programme for both
Italian and foreign victims of slavery, servitude and trafficking aiming at ‘temporarily guaranteeing
adequate accommodation, food and healthcare conditions to the victims’.
186 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

2013). Currently, since the entrance of Romania into the European Union in 2007,
more Nigerian women access Art.18 than Romanian women (145 Romanian
women, 765 Nigerian women).104 Despite the fact that the majority of Art.18
permits are granted to Nigerian women, it has been recently reported that 38% of
outdoor prostitution is composed of Eastern women (Numero Verde antitratta
2017),105 and 36% Nigerian women. Observing the data regarding the granting of
Art.18 and Art.13 permits after the integration of Romania in the European Union, it
can be noticed that not only did the protection system has a larger impact on third
country nationals, compared to European citizens, but also, as previously observed,
that Romanian traffickers had started to use smother strategies (Canappelle and
Mancuso 2013). This represents the paradox of tutorship, in which European
citizenship represents an increase in access to rights for Romanians, yet the possi-
bility to engage in a protection path with Art.18 permit usually encourages the third
country nationals to complete a protection path, which is not the same for the
Romanian women.
To exit exploitation, a Romanian woman does not have to worry about many problems, since
she does not have to worry about the documents, pressing charges, etc.. . . she can also leave
the criminal network without pressing charges. Instead, a Nigerian woman that wants to exit
from her trafficker has to press charges.106

Besides the connection between legal status in the destination country for
European citizens and the protection path, it is also important to compare their
level of mobility between origin and destination country, as previously mentioned
in this book. Furthermore, both nationalities have different migration projects, since
the majority of Nigerian women intend to remain in the destination country, while
Romanian women usually want to return to their origin country. In fact, while
Nigerian women aim to establish themselves in the territory and send remittances
to maintain their family in Nigeria, Romanian women keep sending money to build
their house in Romania, dreaming about returning to their origin country.107 Fur-
thermore, European Union citizenship permits Romanian women to have easier
mobility between the origin country and the destination country, thus, they are
able to establish and maintain contact with their social network. This range of
resources provides to the Romanian women with connected ties, especially regard-
ing the support of the family in the origin country.108

104
Data provided by the anti-trafficking hotline regarding the nationalities of the victims who have
had access to the protection of Art.18.
105
The study was taken at a national level on 26 October 2017 by the street units of the organisations
that are part of the National Anti-Trafficking Platform. The statistics reports that 38% of the outdoor
sex workers in Italy are from Eastern Europe, of this 75% Romanian and 17% Albanian. Further-
more, the report claims that 16% of sex workers are from South America, mainly transsexuals and
2.3% are Italian women. From the reported data, the majority of the sex workers are women
(82.9%), while 15.9% are transsexuals and 1.2% are males.
106
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30 May 2016, France.
107
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
108
Interview number 3 (THB expert), 29 November 2016, Italy.
6.4 The Protection of the Romanian Women 187

In Italy, while 80% of Nigerian women are protected, the protection of Romanian women is
only around 5%, this means that they do not arrive to our services, this does not mean that
they do not exist, also because they are free to return to their origin country. Romanian
prostitution has changed a lot, for instance, it is less violent also because the police were able
to decimate the Romanian criminal groups dedicated to sexual exploitation.109

The receipt of Art.18 permit in the destination country means the women do not
have to collaborate with the authorities, and that they need assistance, including
psychological and legal counselling. Therefore, many victims have shown difficulty
in accepting help from anti-trafficking organisations, normally dealing with leaving
the exploitation within the private sphere, often returning to the origin country.
During my street unit participant observation, I met C., a Romanian girl who had
previously worked in Spain. On the first day that I met her, she happily talked about
amount the money she could earn in prostitution in P. When I asked her why she
came to P.,110 she said that some people said that in P. she could earn more.
Therefore, in order to obtain a more in-depth answer, I asked who had said that.
My second question obviously made her suspicious, and she gave me a vague
answer. Despite her vague answer, she was one of the girls that had never shown
any trafficking indicators. However, months later, she met my street unit colleagues
and started to explain that she was coerced by her boyfriend into prostitution and that
she had given most of her money to him. She finally decided to speak, since she
found out that her boyfriend was also having an affair with another girl, who was
also engaged in the sex market. Furthermore, she explained to my peers that she
would just go home to Romania and that no assistance was needed. In fact, after
some days she returned to Romania, rejecting any kind of assistance that could be
provided in her case. The case of C. provides a clear example that Romanian women
normally return to the origin country without benefiting from a protection path.
As can be seen in the Romanian statistics on human trafficking victims
(1780–2007; 1240–2008; 780–2009; 1154–2010; 1048–2011; 1041–2012;
896–2013; 757–2014),111 since 2007, the year that Romania entered into the
European Union, the number of identified human trafficking victims in Romania
has largely decreased. Nevertheless, this decrease does not necessarily represent a
decrease in the number of victims, but perhaps the fact that the authorities are not
capable of identifying them, or that they are not asking for help; maybe they are not
even aware of their victimisation.
In fact, despite of the high number of human trafficking victims in Romania, there
is only a small number of shelters for VoTs in the country. Besides the main
associations that receive governmental funds in Romania for the purpose of protec-
tion of human trafficking victims, such as Generatia Tanara, AIDRom, and Adpare,
there is not a major investment in the accommodation for human trafficking victims.

