Torsdagstalk:

Women on the Move – With Maria Cerio

About the DIIS Report "Women on the Move", which explores connections between labour migration, trafficking, sex work, debt and reproductive health, bringing to the core of the conversation the first-hand experience of migrant women from West Africa.

The talk is going to be about the DIIS Report “Women on the Move”, written by Sine Plambech, Ahlam Chemlali and Maria Chiara Cerio. The report aims at exploring connections between labour migration, trafficking, sex work, debt and reproductive health, bringing to the core of the conversation the first-hand experience of migrant women from West Africa. Fifty-one women are interviewed at different points of their journeys from Nigeria and Ivory Coast through Niger, Tunisia, Libya, across the Mediterranean to Italy and onwards to Northern Europe. Anchored in critical trafficking studies, the report draws on a trafficking-migration continuum to understand how categories of forced, voluntary or irregular migration will vary according to political and moral values. The women interviewed in the study did not define themselves as trafficked, but as women looking for safety and business opportunities. Taking into consideration their personal and individual stories allow us to overcome the invisibility of migrant women usually depicted as just victims of trafficking or criminals crossing European borders and understanding them as agent with an active role in their migratory experience. Based on the stories and experiences of migrant women and practitioners, this report seeks to develop doable solutions to make this migratory path safer.