Tiziana Chiappelli

Migrant Women and the Gender Gap in Southern Europe: The Italian Case

This chapter1 looks at migrant women’s ‘frozen professional destiny’ using a gender perspective, taking into account the ‘gender systems’ that exist in Southern Europe. These are characterized, especially in some countries, by strong inequalities between men and women, as is testified by the annual Global Gender Gap Report (Hausmann et al, 2012), whose index is based on several indicators in four areas: politics, economy, education and health.

Trafficking and Women’s Migration in the Global Context

This chapter analyses the changing construction of trafficking as a global issue. It considers amongst other factors the first international conferences and conventions which introduced a new perspective to trafficking compared with the early twentieth century idea of ‘White trade’, which linked it strictly to prostitution. It looks at the definitions of trafficking, their core assumptions as well as how these inform the guidelines for legislation and social intervention. This chapter also examines some crucial features of the debate on trafficking, both academic and political, and policy measures produced. This chapter draws on biographical interviews undertaken with women in a number of European countries who either can be categorised as ‘trafficked’, according to the existing definitions, or have lived experiences of exploitation which are similar in limiting their autonomy. Finally, it looks at good practices and argues for a new ‘holistic’ approach, considering that the focus on the criminal dimensions of trafficking and a rigid dichotomy between criminals and victims, traffickers and prostitutes, cannot explain either the causes and the dynamics of the phenomenon or the multiple collective and individual trajectories of those trafficked.