May-Len Skilbrei

Defining Trafficking through Empirical Work Blurred Boundaries and their Consequences

Abstract The definition of trafficking in the United Nation (UN) Protocol on Trafficking from 2000 is the starting point of different countries’ definition of trafficking. In Norway, as in other countries, there are still difficulties in identifying victims of trafficking in the day-to-day work of the police, social workers and others. The definitions of and demarcation between human trafficking and human smuggling have grave consequences for legal approaches, policies and help offered. It is thus necessary to continually discuss how to define trafficking if we want the term to be a fruitful tool in framing the phenomenon—which in turn impacts the ability to aid victims, prevent victimization and to prosecute traffickers. In this article we approach this matter through two qualitative studies among Nigerian women in prostitution in Norway. Their stories are complex and their travels long, and along the way, their migration and prostitution has been organized by different agents. These agents were sometimes human traffickers; other times smugglers of migrants. In this article, we explore which is which, with the definition in UN’s Trafficking Protocol as our starting point. This article is an attempt to analyze the complexities of the women’s situation in order to link theoretical debates on trafficking definitions with women’s lived experiences.

‘Reproachable Victims’? Representations and Self-representations of Russian Women Involved in Transnational Prostitution

The article investigates how the concept of victimhood is constructed within debates on transnational prostitution and trafficking, and how representations of victimhood intersect with representations of the person/self, class, ethnicity, gender and nationality. Using research findings based on observation and interviews with women from post-Soviet societies involved in prostitution in Norway, we discuss how the women embrace, resist or rework dominant representations of migrant prostitution and attendant notions of victimhood, as well as how they relate to multiple notions of the person/self, femininity and nation through their handling of the stigma of prostitution

Is There a Nordic Prostitution Regime

Prostitution policies in the Nordic countries have undergone major changes in the past 15 years. One that has drawn attention, within the Nordic region and internationally, is the criminalization of purchase of sexual acts or services in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland. Finland has criminalized buying sex from victims of trafficking or persons involved in pimp-organized prostitution. Laws concerning prostitution have to be understood in the light of how prostitution is defined and dealt with as a social problem. The recent changes can be explained by reference to ideological developments and developments in the prostitution market. That several countries have implemented similar regimes does not mean that the Nordic countries take a consistent approach. National policies have emerged from different ideological and empirical contexts and have been combined in diverse ways with different models for social work and other interventions.

Taking Trafficking to Court

During the past decade, sex trafficking has been high on the political agenda in Norway. Human trafficking cases have been made a priority since a new section on trafficking was introduced into the Norwegian Penal Code in 2003. This article analyzes sex trafficking court cases in Norway and how judges debate the boundaries that need to be drawn between trafficking and others crimes or situations. Sex trafficking requires legal intervention and policy development, but it is also an area of great public interest. The relationship between the legal and nonlegal processes is presented.

Sisters in crime: Representations of gender and class in the media coverage and court proceedings of the triple homicide at Orderud Farm

In 1999, three people were found dead on a farm in the Norwegian countryside. Two pensioners and their middle-aged daughter were victims of a brutal murder that in the coming three years filled the Norwegian news media. Four people, two women and two men, were charged and convicted of the crime. The perpetrators were the son of the murdered pensioners, his wife, her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. As is the case in many countries, women are rarely involved in planned and brutal homicide for gain in Norway, and this makes it interesting to investigate how such cases and female defendants are represented. This article investigates how cultural assumptions about gender and class influenced how the case and the four defendants were represented in media and court, and concludes that the two women were constructed as opposites in a variety of ways, a finding in line with studies elsewhere on female offenders. Differently from much of the research literature, the male perpetrators were not represented as the brains and muscle of the crime, but rather as dominated by two women who in ways related to class were described as dangerous femme fatales.