109
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
110
I tend to ask this question so I can understand the ties and contacts that the women have with the
territory, especially before their arrival.
111
Data provided by the Monitoring system of the Romanian National Agency Against Human
Trafficking.
188 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

In Romania, the predominant origin country of human trafficking victims in the

European Union (EUROSTAT 2015), many victims go directly home when they
return to Romania, without asking for other services, even if they present some
indicators of psychological trauma. Furthermore, it is important to reflect on the
implementation of the element of trust established between the victims and the
traffickers and consequently the lack of awareness of the victims regarding their
exploitation (Pascoal and Schwartz 2018).
Normally, they are not able to have control of their lives, or be clear in their situation, which
often leads them to deny any kind of exploitation. Therefore, the first step is that the victim
accepts being helped.112
Some victims do not see themselves as a victim, since they have received some sum of
money, so even though there was deception, the victim does not consider herself/himself as a
victim.113

Besides the fact that normally Romanian women are not aware of their
victimisation, it has also been verified that protection measures for human trafficking
victims are not provided in every Romanian county.114 For instance, the present
shelters for victims of human trafficking are normally restricted to the counties of
transit and origin of the majority of victims, such as Timis and Botosani (GRETA
2016d) and Bucharest, where the victims arrive by plane. Furthermore, for many
victims once they return home, even if they are provided with information about
their rights to assistance services, the AINTP is not able to provide assistance in
every town or small village, since the services are mainly provided in the big urban
areas.
Sometimes it is impossible to do work integration, because we have these services on paper,
but then we don’t have these services locally. We can have services also from other entities,
but sometimes they are not real.115

In fact, despite the fact that the Romanian legislation provides assistance to
victims of trafficking for a renewable period of 3 months,116 in the most inaccessible
areas of Romania, it is very difficult for the AINTP to have the funds to maintain
employees in these areas or even to relocate their employees to the origin town of the
victim. The lack of services for human trafficking victims in their hometowns leads
to difficulty in accompanying and engaging the victim in an integration work path.

112
Interview number 20 (civil society), 02 March 2017, Romania.
113
Interview number 7 (Law enforcement), 23 August 2016, Romania.
114
Interview number 7 (Law enforcement), 23 August 2016, Romania and 11 (Law enforcement),
03 April 2017, Romania.
115
Interview number 7 (Law enforcement), 23 August 2016, Romania.
116
Article 63 of Law No. 292/2011 on Social Assistance provides the social services to which
victims of human trafficking are entitled, namely: residential centres (shelters) providing assistance,
care, and protection; day care centres which provide information, counseling, psychological
support, and social reintegration; and services at the community
level, consisting of social care services, psychological counseling, legal advice, professional
guidance, and social reintegration.
6.4 The Protection of the Romanian Women 189

Consequently, the victim tends to be more exposed to re-victimisation, which is

normally aggravated by ‘quick money syndrome’ mentioned by Pamblech (2014).
The lack of a solid educational and social background is a blatant obstacle to achieve
high paid jobs, which influences the work integration offered by the National
Agency.
The women normally ask to work as a beautician, but of course we have to offer them
options according to their school level. We can also offer them the possibility to go to school,
but normally they start it, but they don’t finish it, because they are not motivated. They want
to have something quick and a lot of money, quick money and they don’t want to wait and
they expect to have a lot of income. So, we have to work on something that their family did
not work on. They did not have this education at home; they did not know how hard it is to
earn money and how important it is to go to school. They are like adult people who think like
children. Consequently, if they don’t want to go to school, the only option is to do cleaning
and they don’t want to do this. They don’t earn a lot of money in doing this and therefore
they do not take the responsibility of work, they don’t even inform their boss about their
absence.117

This statement, from an employee of the National Agency Against Trafficking in

Persons, is very clear regarding the obstacles in engaging a victim of human
trafficking in a protection path, especially when accommodation is not required. In
Romania, as an origin country, the majority of the victims do not require accommo-
dation, because they normally return to their family house. Although family plays a
relevant role in the empowerment of the victim, the protection path outside the
shelter tends to hinder the integration due to geographic and mobility problems.
Therefore, human trafficking victims in Romania that choose to return to their family
house, often dismiss psychological and legal counselling. Furthermore, once iden-
tified by the police, in case the police are not located in the workplace of the AINTP,
the police often do not call the experts from the National Agency, as they are aware
of the lack of financial resources. The lack of immediate access to the victim can lead
to the loss of contact with the victim, since the victim disappears after the police
operation.
Because we only have one car, and there is no money for gas and sometimes they do not call
us and they only send the papers and when we try to speak with the victim, she is not
reachable anymore. And they ask if she wants assistance, she says no and they mark this and
therefore we cannot offer assistance to the person.118

The individual’s lack of awareness about their state of victimhood, often conse-
quent to the application of the loverboy method, can be seen as a sign of resistance,
where the individual rejects the state of victimhood. The lack of awareness of the
victim hinders the protection from the State that is usually granted to human
trafficking victims. The denial of victimhood, based on the role of the sacrificed
woman, leads to the resistance of Romanian women from exiting the exploitation,
not showing strength, but instead vulnerability. According to Judith Butler (2016:1)

