La traite des femmes d’Europe de l’Est en Italie

Andrijasevic, Rutvica (2005). La traite des femmes d’Europe de l’Est en Italie. Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationals, 21(1) pp. 155–175.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/remi.2354

Abstract

Feminist scholarship on trafficking in women for sex industry has for the most part focused on the living and labour conditions 'trafficked' women face upon their arrival to the country of destination. So far, the feminist debate on trafficking has resembled the previous debates on prostitution focusing therefore on topics such as violence against women and sex work. In this essay, I propose to shift the focus of attention away from its exclusive emphasis on labour conditions and examine the recruitment and transportation phase of trafficking. My study --based on biographical narratives of women from 'eastern' Europe 'trafficked' to Italy for work in prostitution-- brings to the fore the categories of irregular migration, border and crime in relation to trafficking. In doing so, it interrogates the effects of the border-regimes of the new Europe and its material and legal apparatus on trafficking and theorizes trafficking within the context of the EU enlargement. My study maintains that a politically and theoretically informed feminist scholarship should question the current conceptualization of trafficking along victims-organized crime nexus, and address the implications of Schengen border regime and visa policies on trafficking in women. This essay suggests that privileging the criminal-victim dichotomy results in theoretical oversimplification in current trafficking debates, and proposes instead migration perspective as a way of broadening and deepening the analytical framework with regards to trafficking.