I thought I am Modern Slavery: Giving a Voice to Trafficked Women
Author | Dr Maria De Angelis |
Introduction
This paper presents experiences of policy support gathered between December, 2008, and February, 2010, from women who had been trafficked into the United Kingdom (UK). Undertaken as part of wider doctoral study at the University of Hull, formerly trafficked women were asked about their experiences of trafficking and anti-trafficking professionals about their work with victims. The research aim in talking policy with women was to understand how trafficking policy is experienced by women as policy subjects.
The last decade was ‘golden’ in terms of international-UK cooperation in human trafficking. On the 9th February, 2006, the UK signed the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, attached to the United Nations Convention (2000) Against Transnational Organised Crime. This statute defines trafficking as a serious and organised criminal process involving a person’s movement by force or deception into exploitative or slavery-like practices (Article 3). On the 17th December, 2008, the UK subsequently ratified the Council of Europe Convention (2005) on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which sets out a Human Rights-led framework of responses for protecting and supporting the presumed victims of a trafficking crime.3* Of particular relevance is Article 12, which endorses victims’ rights to subsistence living through material, safe accommodation, and psychological supports; access to emergency medical treatment; any necessary translation and interpretation services; counselling and rights based information; and legal help (CoE, 2005: Article 12.1 a-e). This package of supports covering ‘physical, psychological and social recovery’ constitutes the minimum required of ratifying States and provides the policy structure used within fieldwork conversations.
Although this study predates UK endorsement of the European Union Directive (EUP, 2011) - which extends trafficking protection to additional exploitations, for example, of forced marriage - this paper considers the Convention and the Directive in tandem. This comparison is vital since the Directive leads on policy development, and because the new EU Directive and women’s views resonate on so many levels. Comparisons are also imperative given a recognised absence of women’s voices in the trafficking discourse, and especially in policy support. The purpose of this paper is to present women’s perspectives on material help, health care and social support, a perceived culture of disbelieving victims, and family rights. In so doing, women’s voices canvass some of the limitations in existing trafficking support.4*
Before moving to methodology and findings, this paper argues the case for bringing women’s voices to this debate.
Absent Voices
Scholars identify global and localised gaps in empirically-led research on the Protocol and the Convention (Salt, 2000; Laczko and Gozdziak, 2005; IOM, 2008). This gap is considered particularly acute in trafficking research with female victims. As Brennan (2005:43) observes for survivors in the United States:
'…they have been voiceless for different reasons: because of fear of reprisals from their traffickers, their stage in the recovery process, and concern that their community of co-ethnics will stigmatize them. Given these obstacles, it is possible that few ex-captives will ever step out from the anonymity of their case managers’ offices, to give interviews to researchers, let alone public presentations or press conferences as part of anti-trafficking movement activities.'
This is not to suggest that there is no direct research or representation of survivors’ voices. These exist, particularly where trafficking intersects with other more agentic migratory flows. For example, studies have researched experience at the intersection of sex trafficking and migrations for sex work (Andrijasevic, 2003; 2010; Agustin, 2005), at the nexus of economic migration and trafficking for forced labour (Bastia, 2005;5* Skrivankova, 2006), and on transnational marriage in the context of trafficking (Stepnitz, 2009; De Angelis, forthcoming). Victims have also contributed to research on a specific aspect of trafficking experience. Focussing on studies which are either UK centric or UK inclusive, women have participated in research on their physical and psychological health needs (Zimmerman et al., 2003; 2006), trafficking and bonded labour in the UK (Kalayaan & Oxfam, 2008; Wittenburg, 2008); trafficking and migrant domestic work (Lalani, 2011), gendered exploitation (Dickson, 2004) and, more recently, the experiences of trafficked women who end up in custody (Hales & Gelsthorpe, 2012).
In stark contrast, policy evaluations of the Convention and trafficking support do not grant a voice to women, even as the consumers of trafficking services. Victims are not directly interviewed in either of the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group (ATMG, 2010; ATMG, 2012:20) appraisals, which defend the exclusion as ‘unnecessary and possible secondary victimisation’. Nor do they feature in GRETA’s (2012) evaluation of UK delivery.6* Given that the safeguarding of victims is primary in policy, why is asking trafficked women what they think about policy so critical?
