Research project Negotiating care, post-trafficking needs and gender in understanding help-seeking behaviour (...)

This study is an intervention into the victimological scholarship. It aims to uncover how the interactional process of assigning the victim status and the socially constructed meaning of gender affect the help-seeking behaviour of trafficked victims. Human trafficking is defined as a violation of fundamental human rights and it is classified as a crime in domestic and international law the world over. However, the makeup of the anti-trafficking legal frameworks, their practical implementation and the broader social understanding of the crime vary across the different historical and socio-economic environments. This also impacts the way post-trafficking assistance services are shaped. Comparing two countries that differ in their anti-trafficking approaches and detected victim composition will allow for a deeper understanding of the factors that enable or impede help-seeking behaviour among trafficked victims. For this reason, two Nordic countries (with differing anti-trafficking approaches and  victim characteristics) have been chosen: Finland and Sweden. The current legal frameworks in both countries cover all forms of trafficking indicated in the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol (the document that provided the first internationally acknowledged definition of human trafficking). However, to date, while in Finland the forms of exploitation and gender of the victims vary, the vast majority of detected cases in Sweden comprise female victims of sexual exploitation. This difference in itself makes the comparison of these two countries an interesting approach. Moreover, while there is an abundance of scholarship on the trafficking experience of female victims, the academic consideration of trafficking in males is far less common. Considering Sweden’s relatively limited experience in identifying male victims, Finland allows for a more even representation of both gender groups in the study. Previous studies on human trafficking have illuminated the problems of misidentification and self-misidentification related to the interactional practice of assigning the victim status to the trafficked population. The difficulties in detecting victims of human trafficking obstruct access to justice and, by extension, post-trafficking care services. In events where victims have been identified, access to post-trafficking care services can be an arduous process filled with a number of personal, societal and legal barriers. 

This research involves an ethnographic case study that examines the help-seeking behaviour of victims of human trafficking through an investigation of gendered legal and social constructions of victimhood and the lived experiences of trafficked victims in Finland and Sweden. Following a constructionist approach, this study will explore the nature of help-seeking behaviour of trafficked victims by analysing the construction of human trafficking as a social problem and by taking an interactional approach to victimology, where I will look at victimization as a social process through which individuals are assigned the victim status.

The ultimate aim of this study is to investigate how assumptions about victimhood and gender affect the help-seeking behaviour of trafficked victims in Finland and Sweden, using the post-trafficking assistance model as an analytical framework. 

 

Project managers