117
Interview number 7 (law enforcement), in 28 August 2016, Romania.
118
Interview number 7 (law enforcement), in 28 August 2016, Romania.
190 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

‘vulnerability requires and implies the need for protection and strengthening of
paternalistic forms of power’. However, it is important to reflect that resistance is
not the solution to vulnerability, since the victims who deny their state of victimhood
reject any possible assistance, which continues to affect the condition of the victim
and continues to expose the victim to a situation of vulnerability, in this case the
possibility of re-victimisation.
The fact that Romanian women aim to return to their origin country and do not
need access to Art.18 permit also enhances the likelihood that they refuse the
assistance of the Romanian women in the destination country. This refusal to get
help is an outcome of the relationship between victimhood, normally attributed to
third country national citizens, and paternalism that, as has been noticed, comes to
fill the gap in the access to rights for the victims that do not hold a legal adminis-
trative status in the destination country. However, despite the fact that Romanian
women are less likely to require protection, and this results in the avoidance of a
paternalistic protection by the State toward human trafficking victims, it can also
lead to a situation of re-trafficking. On the other hand, women can also achieve a
level of resilience, by recovering from their trauma, especially when supported by
their family.

6.5 The Protection of the Victims with Children

Until now, I have described the protection path to victims of human trafficking in
Italy through Art.18. In this subchapter, I will continue to analyse the protection path
of Art.18, but with particular reference to the cases in which the victim is a mother,
who requires a longer duration of protection and the fulfilment of the particular needs
of the mother. The mothers share the same programme as the other victims, passing
all the previous mentioned phases, but the protection plan is usually extended from
1–2 years.
Here in V. [city], the women come already flagged by the Juvenile Court and we try to
understand why. Because they were victims of trafficking that were pregnant and gave birth,
thus they were automatically flagged to the social services and to the court. We tried to
explain to the social services that the women were just temporarily vulnerable, also because
this vulnerability is not eternal. We have had women that have made a wonderful path that
have had their children and have started to work, but with the help of the services, as the
Italian women also receive, because they are residents and, as residents, they are entitled to
have free meals.119

As previously mentioned, Romanian women tend to return to their origin country

once they realise that they are in exploitative conditions. Furthermore, they live a
transnational motherhood, thus, this chapter mainly concerns Nigerian mothers
undertaking the protection path in Italy. Notwithstanding that, in the past many

119
Interview number 1 (third sector), 28 February 2017, Italy.
6.5 The Protection of the Victims with Children 191

Romanian women were engaged in the protection paths, mainly before the entrance
of Romania into the European Union in 2007, due to the residence permit.120
Nowadays, the majority of the Romanian women in sexual exploitation do not
have children in Italy, since having a child in the destination country while being
involved in sexual exploitation is not normally accepted by the exploiter. Therefore,
in the case that the woman gets pregnant during the exploitation, she normally has an
abortion or goes back to Romania, in order to leave the child with her relatives.
We have Nigerian women with babies in our projects, but the number of Romanian women
with children is very limited.121

It is difficult for the women to take their children back to Nigeria, mainly because
of their lack of contact with the origin country, not only due to the distance and
residence permit, but also because they could be threatened by their recruiters, who
are usually their acquaintances (Carling 2006). Furthermore, motherhood represents
a relevant role in society (Ac.sé 2015a, b), thus Nigerian women are normally more
willing to keep the baby, especially when supported by the community.
There is an acceptance of motherhood [within the Nigerian community], thus they are more
willing to keep the baby. Consequently, there is more acceptance of the pregnancy from the
woman. Of course, sometimes there is an initial refusal and this baby is not accepted, but
with time, it is recovered. For instance, within the CAS, we realise that there is an element of
protection within a group of five women towards the one that has the baby and there is a lot
of sharing, especially in the daily moments.122

Motherhood of Nigerian women is not only an outcome of sexual exploitation in

Italy, but also, as previously mentioned, a consequence of the sexual abuse suffered
in Libya. Therefore, in the last years, an increase in pregnant women and women
with children arriving in Italy was observed.
We are a project that has always had a part dedicated to women during pregnancy or with
small children, so we have a constant demand for our services, but for instance, in the last
two weeks, four women [Nigerian] have arrived pregnant. Hence, I can say yes [there is an
increase of pregnant Nigerian women], but not all arrived in Italy pregnant, some got
pregnant in Italy and not in Libya.123

A child tends to make the protection path more difficult for victims (the mothers),
especially as it requires a longer duration and specific requirements. The protection
path usually includes more specific services for the child and not all projects of
Art.18 can provide these services, thus the anti-trafficking referent is sometimes
obliged to displace the mothers to other regions. Obviously, the protection path for
mothers and children requires more funding, especially because the children have
the right to stay in the Italian territory until they are 18 years old. Furthermore, the

120
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
121
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
122
Interview number 12 (third sector), 24 July 2017, Italy.
123
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05 April 2017, Italy.
192 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

child usually guarantees the presence of the woman in the Italian territory, often also
beyond Art.18 protection path.124
The protection path is different, we have to find a particular reception centre, and these are
longer protection paths, due to the situation of maternity. Then there is also the other phase,
because the autonomy process of the woman is slower, but we are prepared for this,
especially because of the high number of Nigerian mothers.125

