Reducing the Damage: Dilemmas of Anti-Trafficking Efforts among Nigerian Prostitutes in Palermo

Abstract

IntroductionSicily, long a labour exporter par excellence, has in the O course of the past few decades become an immigrant destination (Booth and Cole 1999; Cole 1997). In the 1970s, Tunisian men arrived to toil in the fields and on fishing boats of western Sicily while women from the Philippines, Mauritius and Cape Verde moved to Palermo and other cities to work as maids. With time, people from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas swelled the foreign population.1 Amid this diversity of origins, virtually all immigrants in this southern Italian region are incorporated in the lowest tiers of segmented, gendered labour markets, performing the dead-end, dirty and demeaning jobs which Sicilians refuse. In Palermo, the island's capital and largest city, most immigrants work in domestic service, but a very visible and recently arrived minority of foreign women, almost all from Nigeria, sells sex on the street.Also setting these women apart from other foreigners is their status as trafficked persons. Trafficking denotes the transportation of persons and the use of intimidation, violence and debt bondage to exploit their labour (ICMPD 1999; OSCE 1999). Most Nigerian prostitutes in Palermo are, or have been, beholden to loosely structured, conational criminal networks.2 Exploiting corruption and poverty at home and possessing a firm understanding of illicit markets, Nigerian gangs have exported thousands of young women to the booming sex markets of Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and other European Union states. Faced with minimal opportunities at home and lacking the resources to emigrate legally, young women (and in many cases their families) have entered into a pact with traffickers, agreeing to pay for passage and a job in Europe. While most women understand the nature of their future employment abroad, in Europe they encounter unanticipated and brutal exploitation at the hands of their co-national female exploiter, the madam, and her male associates. To the frustration of those involved in countertrafficking efforts, most women remain on the street to repay an enormous debt for fear that traffickers will visit bodily and spiritual harm on them and their families back home. The debt paid, some women flee the sex trade, and some operate as independent prostitutes, while others join forces with former exploiters, becoming madams in their turn.The presence of Nigerian prostitutes has greatly expanded and altered the market for sex in Palermo. As recently as the late 1980s, street prostitution was scarcely visible in Palermo. In the seedier parts of the old city, a small number of aging career sex workers could be found. Transient native drug addicts, though younger and willing to perform for less, might well carry the HIV virus or other STDs. In the mid 1980s, North Africans arrived, followed by Albanians. The Nigerians arrived in the early 1990s and soon dominated the street trade. By the late 1990s, clients purchased sex quite openly day and night in the old city and in Favorita Park. The Nigerian population, which may have reached over 300 in 1999, declined as the police began in earnest the periodic sweeps and investigations that continue today, when there are an estimated 50-100 women.3 The continued popularity of Nigerians among clients is a function of cost. Nigerians consistently offer themselves at prices well below those charged by others; in 2004, for example, Nigerians charged about 2025 Euros per encounter, Italians 50, and transsexuals 100 (about US$120). Recent arrivals from Nigeria are more likely to accede to clients' demands for unprotected sex. Racial stereotypes also figure in the popularity of the Nigerians as Sicilian customers hanker after the supposedly hot African woman.The institutional response, tepid at first, gained momentum as the involvement of criminal interests became evident and as the phenomenon became all-toovisible. The two national police forces, the Carabinieri (part of the Ministry of Defence) and the Polizia dello Stato (part of the Ministry of the Interior) made sweeps, conducted investigations, and in 2001 the Polizia established an office dedicated to foreign criminality and prostitution. …