Stigma, stereotypes and Brazilian soap operas: road-blocks to ending human trafficking in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine

Resumen

AbstractDuring the last 15 years, we have witnessed a significant and increasing focus on human trafficking in the work and research of international organisations, local and international non-governmental organisations, governments, researchers and academics from a range of disciplines. However, the focus remains on presumed structural causes of trafficking, including assumptions regarding victims' levels of education and sex. Other socio-cultural factors are frequently ignored in trafficking discourse. Based on fieldwork carried out in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine from July 2009 to November 2010, including 50 interviews with key informants, this article directs attention to some of these oft-ignored factors that continue to act as a barrier to ending human trafficking. Attention is paid to three socio-cultural factors that act as road-blocks to efforts to counter trafficking in all three countries: first, the stigmatisation of both sex work and trafficking; second, a narrow understanding of who constitutes a victim of trafficking and third, lack of attention by researchers and activists to the role of images of successful migration abroad as an influential pull factor. These research findings indicate the importance of understanding the intersections between race, culture, gender, sexuality and class to relation to women's and men's involvement in unsafe and/or exploitative migration abroad.Estigma, estereotipos y telenovelas brasileñas: obstáculos para acabar con el tráfico de personas en Vietnam, Ghana, y UcraniaDurante aproximadamente los últimos 15 años, el tráfico de personas ha sido un significativo y cada vez más importante eje de trabajo e investigación de organizaciones internacionales, organizaciones no gubernamentales locales e internacionales, gobiernos, investigadores y profesores de una variedad de disciplinas. Sin embargo la atención continu´a enfocada en las presuntas causas estructurales del tráfico, incluyendo factores como el nivel educativo de la víctima o su sexo. Pos su parte, otros factores socioculturales son frecuentemente ignorados. Basado en un trabajo de campo llevado a cabo en Vietnam, Ghana y Ucrania entre julio de 2009 y noviembre de 2010, incluyendo 50 entrevistas con informantes claves, este artículo centra su atención en algunos factores a menudo ignorados que continúan actuando como una barrera para terminar con el tráfico de personas. Se presta atención a tres factores socioculturales que actúan como obstáculos a los esfuerzos para contrarrestar el tráfico en los tres países: primero, la estigmatización del trabajo sexual; segundo, un concepto limitado de quie´n constituye una víctima; y tercero, una falta de atención por parte de investigadores y activistas al rol de las imágenes de la migración exitosa al extranjero como un factor influyente de atracción. Los resultados de esta investigación muestran la importancia de comprender las intersecciones entre raza, cultura, género, sexualidad y clase en relación a la participación de las mujeres y los hombres en los procesos de migración insegura y/o en condiciones de explotacio´n hacia al exterior.在过去十五年左右，人口贩运已成为众多领域的国际组织、在地与国际非政府组织、政府、研究员和学者调研工作中显著并持续成长的焦点。但这些关注仍停留在引发人口贩运的推测性结构性因素，包含受害者的教育程度和性别之预设，其他的社会文化因素则经常受到贩运论述所忽视。本文根据2009年7月至2010年11月之间在越南、迦纳与乌克兰所从事的田野工作，包含五十位受访者和关键报导人，将关注导向这些经常受到忽略、因而持续成为终结人口贩运障碍的要素。本文将关注三个国家中对反对人口贩运努力构成障碍的三个社会文化要素：首先是对性工作者与人口贩运的污名化；再者是对谁是人口贩运受害者的窄化理解；第三则是研究者与社运者忽略了成功移民者的意象做为具有影响力的拉力因素。这些研究发现显示理解种族、文化、性别、性向与阶级的互动之于女性和男性涉入危险且／或剥削式的海外移民方式的重要性。Keywords:: migrationtraffickingsex workstigmaVietnamGhanaKeywords:: migracióntráficotrabajo sexualestigmaVietnamGhanaKeywords:: 移民人口贩运性工作污名越南迦纳 AcknowledgementsI would like to thank my doctoral supervisor, Dr Helen Pringle, at the University of New South Wales, and José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, for their very valuable comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Gender, Place and Culture for their helpful feedback. I bear sole responsibility for the opinions expressed in this article.Notes1. This article is based on a presentation delivered at the International Colloquium, ‘Debating women: Past and present’ 1–4 June 2001 in Funchal, Portugal, entitled, ‘Roadblocks to counter-trafficking: A comparative analysis of Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine’.2.CitationUnited Nations protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons especially women and children, supplementing the United Nations convention against trans-national organized crime, opened for signature 12 December 