The protection path of the mother and the child is normally paired with the
protection services of the municipality. In fact, despite the fact that the municipalities
are normally not obliged to fund the protection of human trafficking victims, in the
presence of the minor, this role is mandatory, because even if the woman gains
autonomy with the protection path, the minor is still the responsibility of the
municipality.
The path is long [for the victims with children], because during the pregnancy we cannot
think about work integration, we can only start to think about it when the child is born.
Furthermore, we need to work on the capacity of the mother and her relationship with the
child, the integration in a kindergarten and the search for work. It is also difficult, for
instance, when the child is a result of violence.126

As previously mentioned, besides Art.18 permit, mothers can also have access to
international and humanitarian protection, which does not require the enrolment in
the protection path. However, while the Art.18 protection path usually only lasts just
1 year, when the woman is pregnant or is a mother, it is normally prolonged and lasts
2 years.
Art.18 penalises the women, since with the humanitarian protection, they have two years
and, if they are pregnant, it is better. I also find myself in difficulty in knowing what it is
better for the women and what is convenient.127

Although pregnancy is normally the moment in which the organisations benefit

from convincing the woman to exit the exploitative situation, in the case that it is an
outcome of sexual abuse, it tends to hinder the work of the anti-trafficking organi-
sation, in terms of the relationship with the child. Therefore, practitioners usually
have to work on trauma, while they mediate this conflict in the relationship between
mother and child, especially in the newborn’s first months of life. The facilities have
practitioners accompanying the woman with the implementation of a ‘western’
parenting approach, creating the conditions to be contemporaneously a mother and
a worker.128
We had a lot of pregnant women, they had mainly psychological problems and trauma and
they normally affirmed that they were not capable of taking care of the child and being able
to do everything that a mother is supposed to do for a child. They do not trust themselves, but

124
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
125
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29 November 2016, Italy.
126
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
127
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
128
Interview number 28 (third sector), 29 November 2016, Italy.
6.5 The Protection of the Victims with Children 193

they are also realistic, because they do not have the resources and many come from a
background where they can’t help the child and often it is better to be given to the State, so
the child can go to a family in a stable situation.129

‘We put the mothers in a single room, because many children here are a result from violence,
we don’t know who the father is and often neither do they. We try to keep them calm,
because this baby is often seen for them as a problem for their future and they should
understand that they have this anger’.130

According to the practitioners working in the sector, pregnancy is the most

important moment to get the women out of exploitation (Ac.sé 2015a, b), because
the embodied growing of another human being triggers the sense of responsibility
not only for the child, but also for the own body of the victim (Brotherton 2016). In
fact, in France, organisations working with women engaged in the sex market
provide the women with information regarding their rights and benefits. The com-
plementation of these services by the third sector provides the women with a network
of contacts that grants the child a set of benefits, as required by the social services.
However, the illegal administrative status of the mother often proves to be an
obstacle in fulfilling the role of the mother.
In 2015 we had a total of 18 children in our services with their mothers. For the protection of
the child, there is the ‘aide sociale à l’enfance’ that supports the mother and the child and the
problem is usually the documents of the mother, in case they are not hosted in our centres. 131

Since human trafficking victims are normally emarginated from society, mothers
in this condition do not always have the support of institutional services. On the
contrary, when women are in protection programmes, they are usually supported by
the practitioners who emancipate the mother by offering Italian courses and special
training and contemporaneously offer babysitting services that permit the women to
frequent these courses. For instance, some of the facilities have private kindergartens
inside their structure.
There was this girl that did an internship with us, she had a baby and she had to breastfeed, I
could not send her to the cooperative, so she stayed here, doing the cleaning and she learned
how to cook, we want them to learn this also.132

Besides the importance regarding the availability of the services such as kinder-
garten to the mothers, the integration in the labour market also requires particular
schedules. Therefore, the women can ask for kindergarten services outside of office
hours. Despite the fact that these requirements are common to the majority of single
mothers, for a human trafficking victim, they are only possible within a
protection path.

129
Interview number 20 (civil society), 02 March 2017, Romania.
130
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
131
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30 May 2016, France.
132
Interview number 22 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
194 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

For instance, here we have the possibility to have a babysitter at a very low price, or
situations in which it was possible to take the baby to the internship. Doing an autonomy
path without resources is very complicated, since the baby goes to kindergarten from 10 am
to 5 pm, meanwhile she probably needs it on another schedule, because she has to do
cleaning and there is no kindergarten from 5 pm to 10 pm. These are the difficulties of a
mother without a network and who has no one to leave the child with when she is going to
work.133

In one of my interviews, interesting aspects emerged regarding the traffickers’

exploitation of the pregnant women, during the assistance. In the last 2–3 years, there
were several cases of Nigerian women who left the reception centres after their
arrival in Italy and who came back after 6 or 9 months of pregnancy. Therefore, from
one side Nigerian women ask for help from the services, mainly when the trafficker
does not accept the baby, and on the other side, it was also noted that the trafficker
sometimes sends the women to the assistance program. In fact, traffickers are often
aware that children can create complications to the exploiter.
For Nigerian women, children are a benediction, firstly because they cannot be deported and
secondly because it can be a motive to escape from exploitation. When a woman starts to
create too many troubles, because she is sick, or she is too confused or she rebels, the
traffickers are not like the ones before, they have started to change and, since there are so
many girls, they expel the girls from their house.134

