Trafficked and Silenced:
How Mainstream Trafficking Discourse Stifles the
Voices and Shapes the Stories of Victims
Dr Ramona Vijeyarasa
Sydney
11 February 2015
Paper in context
• Based on research conducted in Ukraine, Vietnam
and Ghana as well as secondary literature
• More detailed findings published in “Sex, Slavery
and the Trafficked Woman: Myths and
Misconceptions about trafficking and its victims”
(Ashgate, 2015)
2
Outline
1. Methodology
2. What are the three main trafficking
archetypes?
3. How has the “suffering victim” been
analysed in other contexts?
4. How does this apply in the context of
trafficking and how can we dispel these
archetypes?
3
Methodology
• Conducted fieldwork: Ukraine; Vietnam and Ghana
• Involved questionnaires completed by returned victims
housed in shelters or accessing NGO or government
reintegration support
• Interviews with experts from UN agencies, government
authorities, international organisations, donors,
development banks, NGOs
4
Methodology
104 completed questionnaires and 50 key informant interviews
5
A note on the evolution of trafficking discourse
Dominant
focus on
sexual
exploitation.
Stereotypes
are
pervasive
Appearance
of
alternative
approaches
Lack of
empirical
evidence to
defend
alternative
approaches
Ongoing
focus on
sexual
exploitation
and
persistence
of
stereotypes
6
Three Mainstream trafficking
archetypes
1. The naïve woman
2. The inviolable man
3. The innocent women i.e. perpetrating male
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Mainstream trafficking archetypes:
The naïve woman
A Nepalese girl, Chamoli ran away from home with her
boyfriend to India at the age of 16. It was only when she
arrived in the city of Poona that Chamoli discovered her
boyfriend’s intention to sell her to a brothel (Balos, 2004:
137; Coomaraswamy, 2000: ¶12).
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Mainstream trafficking archetypes:
The inviolable man
•
•
•
•
Women are “more vulnerable than men to being trafficked”
(Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies, 2007: 6).
Trafficking “has its roots in gender politics and sexual inequalities,
linked to widespread economic poverty” (Poudel and Carryer, 2000:
74).
There is a “gender imbalance in human trafficking”. Women “often
have no individual protection or recognition under the law, inadequate
access to healthcare and education, poor employment prospects, little
opportunity to own property” as well as “high levels of social isolation.
All this makes some women easy targets for harassment, violence, and
human trafficking” (US Department of State, 2009: 36), all at the hands
of men.
Dearth of literature on the trafficking of men (see Surtees, 2009 on
trafficking of men from Ukraine and Belarus and Horwood, 2009 on
irregular migration of men from East Africa and the Horn to South
Africa).
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Mainstream trafficking archetypes:
The good woman
• Both trafficking and prostitution as “highly gendered
systems that result from structural inequality between
women and men on a world scale”. She continues by noting
how “[m]en create the demand and women are the supply”
(Hughes, 2006: 10).
• Significantly less recognition is given in the academic
literature to the female perpetrator.
• While it is a norm to hear references to the “madam” in
literature on sex work (e.g. Bernstein, 2007; Ward and Day,
2006; Dandona et al., 2006; Wahab, 2002; Thu Hong, 1998),
the female trafficker is not often discussed.
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Mainstream trafficking archetypes:
The good woman
The human trafficker is a young carpenter who moves from the Red River
Delta to Lào Cai province to work for small wood processing factory. He has
the gift of the gab, so he is very persuasive...During the time he is working
in the factory, he meets and falls in love with a girl from Giầy ethnic
minority. He tells her family that he will take her to his home village to
introduce her to his family. In fact he has taken the girl to China and sold her
to a prostitute house (District level government official, Department of
Social Evils Prevention, Lào Cai, 1 October 2009).
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The suffering victim in other contexts:
Agustín and Brown
•
•
•
Laura Agustín: “[i]t has long been recognised that people
who are considered “victims” or “deviants” are likely to tell
members of mainstream society what they believe they
want to hear” (2004: 6).
Agustín: “many make their present circumstances appear
to be the fatal or desperate result of a past event” (2004:
6).
Agustín refers to the comments of one Dominican research
participant, who said, “[a]fter all, if we were forced to be
what we are now, we cannot be blamed for it” (2004: 6).
