Social Protection Programmes: Narratives of Nigerian Women and Anti-Trafficking Practitioners in Italy

This book deals with social protection programmes targeted to people trafficked for the scope of sexual exploitation. It provides empirical evidence on the N.A.Ve programme, in the northeastern Italian Veneto Region, and its evolution. It elaborates on the programme by narrating the subjective experiences of practitioners and of a specific group of beneficiaries: young Nigerian women - some in transition towards the age of majority.

The book builds on qualitative research, including a long ethnographic observation and semi-structured interviews carried out in the period 2019-2021, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It takes an intersectional, social work and humanitarian governance perspective to examine the multiple dimensions of vulnerability (age, gender, geographical origin, type of exploitation) characterising trafficked and sexually exploited Nigerian women. It draws attention to the precariousness of protection trajectories, but also their variability, stressing on the agency of these women. This is done with a postcolonial feminist approach by building on the autonomy of migration and the critical humanitarian governance literature, while shedding light on the temporal tensions between biographical and institutional times.

Calling for greater space for women’s voices and for their involvement in the co-development of protection programmes, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, social work and politics, as well as to practitioners and policymakers interested in migration and trafficking.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Michela Semprebon is Researcher and Lecturer in Sociology and Sociology of Migration at the University of Parma (Italy). She has been the Research Coordinator and Principal Investigator of the EU INSigHT Action (Building Capacity to Deal with Human Trafficking and Transit Routes in Italy, Nigeria, and Sweden), in the context of which she co-wrote several reports and is working on several publications, of which this is one. She has done extensive research on migrants’ inclusion policies, reception and welfare systems, migration in small municipalities, migrants, and housing policies. Since 2019, she has been conducting research on human trafficking and exploitation with a focus on protection programmes and, following her experience as a trained legal guardian, on unaccompanied minors and legal guardianship. Some of her recent publications include: ＂Migration Governance and the Role of the Third Sector in Small-Sized Towns in Italy,＂ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2022), ＂Victims or offenders? The principle of non-punishment and the critical protection of unaccompanied minors exploited in criminal activities in Italy,＂ Sociologia del Diritto (2022), ＂Towards a parallel exceptional welfare system: the scaling down and out of forced migrants’ reception in Italy,＂ Urban Geography (2021).