As previously mentioned in this chapter, the Legislative Decree 12/2015 foresees

that if the asylum seeker leaves the reception centre, she is not entitled to receive
further assistance and have access to accommodation. However, if the woman
arrives accompanied by a child, the reception centre is obliged to accept the
woman into the facility. Therefore, practitioners working on this issue started to
suspect that the traffickers induce these pregnancies on purpose, in order to make the
women return to the assistance system.
These women return, not because they want to return, but because the person that manages
them has decided that it is the moment to return to the protection system and if there is a
pregnancy, no structure will deny their assistance. Hence, there is a pause in the exploitation,
because it is very ‘comfortable’ to return to the assistance programme.135

When the women come to a protection referent, such as the municipality services,
counselling offices for the asylum system, or the anti-trafficking hotline, the practi-
tioners are aware that they tell a story to better their chances of acceptance into the
structure. Therefore, the professionals tend to work on their first standardised version
of the facts. The women often present a narrative stating that they went for a walk
and when they got lost, they found a Nigerian man at the train station, normally
without mentioning the exploitation part. Despite the fact that the women ask for
assistance, this does not mean that they break contact with the exploiter.

133
Interview number 12 (third sector), 24 July 2017, Italy.
134
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
135
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
6.6 The Reunification of Family After Trafficking 195

There is this girl that once in a while has to go to the street and she has a child with her and
she goes to the street because she needs to keep him. The madam kicked her out of the house
when she was pregnant, even if she hadn’t paid all the debt, almost 15,000 euros. Therefore,
instead of having problems, because when the women are pregnant, they are guarded, the
madams prefer to send the women away.136

We had a case of a woman that came during the winter and we had four requests in a month,
from four different cities, all from our region. The calls were to the anti-trafficking hotline
and it was this Nigerian woman that was at the train station of one city and declares that she
wants to exit from prostitution. Consider that we don’t have so many calls saying something
like that. Therefore, we go to the train station and we contact the woman, trying to establish a
first contact, in that moment she does not want to exit prostitution, she only wants to be
hosted and a bed. The women all know the name and surname of our cultural mediator.137

There was this case of a Nigerian woman in M. that went to the Territorial Commission.
Because she was pregnant, the Commission immediately called the anti-trafficking referral
agent, who arrived and they carried out an interview together. The woman had a moment of
weakness and affirmed being engaged in prostitution, telling them where she lived, giving
the address and immediately accepting to go into a reception centre, which after 24 hours she
abandoned. However, she was still a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy, so she
decided to go to the counselling municipality office of M. [city] (the one that provides
housing and economical subsidies) and ask for a subsidy on her own, using another name.
Since we are all part of a network and well-organised, the employee called the anti-
trafficking referral and they found the same person, but once they met, the Nigerian girl
went away without saying anything. A week later the anti-trafficking referral office of the
region received a flagging from the municipality of B. from a street unit for homeless people,
that a pregnant Nigerian woman has asked for a bed, but she affirmed that she was at the
hospital at M. and we understood that it was the same person. So, this woman looked for
three different types of hosting, but even in the last situation the employees have called for
the third time the anti-trafficking referral and it was in this moment that she was taken into a
facility. So, the child is still small and the [criminal] organisation has all the interest that the
woman remains in protection during that period, since a woman with a baby can give more
problems to the organisation when she is a mother.138

6.6 The Reunification of Family After Trafficking

According to the sociologist Francesco Carchedi (2000), the majority of Nigerian

women who have children, leave them behind, since being engaged in the sex market
can be seen as incompatible with the role of the mother. Furthermore, motherhood in
western society requires a work contract and a fixed domicile, which is not always
available, especially in the condition of exploitation. Therefore, while in debt,
women tend to find illegal ways to bring their children to the destination country.
However, in a second phase, some women work to ensure they meet the legal
conditions required by the social services in order to bring their children to the

136
Interview number 23 (third sector), 27 July 2016, Italy.
137
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
138
Interview number 29 (third sector), 06 March 2017, Italy.
196 6 Protection and Victim’s Assistance

destination country. However, since the women usually stop their involvement in the
sex market, in order to be able to bring their children to the destination country, once
the child arrives, they often stop sending the remittances to the origin country, to the
relatives that have brought up their children there (Busch-Armendariz et al. 2011).
They normally choose to go first to the destination country. We have had cases in the follow
up that after four years, the Nigerian women were able to bring their children to Italy, but a
long time after the exploitation.139