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The suffering victim in other contexts:
Agustín and Brown
•
•
•
•
Wendy Brown: “totalizing descriptions of women’s experiences that
are the inadvertent effects of various kinds of survivor stories” (2005:
92).
The porn star who feels exploited “invariably monopolizes the feminist
truth about sex work”, while sexual abuse and violation occupy what
Brown refers to as the “feminist knowledge terrain of women and
sexuality” (Brown, 2005: 92).
“…confession is the site of production of truth” and what results is a
tendency “to reinstate a unified discourse in which the story of
greatest suffering becomes the true story of woman” (Brown, 2005:
92).
Suffering is a requirement
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Dispelling trafficking’s archetypes:
The rationale and voluntary victim
•
…many of them are aware, to a certain extent, of the risks when they
set out on their adventure (A. Bruce, former Chief of Mission, IOM
Vietnam; Head of Regional Office for Asia, IOM Bangkok, 21 September
2009).
•
From the point of [a] trafficker, why would I kidnap somebody if I can
just offer a job to someone and they gladly agree and go with me? (O.
L. Kustova, Legal Adviser, Law Enforcement Section, US Embassy to
Ukraine, 2 September 2009)
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Dispelling trafficking’s archetypes:
The rationale and voluntary victim
•
•
•
In data collected from Ukraine, in 67.3% of cases, the
respondent’s mother was aware of the decision to leave
Ukraine; fathers were aware in one-third of cases.
In only 4.8% of cases, no individual related or known to the
victim was aware of the respondent’s decision to leave
Ukraine.
Such responses contradict the suggestion that these
victims were kidnapped, abducted or otherwise
unexpectedly coerced to leave Ukraine and, moreover,
show that there was a level of pre-planning for this
potential movement.
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Dispelling trafficking’s archetypes:
The rationale and voluntary victim
• Rosanne Rushing (2006): “The family’s perception of daughters as a
source of reliable remittances and community norms supporting youth
migration contribute to promote the migration of daughters to the
cities” (Rushing, 2006: 481).
• Rushing: parents “expect their daughters to remain in the city
indefinitely as a secure source of income”, many women stay despite
exploitative conditions and a desire to return home (2006: 489-490).
• Busza’s study – of Vietnamese women undertaking commercial sex work
in Cambodia – stated that they were “ashamed” of sex work and that it
was “bad work”, yet reported pride (Busza, 2004: 240-241).
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Dispelling trafficking’s archetypes:
The male victim
• Based on data from Belarus and Ukraine in which
male victims accounted for 28.3 per cent and 17.6
per cent of the IOM assisted caseload respectively
between 2004 and 2006, i.e. around 685 trafficked
men (Surtees, 2008: 9).
• Only 14 male respondents in my survey data.
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Dispelling trafficking’s archetypes:
Where are the male victims?
Non genderneutral
response
No shelters
for men
Focus on
child
trafficking
Government
and civil
society
intervention
Focus on
sexual
exploitation
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Dispelling trafficking’s archetypes:
The female perpetrator
• Empirical evidence for the male trafficker?
o Erin Denton: Of 191 incidents of human trafficking that were
reported in international electronic media over a 6 month period,
the gender of traffickers was not mentioned in 32 per cent of cases
(2010: 18).
• The role of female traffickers?
• Sometimes they are used as success stories. This woman says, ‘I was
there. I earned a lot of money. I purchased an apartment for my
parents or myself. It is easy. Do not worry’. (Olena Kustova from the
US Embassy in Ukraine, 2 September 2009)
• I would say that according to Ukrainian legislation, for instance, a
woman who has children can request the court to reduce her
sentence or release her because no one can care for her small
children. Sometimes traffickers take these into account and pick up
recruiters who can later be released because of these circumstances
(Olena Kustova from the US Embassy in Ukraine, 2 September 2009)
• Wei Tang: Female Melbourne brothel owner convicted of slavery
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offences under Australia’s Criminal Code
Concluding remarks
• Need for methodologically sound evidence to dispel
archetypes
• Provide an environment conducive to “story telling”
“that is neither confessional nor normative in a
moralizing sense”
• Ensure victimhood is not denied where narrative does
not conform
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