2000, G.A. Res. 55/25, art 3(a) (entered into force 25 December 2003) [Trafficking Protocol]. It is commonly referred to as the Palermo Protocol.3. A ‘burger’ is a positive term that was originally used to refer to Ghanaian migrants who had lived and worked in Hamburg, Germany, and was later extended to all Ghanaians who had migrated to Europe and North America for work and had since returned to Ghana. See Awumbila (Citation2010, 4).4. As required by the HREC, a participant information statement and consent form was distributed to all participants to explain the purpose, methods and intended possible uses of the research; why the informant's participation in the research was requested; the confidentiality of information supplied and their anonymity if desired and that their participation was purely voluntary and free from coercion.5. All informants who were contacted in Ghana, except two, agreed to participate in an interview. No response was received from one of these two potential informants, while the other who declined to participate offered the contact details for a different informant. In Vietnam, nine additional informants were contacted for potential participation in this research. This included four local NGOs, three of whom did not respond and one of whom responded by declining to participate on the basis of their insufficient depth of knowledge; one academic with a Hanoi-based research institution and two gender specialists at a multilateral donor organisation, from whom no responses were received. Two staff working for UN agencies accepted to participate but were unable to do so due to a clash in schedules and illness. In Ukraine, staff from two Ukrainian ministries declined to participate in this research (Ministry of Gender Equality and Ministry of Justice). Staff from two additional organisations in Ukraine were contacted, namely La Strada Ukraine and another inter-governmental organisation (which chose anonymity), but were unresponsive during this period of fieldwork in Ukraine. Given the significant role played by these organisations in the field of trafficking in Ukraine, requests for an email interview were re-sent via email in November 2010, and responses to the list of questions were received in the same month.6. Advantages of email interviews include savings in time and financial resources (Bampton and Cowton Citation2002, 25), as well as creating more comfort for interviewees who are engaging in an interview in a foreign language than they might be in a face-to-face interview (Bampton and Cowton Citation2002, 19). Email interviews are also beneficial when interviewing subjects with closed or limited access (Opdenakker Citation2006), in this case, shelter management or staff.7. In Vietnam, two email interviews were conducted in Vietnamese. The questions were translated from English into Vietnamese, with responses later translated into English. Translation was provided by a Vietnamese translator. Ms Do Thi Thai Thanh holds a Bachelor of English from the Hanoi Foreign Language College and has experience translating documents related to HIV and AIDS and migration for both local and international NGOs and international organisations in Vietnam. In Ukraine, questions and responses were translated from English to Russian and vice versa by Roman Ilto, a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. One interview, with Dr Irina Lysenko, a medical doctor at the IOM Rehabilitation Center in Kiev, was conducted in Russian, with Irina Titarenko, Senior Reintegration Programme Assistant from IOM's Mission in Ukraine, translating from Russian to English.8. As part of my PhD research, I also collected data from 104 individual trafficked returnees from Ukraine and five individuals trafficked from Vietnam through a self-completed questionnaire. The analysis of these data has not yet been published.9. National Plan of Action Against Crime of Trafficking in Children and Women During 2004–2010, No. 120/2004/QD-TTg, 14 July 2004 (National Plan of Action).Additional informationNotes on contributorsRamona VijeyarasaRamona Vijeyarasa is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, researching trafficking from Ghana, Ukraine and Vietnam. Her current research uses a feminist, legal, socio-economic framework to assess the assumptions made about the demographics of victims of trafficking, using these three countries as case studies. Ramona earned her LL.M. degree (specialising in human rights) from New York University School of Law and a combined Bachelor of Arts (Politics and History)/Laws from UNSW. She has published on reproductive rights; transitional justice; trafficking, sex work and feminist discourse; stigma and HIV and the Millennium Development Goals.