Moderator: Gaia Giuliani (CES)


About

In March 2018, the Oba of the Edo ethnic group, the highest traditional authority inheriting the ancient Bini monarchy, delivered a speech at his palace in Benin City against human traffickers who use traditional religion to link women in the region to international human traffickers. In front of his court dignitaries and in the presence of many of the region's native priests, the King declared the subjugation rituals performed null and void and threatened those who practised them again to 'go mad and die'. Although it generated a lot of enthusiasm in the networks fighting human trafficking and exploitation of prostitution, the effects of the King's pronouncement among the women allegedly victimised were far more complex.

Human trafficking from Nigeria's Edo State, ultimately fuelling a highly precarious sex market in Europe, is a well-known phenomenon that has produced studies and initiatives to combat it at various levels. After presenting the case, providing details on the most relevant dynamics of the phenomenon, my presentation discusses the complexity of the migratory motivations of the women involved and the complex relationship between morality, authority, and individual and family expectations tied to migration ‘at any cost’.
 

Bio note 

Francesco Vacchiano is a psychologist and anthropologist, Associate Professor at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and Associate Researcher at ICS-UL in Lisbon. He has combined clinical and research interests in ethnopsychiatry at the Frantz Fanon Centre in Turin between 1997 and 2009 and at the Centre for Clinical Ethnopsychology in Lisbon from 2014 to 2020. Vacchiano has conducted research in several countries on the main profiles of contemporary migration ('unaccompanied minors', refugees and 'victims of trafficking') and on the policies and practices of their inclusion/exclusion.

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