Daphne project: 2002-009
DAPHNE PROGRAMME - YEAR 2003-2004
FINAL REPORT–
SUMMARY
PROJECT N° JAI/DAP/02/009/WY
PROJECT TITLE:
"STRENGTHENING EMPOWERMENT STRATEGIES OF MIGRANT SEX WORKERS FACING VIOLENCE LINKED WITH TRAFFICKING"
Strengthening empowerment strategies of migrant women engaged in prostitution
to combat violence associated with trafficking in women'
From January 1st, 2003 to December 31st, 2004
Coordinator: CABIRIA
Contact person: Françoise Guillemaut
Address: BP 1145
Postal code: 69203
City: Lyon
Country: France
Phone number: 00-33-4-78-30-02-65
Fax number: 00-33-4-78-30-97-45
E-mail: Website:
Partners name and country: CABIRIA (France), MAIZ (Austria), LICIT (Spain), GRISELIDIS (France), COMITATO DCP (Italie), SIMONE SAGESSE (France), HEALTH AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT (Bulgaria), ANIMUS (Bulgaria)
1. Aims of the project
This programme focused on women’s empowerment to fight against violence and escape coercion. Our research was based on the field experience of 6 NGOs based in Austria, Spain, Italy, France (2 NGOs) and Bulgaria with women living in Europe and coming from Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Latin America, Maghreb and from Subsaharian Africa. We explored all the processes in which women have been engaged from the very beginning of their migration decision. Some of them have been forced, others chose to leave their home country, often without being aware of the traps in which they would be caught. Others left their home country, well-informed of the kind of job they would do in Europe. We shared with them their everyday lives, where they are compelled to do sex work, and experience fear, clandestinity and isolation. The central issue of our research was to understand how women cope with their situation; then, our main purpose was: how can we support them in changing their situation regarding of the threat from traffickers on one hand, and restrictive European policies on migration and on victim protection on the other? (We combined research and field actions)
2. Implementation of the project
During the first year, we had two partner’s meetings: one in February 2003 in Lyon, the other one in November 2003 in Barcelona. During the first meeting, we defined the framework of our research, action and collaboration. In November, we did an update of our work: data collection, theoretical backgrounds, local actions, and situation in each country. Then, we prepared the schedule and timetable for the actions and the final report in 2004.
Methodology
The data collection was based on a questionnaire on violence, on the collection of demographic data, on some personal narratives, “récits de vie” (accounts of personal stories through interviews) and direct observation “diary” (journal de terrain).
Our central purpose with respect to methodology was to consider the whole phenomenon from the women’s point of view and consider them as actresses in their own lives. Even though many of them have experienced harsh coercion situations, we always considered them to have personal skills, and recover and decide for themselves. That was a first step to define «empowerment». It was very important for us to work with this background in the field and for our research methodology, because it was a way to help women set themselves free and strengthen their agency.
3. Results and impacts of the project
3.1 General field actions
The field actions were similar in the four countries:
-Outreach: nights and days, in streets or in commercial places,
- Work with cultural mediators,
- Administrative and legal support, especially when women face violent situations,
-Safe shelters especially in France and Spain
In addition, each partner realised various actions ranged from individual support for women to lectures, publications, workshops and leaflets in 2003.
The leaflets for women dealt with violence prevention, administrative matters or health. The workshops for women encompassed self-help and empowerment groups, information on violence, on law, on health, etc. Moreover, in all NGOs in the four countries women could attempt free classes: languages, computer, professional orientation, dance, etc.
All the partners gave lectures or participated in national or international conferences on trafficking, and they presented then the Daphne project. Last, the four partners published articles in academic reviews or in magazines in their own countries.
3.2 Specific actions in Spain and France
-Spain: the young Spanish team, LICIT, experimented the implementation of a drop-in for women in sex work. In 2003, they found the place, defined the action, partnership organisation and made it operational.
-France: An anonymous flat (3 rooms) was implemented in Lyon, in order to shelter trafficked women. 24 women were sheltered (for a total of 2390 days). The women’s stay varied from 1 to 10 months with an average stay of 2.5 months.
3.3 Unforeseen activities
In 2003, European Union took a harder position regarding immigration policies on one hand, and most countries started to forbid street prostitution on the other hand. The women we support in each country are illegal migrants and work in the lower areas of sex industries: mainly streets and brothels (in Spain and Austria). Eventhough they have been trafficked, most of them cannot claim for their rights, because coercion against migrant and criminalisation of prostitution are predominant at a national or local level.
-Spain: immigration laws were in a process of revision and street prostitution began to be pursued.
-Austria: most sex workers are registered, but illegal ones are fined. Be they registered or not they are completely depending on local bosses. The legal framework puts the bosses in a central role: they declare sex workers to the police themselves and they collect the women’s taxes.
-France: new coercitive laws on soliciting and on migration passed in 2003. Migrant sex workers risk prison and deportation regardless of their situation. (An article of the law states that they would get resident permit if they assist the criminal proceedings, but in reality, it does not work)
-Italy: street prostitution has been forbidden, migrant women risk deportation and the immigration laws are still in debate.
In these contexts, the every day work of the field and research teams became more difficult. Women started hiding themselves, became more mobile, they were pushed deeper underground in illegal situation, and they started relying back to pimps rather than to social workers etc. In addition the advocacy for human rights became more important in each country.
In 2004, the project still brought together daily outreach actions in favour of migrant women as well as victims of trafficking and human sciences research on women migration processes, violence against women and their means to escape from all kind of violence. It meant to identify their strategies in order to give them an adapted and effective support. In outreach work, actions of individual support (administrative, legal and health support) and collective one (work shops, classes, information) went on being carried out, together with awairness campaigns toward professionals, scientists and general public (through conferences, demonstrations and publications).
