Migration, Humanitarianism and the Politics of Rescue

DIIS-Researcher Sine Plambech will speak at the Centre for Advanced Migration Studies seminar on human trafficking. The talk entitled “Between ‘Victims’ and ‘Criminals’ – Nigerian Migrant Sex Workers and the Politics of Rescue” is based on original research of a group of migrant sex workers from an area in Nigeria from which migration to Europe is rampant. While in Europe, some of the women concerned were involved in situations that fit the respective countries' legal definitions of human trafficking, and were thus categorized as “victims of human trafficking”; others were categorized as “illegal aliens” because they did not possess the documents required to live and work legally in Europe. Yet, regardless of legal categorization, all of them were deported or returned to Nigeria.

The presentation analyzes the need to identify and distinguish groups of migrants from each other (the “victims” from the “criminals”), and discusses the difficult dilemmas that have arisen in the wake of increasingly restrictive European immigration policies. The presentation furthermore elucidates the experiences of the migrant sex workers and how the legal and cultural rubrics of “trafficking” affect their lives upon return.