Firstly, it enables a degree of movement beyond what is typically known and claimed in the policy discourse. Women possess knowledge which remains hidden precisely because it is not sought after information. Reflecting on her counter-trafficking research with women supported by Poppy and Eaves Housing,7* Dickson (2004:1) writes:
'Many of these experiences will not have been raised by women in any other setting because these are not the experiences that are useful to statutory services in terms of prosecution.'
Secondly, consumer perspectives better connect policy supports with victim-related needs. How one interviews women may be contested (Oakley, 1981; Oakley, 2005), but interviewing women is long recognised for reaching subjective experience valuable for socio-political improvement (Reinharz, 1983; 1992; Mies, 1983; Oakley, 1989; 1992; Kelly, Burton & Regan, 1994). Oakley’s work on social support and motherhood (1992:327), for example, demonstrates a beneficial policy outcome from researching women’s perspectives on mothering:
'The provision of sympathetic listening support through continuity of care, which is what women have been requiring whenever anyone has thought to ask them, is a more effective way to promote their health and that of their babies than most of the medical interventions carried out in the name of ante-natal ‘care’.'
Thirdly, far from constituting secondary exploitation, Morris (1997:29) embodies a far greater harm in denying a voice to survivors of suffering. As Morris explains:
'Voice is what gets silenced, repressed, pre-empted, denied, or at best translated into an alien dialect, much as clinicians translate a patient’s pain onto a series of units on a grid of audio-visual descriptors. Indeed, voice ranks among the most precious human endowments that suffering normally deprives us of, removing far more than a hope that others will understand or assist us. Silence and the loss of voice may eventually constitute or represent for some who suffer a complete shattering of the self.'
In presenting women’s perspectives on trafficking support, this paper can be read as adding women’s absent voices to policy research.
Methodology
Accessing Participants and Understanding Complex Experience
Given that formerly trafficked women are hard to access, a snowball sampling of anti-trafficking projects and networks was key in sourcing participants (Atkinson and Flint, 2001). This search generated twenty four participants whose movements included trafficking, a mixture of smuggling and trafficking,8* or a forced migration. Women with a forced migration are economic migrants whose journeys cross other forms of movement ending in slavery-like practices. For example, one woman sought help from a smuggler to escape persecution in her home country and arrived in the UK without documentation and in debt bondage. Within this participant group, trafficking exploitations fell into three categories – sexual exploitation, forced marriage,9* and forced labour – though, as with movement, some women experience more than one form of exploitation. For example, one participant was trafficked into a forced marriage at home and for labour exploitation in a factory. Another woman was trafficked for forced marriage and sold for prostitution amongst her husband’s acquaintances. Such diversity in movement and exploitation contextualise the complexities vexing the identification and assessment of victims of trafficking (VoTs) in trafficking support.
Sample Profile and Choice of Methods
Women in this sample were aged between twenty two and forty two and possessed fifteen nationalities between them: Algerian, Bangladeshi, British Pakistani, Chinese, Gambian, Indian, Iraqi, Kenyan, Moldovan, Nigerian, Pakistani, Somalian, Sudanese, Turkish, and Ukrainian. With the exception of Algeria, Turkey, and a British born woman of Pakistani ethnicity, all participants originated from top sending countries for UK trafficking during the fieldwork period (SOCA, 2009/10:42). Additionally, China and Pakistan also featured in the top ten asylum producing countries at the time, with Iraq occupying the second top producing country for the UK in 2008 (Asylum Support Partnership, 2009). All participant women were mothers. Some had children left behind in their home country and/or born to British husbands during a forced marriage, or smuggled over with them. With the shortest and longest stay in the UK at one and seven years respectively, most of these formerly trafficked women had been in the country between twelve and thirty- six months. The two women who were resident longest in the UK were content with their immigration status. The longest resident had indefinite leave to remain...
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