As well as the situations in which the women try for family reunification after a
period of maintaining a stable economic and social level, there are also urgent family
reunification cases, which are required in situations where there is the perception that
the child in the origin country is in a situation of danger. For instance, in 2015 after
the prosecution of the trafficker, the judge, along with the French Ministry for
Foreign Affairs decided to support the transference of a Nigerian child to the French
territory. The urgent family reunification was possible due to the subsidiary protec-
tion of the mother. Nevertheless, even in emergency cases, reunification is very rare.
In case the family reunification is not possible, and in case of reciprocations for the
families in the origin country, the French associations provide a sum of 300 euros in
order to pay for a year of accommodation for the child in another state of the origin
country (Ac.sé 2015a, b).
Here in France, the women with children are protected by the social services. We have had a
case, in which a Romanian woman had one child here with her and another one with
her grandmother. In this case, we have contacted an association in Romania and we have
helped the woman to bring her child to France, because she pressed charges against the
man that exploited her. She had to change city and she was hosted in one of our centres with
her child. 140

As observed, on the contrary of Nigerian familial reunification, Romanian famil-

ial reunification within the European Union, requires less bureaucracy especially
regarding legal status. Furthermore, origin countries within the European territory
tend to facilitate the official and institutional contacts that support the reunification.
However, despite the fact that in France there were cases of urgent family
reunification, in Italy, the imminent danger seems to be solved by other methods.
There were cases of two Nigerian women who had a moment of alarm, and they asked to go
back to Nigeria immediately, since they perceived a danger to the child [in the origin
country]. In these cases, the impression that we have is that the woman has treated the
problem directly with the organisation and paid directly to them for the protection of the
family.141

Despite the importance of the well-being of the victim, which can be a reason for
family reunification, most of the protection programmes do not include reunification
within the protection path of the victim (Busch-Armendariz et al. 2011). However,

139
Interview number 30 (third sector), 22 February 2017, Italy.
140
Interview number 21 (third sector), 30 May 2016, France.
141
Interview number 25 (third sector), 05 April 2017, Italy.
References 197

familial reunification can be one of the success indicators of a protection path,

especially since it tends to be very stressful and demanding after a long separation
and with the influence of traumatic events. Women sometimes feel insecure in the
role of being a mother during the reunification. Therefore, it is important that the
reunification is accompanied by the social services in order to provide the family
with added support, especially at a psychological level and to empower the family to
achieve practical, educational, and social development.

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Conclusion

In 1861, Harriet Jacobs wrote in her novel Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl:
“Slavery is terrible for men (. . .), but it is far more terrible for women”, mentioning
in particular the exposition of women to sexual exploitation. The observation of the
writer resumes the exposition of women to an intersectional vulnerability, within
which it is important to analyse a hierarchy of layers including reproduction rights
and motherhood. The policies in human trafficking have always implemented a
gender mainstream, especially due to the high number of identified female human
trafficking victims in sexual exploitation. Obviously, the study does not claim that
women are collectively more vulnerable to human trafficking than men, since the
affirmation of men’s invulnerability could be risky, but it intends to analyse partic-
ular specificities of women in exploitation that are normally enhanced by the
Patriarchy. On the other hand, one could argue that the assumption that women
are intersectionally more vulnerable than men can enhance the paternalistic
approach, as well as the notion of victimisation that leads to the justification of the
control of the state of women’s bodies.
The comparison in this study between Romanian and Nigerian women in sexual
exploitation approaches the dyad of victimhood/non-victimhood as well as visibility/
invisibility, influenced by structural factors such as citizenship, in this case, the
access to a legal status (Romanian women) or the lack of it (Nigerian women).
Therefore, the study considers the concept of a vulnerable subject which includes a
potential situational vulnerability such as motherhood, by analysing the social
contract of the victim, based on the dependence of the individual on the State.
This analysis comes to answer the first research question posed in the introduction
of this book: Are Romanian women less vulnerable than Nigerian women, due to
their citizenship? Based on this study, the answer is NO.
Structural violence is formed within a cultural and social environment, depending
on the consuetudinary norms that invisibly connects sexuality, violence and politics,
thus the perceived concept of violence is limited to women’s conducts within a social
context of accepted norms, otherwise, the violence used can be justified. Normalised
violence often obfuscates the individual’s victimisation awareness, that

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 201

R. Pascoal, Motherhood in the Context of Human Trafficking and Sexual
Exploitation, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50849-4
202 Conclusion

consequently leads to the invisibility of the considered ‘invulnerable group’. It is, in

