Narratives of (In-)Justice in Sex Trafficking. the Case of Nigerian Women in Italy

Representation practices play a crucial role in understanding the historical, cultural and political specificities of the category of ‘victim’. In this regard, the expression ‘sexual humanitarianism’ refers to processes where specific migrant groups are more than others represented as vulnerable in relation to their involvement in the prostitution market (cf. Andrijasevic and Mai 2016). Those who belong to these groups become ‘iconic victims’ (Jones 2010) and are therefore entitled to claim protection rights on the basis of a supposed higher vulnerability attributed to women (and minors, especially girls) involved in sex trafficking. These women are often called upon to demonstrate their fragility in order to obtain institutional protection, thus modelling their biographies and traumatic experiences according to narratives that adhere to the stereotypical notions promoted by humanitarian discourse.

This paper presents the results of a fieldwork research carried out between 2018 and 2022 on the phenomenon of Nigerian sex trafficking in Italy. It addresses forms of gender (in)justice as reflected in the biographical experiences and narrative representations of Nigerian migrant women involved in the prostitution sector. Through the adoption of a biographical approach, the research focuses on the narrative strategies adopted by these women who often face the difficulty of translating (not only linguistically) what they experienced within the rigid parameters of the institutional and bureaucratic vocabulary that tends to make them performing as ‘perfect trafficking victims’. Therefore, in addition to the well known forms of injustice suffered by these women within trafficking circuits, due to the extreme conditions of the journey, multiple forms of violence and sexual exploitation experienced in Italy, the research highlights more invisible forms of bureaucratic and institutional violence linked to different fields of experience of the women involved, from reception to healthcare management, up to the often obstacle-ridden experience of motherhood in diasporic contexts.