Gender and crime revisited: criminological gender research on international and transnational crime and crime control

The increased internationalization of law and the strengthened position of transnational civil society create a need for a criminological research agenda that investigates intersections between legitimacy and representation, punishment and welfare beyond the nation state. This article explores the need for and scope of such a research agenda, and particularly focuses on the potential value of criminological tools in analyses of power dynamics in international and transnational crimes and related legal strategies. We argue that much criminological scholarship is characterized by the application of a bottom-up perspective, a critical perspective on social control and welfare institutions and their practices, and a recognition of the disciplines close relation to and relevance for contemporary criminal justice policies. Drawing on research on conflict-related sexual violence and human trafficking we demonstrate what such a criminological approach entails. In particular we focus on unintended consequences of punitive responses, and the role of NGOs in the formation of criminal policies relating to these fields. We argue that criminology can play a central role in furthering an understanding of global power structures, and suggest important questions such research efforts may engage with.

Mission Impossible? Voluntary and Dignified Repatriation of Nigerian Victims of Trafficking

In the wake of increased internationalization of prostitution markets, European authorities are facing new challenges regarding policy choices between the need to protect the rights of persons trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation on the one hand, and to control illegal entry on the other. The Norwegian case is no exception: the largest cities have seen a dramatic change in the composition of both street and indoor prostitution arenas in the last ten years. The number of migrant women in this sector has increased dramatically. The last few years saw a new development: prostitution arenas of larger Norwegian cities have seen an influx of Nigerian women, from only two spotted in street prostitution in the capital Oslo in 2003 to 638 in 2008, out of a total 1,230 women in street prostitution. One of the most important questions posed by the deliberations in Norway on this emerging phenomenon is whether the Nigerian women are victims of trafficking, and if so, how can Norwegian authorities meet their needs?

International comparative explorations of prostitution policies: lessons from two European projects

In this contribution we reflect on our experiences of co-designing and coordinating two comparative projects on prostitution policies in Europe by focusing in particular on the epistemological workings underpinning their design and execution. We set out two main goals. The first is to shed light on what the epistemological and methodological issues we encountered reveal about the field of prostitution policy studies, an endeavor which can contribute to better comparative research in the field. The second goal is to relate the scope, developments, outcomes and expectations of the two projects to recent attempts to identify a “one-size-fits-all” model of prostitution regulation, and to interrogate whether transplanting it across Europe is a desirable outcome. Building on the lessons learned from the projects, we propose an approach to prostitution policy development that is reflective of the specific contexts within which the policies are meant to be applied.

The Swedish Prostitution Policy in Context

The Swedish Sex Purchase Act has sparked considerable interest and debate internationally since it was introduced in 1999. This chapter describes and contextualizes the political process preceding the introduction of the Swedish Sex Purchase Act. We then describe its implementation and existing knowledge and assessments of its consequences. One key point is that analyses of legislation in the field of prostitution must consider the relationship between the expressed intentions of the law, the formulation of the law, and how the law is implemented. Legal measures are taken based on specific agendas, but their symbolic value and implications are transformed by the way in which the criminal law interacts with other policy domains. With the Swedish Sex Purchase Act, there has been an interaction between the feminist abolitionist agenda, which was the original basis for the policy, and other agendas. Laws are not made once and for all but are continually revised and readily appropriated by new aims, agendas, and actors.

Linking Prostitution and Human Trafficking Policies: The Nordic Experience

In international debates on prostitution policy and in debates on prostitution that takes place within individual countries, references are often made to ‘the Nordic’ or ‘the Swedish’ model of prostitution policy. In Sweden, Norway and Iceland, the purchase of sex is a criminal offence, while it remains legal to sell sex. In debates, references are made to the effects of such a policy on the extent of human trafficking. While politicians and activists are eager to treat this particular way of regulating prostitution either as a great success or a great failure, researchers need to take into consideration how a country’s anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution efforts impact identification of cases, and therefore available figures. In this chapter, we investigate the evidence for how the Swedish Sex Purchase Act influences trafficking to Sweden, and we particularly argue that researchers must avoid underestimating the complexity of the relationship between law and the phenomena they regulate.