fact, based on structural and symbolic violence enhanced by the Patriarchy that
Romanian women do not perceive their own victimhood, normally enhanced by the
element of trust within a relationship of proximity as well as the role of female
breadwinner.
The analysis of the intertwined factors, as much in the origin country as in the
destination country, including social context, the analysis of the concept of victim,
the trafficker’s strategies, and the role of the State, has offered a complex overview
of the concept of human trafficking victim as well as considering the vulnerability
factors in all the trafficking phases. Finally, it was also important to understand the
influence of the factors in a chronological sequence that contribute to the vulnera-
bility of the women.
The legal status and access of rights of the victim influence on the perspective of
victimhood, since in Italy the protection of human trafficking victims is highly
related to the granting of the residence permit. Furthermore, with the improvement
of tutorship to citizens of the European Union, Romanian traffickers have relied on
the use of softer ‘means’ such as APOV, deception and coercion, strongly enhanced
by the element of trust. By improving their treatment of the women and increasing
the percentage of the money the women receive, they implement a false conscience
on the victim regarding her own agency. In fact, despite the fact that coercion is still
applied by the trafficker, the victim feels a certain level of autonomy, especially
regarding their mobility and an increased amount of money. Furthermore, the
entrance of Romania into the European Union has permitted women to return
more easily to the origin country, especially when the victims perceive their exploit-
ative situation. Therefore, while Romanian citizens would normally return to their
home without attending a protection path, Nigerian women normally have the
necessity to be recognised as victims in order to have access to their rights and a
legal status.
The access to rights of Romanian women, as citizens of the European Union,
usually assumes their invulnerability by focusing only on the aspect of their legal
situation in the Italian territory and trivialises the complex situation of Romanian
women engaged in the sex market. The relations of proximity and the element of
trust, in the overlap between the private and the public sphere, can blur their consent.
Obviously, I do not refer to their consent regarding their engagement in the sex
market, but concerning the complexities of their situation. In this way, I do not want
to erase the self-determination of victims, but consider their vulnerabilities and try to
understand the patriarchal norms that have such an impact on the way society and the
state view these women, and how these norms affect our perceptions. The use of
violence of proximity, based on an asymmetric relationship of power, provides the
traffickers with the domination of the setting and the rules. Therefore, the perpetrated
violence is perceived within the private sphere and endured by the women, who seek
their value in the role of mothers and wives, through the recognition of the partner
and the Patriarchal society.
The contract between Romanian women and their traffickers is normally balanced
under a relationship of natura compromissoria and contrattualistica, in which,
Conclusion 203

despite the use of violence and threats, a certain level of autonomy is recognised in
the women under the implementation of a false conscience. The implementation of
the loverboy method is based on an instrumental Weberian relationship, in order to
achieve a purpose, while the victim perceives the relationship as a value-rational
action. The implementation of an emotional false conscience on the victim enhances
the exploitative situation and consequently postpones its end goal, usually presented
as a house built in Romania or a stable future for the children. Therefore, the consent
of the woman is mainly based on the public and private recognition of her sacrifice
for the family, as a wife and a mother. In this case, vulnerability in such a setting
becomes a Butlerian resistance, in which the victim’s agency is not only oppressed
by the proximity relations, especially the trafficker, but also by the patriarchal norms
and the representation of her role in society.
Victimisation is often associated with physical violence, yet, in neoliberal society,
victimisation can also be present within an autonomous space, where the individuals
are controlled by moral norms. Therefore, the identification of a group as autono-
mous, within a setting of state dependency and interrelations, can lead the group into
a situation of invisibility, normally enhanced by the victimisation of another group.
The overall analysis of factors in the destination state, including the legal status; the
social context and the perception of the concept of the victim; the relationship with
the traffickers; and the victim’s backgrounds, dissects the entire exploitative process
and analyses the principal aspects that influence exploitation in both compared
groups.
The internalised submission embodied by the women is used by the traffickers
because the victim avoids aggression from the trafficker by doing what she is asked,
this means that she is vulnerable and this inaction could lead her into an exploitation
sine diem. The lack of physical aggression can lead the victim into a state of false
autonomy, where the justification of the means is based on the sacrificed mother and
partner, thus exploitation is transformed into a state of resistance since the triggering
of survivorship does not annul the oppressive situation and the domination of the
trafficker.
Resistance means enduring the exogenous factors that affect the vulnerability of
the victim, based on the conception of social and material relations. Hence, resis-
tance is the result of exogenous and endogenous vulnerability within one’s agency.
In this case, the victim’s resistance is based on the acclimatisation to, and the
normalisation of, the exploitation, enhanced by the consuetudinary norms over
time. It is exactly the factor of time that differentiates between the situation for
Romanian women and Nigerian women, since while Nigerian women normally pay
their debt within 4, maximum 6, years, Romanian women are exploited for a longer
time, due to their lack of awareness and romantic relationship with the trafficker.
My other research question regards the role of motherhood in sexual exploitation.
After an intensive analysis that confirms that Romanian women are more vulnerable
to sexual exploitation than Nigerian women, I proceeded with the influence of
motherhood on both nationalities. The outcomes were again surprising, as mother-
hood has a completely different effect on both nationalities. Despite the fact that the
issue of motherhood and human trafficking for sexual exploitation is one of the main
204 Conclusion