During the implementation of the project "Strengthening empowerment strategies of migrant sex workers facing violence linked with trafficking", we could bring out priority issues for research and action and answer to them (see research report "Women and migration in Europe, strategies and empowerment", written by Françoise GUILLEMAUT and Luzenir CAIXETA, Le Dragon Lune editions, November 2004, Lyon, France, ISBN: 2-9513977-8-X; available in English, French and Spanish).
- contextualisation of trafficking issues, linked with gendered analysis on work, migrations and exploitation, linked with globalisation etc.
- definition of the terms of the debate: trafficking in human beings, traffickers, pimps, victims of sexual exploitation, classification of violences, notions of strategies and empowerment, support to victims etc.
- the impact of public policies to fight against trafficking, immigration and violence on concerned women themselves and on trafficking
- data: what is the form and the extent of the phenomenon? Not any statistical data can be totally reliable as far as illegal activities are concerned. That is why comparison of sources and methods is important, as well as qualitative approach.
- models of intervention and "good practices", how to assess them and compare them according to domestic contexts?
- women's space in all these processes, their lifes, aspirations and reactions.
Migrant sex workers or victims of trafficking are known as uneasily approachable due to their clandestinity and the suspiscion they develop toward institutions. However, our outreach practices allow us to assert that the construction of a relationship of trust is possible. One of the keys of this work on trust is, in our opinion, that NGOs do not collaborate with the police. Indeed, our researches show that police officers are seen by most women as a source of danger and violence for them. This is easy to explain for two reasons: on one hand, they are in charge of implementing expulsion policies and on the other hand, they cannot really protect victims. At last, in women's countries of origin, policemen are quite often corrupted and often take part themselves in rackets of women. It means that, at the moment, it is important not to place women under the control of the police but on the contrary to make it easier for them to access lawyers and organisations defending human rights. And this, regardless of their possibility or will of denouncing or testifying in police investigations as written in the recommandations of the expert group report given to the European Commissary in December 2004, recommandations of which have been validated by the Commission (Report of the Expert Group on Trafficking in Human Beings, European Commission, Directorate-General Justice, Freedom and Security, Brussels December 2004).
3.4 Data:
All data cannot be explained in a few sentences, we will thus only reproduce part of it hereunder. It is available in full in the research report.
Out of 477 women, whose files were considered in detail in the 4 countries, the dividing up by continents of origin was the following between 2002 and 2003:
Latin America: 30 %
Subsaharian Africa: 20 %
Eastern Europe: 47 %
It does not necessarily shows the reality, as it is by nature unknown (due to the clandestinity of people) and it is changing (mobility of people in Europe).
Among other characteristics of women, we can note down that:
- 50% of them are single
- Most of them are between 20 and 30 years old (except for Latin America and French-speaking Africa with an average age of about 40 years old)
- 70 % are from urban areas
- 49 % of them have secondary education or highschool level of studies (12 % have passed school-leaving examination)
- 10 % went to university
- 78 % have a trip debt and 22 % do not
- 77 % of them send money to their family or children
- 29 % have been lured about working conditions * [1]
- 54 % have already been arrested by the police, 10 % have already been in jail *
- 15 % gave at least once money to the police *
3.5 Good practices: outreach
Hereunder are the good outreach practices that we identified:
- Proximity, ethic and trust: teams have first to create trust bonds with women. Not any support, help proposition or accompaniement should be provided by a contract or a legal constraint. It is only from the needs and asks of women that we can elaborate a real work of support and accompaniement. Very often, rehabiliation programmes where women are forced to integrate themselves to obtain papers or when they have been rapatriated with the police, give figures showing that 30 to 50 % of them finally ran away from these places (see research report). The human rights line for women has to come first before States security or the one of police devices interests.
- Empowerment and auto-organisation have to be some favoured methodologies and purposes; it is indeed important to give any mean to women to understand their situation, putting it in a wider political and legal context. This is made easier by all devices of access to knowledge (e.g free classes), by focus and auto-suppport groups where women themselves decide of the content, schedule, speakers and organisation. Psychologising and individualised approach does not seem to be fitting in many situations, except if a woman asks for it herself.
- Research: ethic, respect, women participation. In approaching a research, it is important to keep in mind that women themselves are experts on their own situation. Therefore, they have the analyses keys to understand the traffic phenomenon.
4. Recommandations:
- Do not make denouncement or obligation of rehabiliation a condition to provide support or protection (especially to obtain a stay permit with right to work and to formation).
- To work in priority with lawyers and human rights organisations, better than with the police.
- To revise public policies of asylum and immigration in a more favorable and less sexist way for women.
5. European profit:
- The research report is the first of the kind, in the sense that it explores carefully the way of life and aspirations of concerned women. Moreover, it puts this information in prospect with European public policies and it gives a wide range of data. This way, it can represent a reference work on this subject. It only remains to know if its dissemination will be sufficient. On our scale, we will do anything that is possible to go on with the dissemination but our means are limited.
- Experienced outreach practices are efficient and produce tangible results: women protection and legal support, access to knowledge and to the language spoken in the country where they arrive, access to health and to rights, plea in favour of human rights, fight against violence. Here again, although we are able to go on suggesting actions, it remains to know if the different governments of member States and the European Commission will be sensitive to it.
- At last, this work has definitely strengthened NGOs network and given them a better visibility, as well as a prospect of partnerships expansion to strengthen crossed actions.
Daphne project_2002-009_1
[1]For data marked *, n is according to 100 people answers; it is a closed questionnaire