The Construction of Silence: Narratives of Nigerian Women Crossing into Europe

Abstract

The trafficking of Nigerian women for the purpose of sexual exploitation is a phenomenon that has been visible in Spain since the 2000s. One of the entry routes is the southern European border from Morocco to Spain where access to the protection system is linked to the identification of women as “victims” of trafficking by Spanish Security Forces. Such identification requires the women to narrate their life stories, despite the silence and concealment in which they find themselves, making their narration rather difficult. From multi-sited ethnographic research and using an ecology of knowledge approach, we propose to analyze how women's silence is built within the Nigerian trafficking journey and how women confront this silence. Results show that, far from being anchored in the victim category as passive and disempowered subjects, women not only provide fundamental knowledge to understand the phenomenon of trafficking but also propose concrete actions for its transformation.