subjects debated in the feminist cause, scholars tend to neglect the overlap of these
two issues. In fact, this lack of academic literature has hindered the study, and it was
mostly based on field research.
While the role of the mother and its importance has been changing in the last
century, women’s bodies are still the symbolic and cultural embodiment of moral
society, since mothers are considered the pillars of society. Motherhood is, in fact,
the recognition of the women’s competence, the embodiment of norms, regulated by
subjectivity, in a balance between freedom and responsibility. Therefore, in the
patriarchal state, the role of the mother does not usually overlap with roles that
imply ‘immoral behaviours’. This is probably the reason that not much attention has
been given to this subject, particularly, since women engaged in the sex market tend
to separate the two worlds and hide their engagement in the sex market from the
public sphere.
Motherhood can be embodied by the individual as a renewing, changing factor
that affects the body, allowing transformation. In fact, the impact of motherhood on a
victim of human trafficking normally depends on: (1) if the victim was already a
mother when she engaged in sexual exploitation; (2) if maternity provides the
woman with the possibility to assume the role of a mother during exploitation; and
(3) if the woman receives support from the father of the child.
Despite the academic literature gap on this subject, during my research, it was
clear that many victims were already mothers at the time of recruitment. In fact, it
was also evident, especially with the Romanian women, that maternity was a push
factor to enter into an exploitative situation, while for the Nigerian women it was
often the responsibility for the whole family, as well as their children. Motherhood
for Romanian women is mostly lived at a transnational level, being one of the main
causes of remittances sent home. In transnational families, the role of the mother is
usually assumed by another female that cares for the child and maintains a relation-
ship with all the individuals within the child’s network. Therefore, motherhood
before exploitation is normally a push factor to trafficking, especially when occur-
ring in a transnational setting.
Women that engage in sexual exploitation tend to assume the role of the
‘sacrificed mother’ that resists the exploitative situation, resist is not a synonym of
fighting in this case, but enduring, in order to provide their children with ‘a better
life’. In this case, motherhood is a resistance factor for the exploitative situation.
Although resistance is normally perceived as a positive aspect, since it enhances
survivorship in a situation of trafficking, as previously mentioned, it can also lead to
an exploitation sine diem.
In motherhood, resistance is mainly displayed, when the victims were mothers
previous to the exploitation. In the case of the loverboy method, the victim usually
assumes that the boyfriend is the father. In this case, the children are often used as a
coercive tool, in order to manipulate the victims and justify the sacrifice. Further-
more, exploiters use prostitution in order to trigger guilty feelings in their victim, due
to the dichotomy between the role of the mother and prostitution. The ‘blaming
process’ is enhanced by the threats to expose the ‘immoral behaviour’ of the mother
Conclusion 205

to the social services. In this case, children can be the perfect coercive tool used
against the mothers, especially in relations of proximity.
In the novel of Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the
children of the mother slave were her attachment to life, thus, she was aware about
the use of her children as a coercive tool by their exploiter. In the majority of cases,
Romanian women live in a situation of transnational motherhood. In fact, as citizens
of the European Union, Romanian women do not need to have children in the
destination country in order to obtain a legal status. On the other hand, for Nigerian
women motherhood in the destination country positively affects their legal status.
Therefore, contrary to Romanian women, the role of mothers in the destination
country brings Nigerian women visibility in the public sphere, especially due to their
access to a network of care providers for the child.
Motherhood is shaped by the context of the relationship. In fact, in a situation of
trafficking, motherhood can also be a burden, especially if it comes as a result of
trauma or violence. This is another important aspect to consider within the difference
between Romanian and Nigerian women, as it is also connected with the legal
entrance into the destination country. Nigerian women, in the past, would mainly
arrive by plane with a tourist visa, illegally overstaying the granted 3 months. On the
contrary, nowadays, Nigerian women arrive in Europe, mostly through the Medi-
terranean Central Route, after a long journey through the desert, suffering high levels
of violence and sexual abuse. Consequently, the women can arrive in Italy pregnant,
which directly influences the relationship between the child and the mother, espe-
cially since the child can be a constant reminder of the mother’s trauma. Further-
more, motherhood, as a legal instrument that avoids the deportation of Nigerian
women, has also been used and controlled by the criminal networks.
Pregnancy is considered to be a factor of mutation in the embodiment of women,
especially since it is connected with a new identity that it is growing. The respon-
sibility of this new life, bodily attached, gives to the women a new responsibility to
protect the child. It is, in fact, during pregnancy that women start to feel the need to
protect the baby, by protecting themselves. Furthermore, in pregnancy women start
to recover self-determination and control of their own body. Therefore, despite the
fact that pregnancy in a situation of trafficking can be considered an added vulner-
ability; it can trigger the first step to resilience.
Resilience is experienced as an attachment to life, which can lead to the person
overcoming the vulnerable situation. In this case, resilience can be like a vaccine that
triggers and enhances the immunity of the victim. Although pregnancy can lead the
victim into a state of resilience, it is important to note that resilience is usually
enhanced by social, educational and cultural assets, often provided to the victims by
the protection programmes. Therefore, the ultimate resilience of the victim of
trafficking is not only exiting from the exploitative situation but being able to have
control of her own life, evolving to a posterior state of resilience, that intrinsically
perceives and accepts vulnerability, different from the original state.
In conclusion, the complexity of factors influencing both nationalities’ results in
different responses and vulnerable states. Nigerian women’s status as third-country
nationals enhances their profile as victims and, consequently gives them more
206 Conclusion

visibility in society and organisations. On the other hand, Romanian women are
mainly perceived as ‘invulnerable’, falling into invisibility, which is enhanced by
patriarchal norms and normalised violence. Furthermore, the violence occurring
within the private sphere camouflages the sine diem exploitative situation of many
Romanian women. Hence, Romanian women are more vulnerable to human traf-
ficking, as their exploitation leans on the female role of partner and ‘the sacrificed
mother’ that enhances their resistance in exiting exploitation. On the other hand, for
Nigerian women, motherhood can be a resilience factor when it is experienced in the
destination country, since it activates a network of contacts that push the mother to
leave the exploitative situation, in the ‘best interest of the child’.