Beyond Victimisation: Exploring New Paths of Migration - The Case of Nigerian women in Europe

Human trafficking has been defined as the "facilitation" of movement of people with the goal of exploiting them. In particular, it has also been defined as a gendered transnational crime, as until today, most of the people being trafficked from one country of origin to one of destination for sexual exploitation, are women and girls. This paper aims at contributing to research on this topic, exploring how "blurred" the boundaries between human trafficking and migration are in Europe, today. By using a combination of OC and International Relations literature, the authors discuss two main contrasting positions (i.e. moral approach and sex work approach), using the Nigerian case to discuss how women are active members, even leaders, of transnational criminal organizations, proving how even the women identified as "victims" usually have some degree of agency. The paper aims at demonstrating how both in the case of exploiters and victims the main reason for joining criminal networks is lack of access to resources, poverty, and discrimination, and how in many cases some women perceive migration to Europe for sexual work, as the answer to theirs and their family’s socioeconomic hardship. Given the centrality of EU migration and mobility policies, it is pivotal to deepen the knowledge on the phenomenon to overcome the popular, simplistic narrative which depicts victims as naïve women in need of rescue from ruthless male traffickers, in order to rethink EU migration policies.