scholarly journals From policies to lived experience and back: the struggle for reintegrating returnees of human trafficking in Goiás State (Central West Brazil)

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (41) ◽  
pp. 163-187
Author(s):  
Runa Lazzarino

This article is based on a fieldwork research conducted mainly in the Brazilian state of Goiás, with a focus on the returnees of human trafficking (HT). The text is funnel-shaped: from the international and national policies, to the relevance of Goiás state as a hotspot area for investigating both the phenomenon and the measures to counter it, to the voices of some key governmental and non-governmental operators directly assisting and caring about the needs of the ex-victims, up to the everyday more intimate life of an emblematic case of a social actor. The aim is to let emerge the complexities of the standpoints around the issue of reintegration of the returnees of HT. The return is conceived not only as a mere geographical displacement, as a simple homecoming or as a matter of good protection policies and programmes. It is also approached as a deep, long and tortuous resettlement of the subjectivities undertaking it. Indeed, through the story of Sabrina, I intend to point out the value of good policies, state measures, humanitarian aid services, but also the distance between these last ones and the actual conditions of the psychosocial suffering of the return migrants, their families and communities.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
LINDSEY APPLEYARD ◽  
CARL PACKMAN ◽  
JORDON LAZELL ◽  
HUSSAN ASLAM

Abstract The financialization of everyday life has received considerable attention since the 2008 global financial crisis. Financialization is thought to have created active financial subjects through the ability to participate in mainstream financial services. While the lived experience of these mainstream financial subjects has been the subject of close scrutiny, the experiences of financial subjects at the financial fringe have been rarely considered. In the UK, for example, the introduction of High-Cost, Short-Term Credit [HCSTC] or payday loan regulation was designed to protect vulnerable people from accessing unaffordable credit. Exploring the impact of HCSTC regulation is important due to the dramatic decline of the high-cost credit market which helped meet essential needs in an era of austerity. As such, the paper examines the impact of the HCSTC regulation on sixty-four financially marginalized individuals in the UK that are unable to access payday loans. First, we identify the range of socioeconomic strategies that individuals employ to manage their finances to create a typology of financial subjectivity at the financial fringe. Second, we demonstrate how the temporal and precarious nature of financial inclusion at the financial fringe adds nuance to existing debates of the everyday lived experience of financialization.


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-370
Author(s):  
Bram J. Jansen

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to contribute to debates about humanitarian governance and insecurity in post-conflict situations. It takes the case of South Sudan to explore the relations between humanitarian agencies, the international community, and local authorities, and the ways international and local forms of power become interrelated and contested, and to what effect. The paper is based on eight months of ethnographic research in various locations in South Sudan between 2011 and 2013, in which experiences with and approaches to insecurity among humanitarian aid actors were studied. The research found that many security threats can be understood in relation to the everyday practices of negotiating and maintaining humanitarian access. Perceiving this insecurity as violation or abuse of a moral and practical humanitarianism neglects how humanitarian aid in practice was embedded in broader state building processes. This paper posits instead that much insecurity for humanitarian actors is a symptom of the blurring of international and local forms of power, and this mediates the development of a humanitarian protectorate.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Eka Permanasari ◽  
◽  
Thomas Lientino ◽  

Kalijodo has a long history in terms of gambling, prostitution, human trafficking and other illicit activities. Although it is a green belt area, the location had always being filled with semipermanent buildings. The area was changed its meaning in 2016 when the late Governor of Ahok with the help of the police and army, eradicated these housing and transformed this place as the community center (RPTRA-Ruang Publik Terpadu Ramah Anak). Together with Yori Antar, Basuki changed Kalijodo into a new center for Jakarta with its mural and skatepark. Former illicit users have been pushed out from the site. Some built a temporary shelter under the highway bridge while others went to their villages. After the fall of Basuki due to the blasphemy crime, the image of RPTRA Kalijodo was contested. Within a day, the area was filled with illegal parking and prostitution returned in different forms taking place under the highway bridge. Layers of meaning and use of Kalijodo transforms rapidly and in results changes the image of the city. Through observation, interviews and archival research, this paper analyses the contestation of the city image by investigating the relationship between the top-down approach and the everyday life uses of space.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sumu Diya Mukesh

<p>This research examines how social stigmas related to sex work and sexual activity in India contribute to the creation of environments conducive to gender discrimination and the erosion of female rights. It seeks to understand, through the work of anti-trafficking staff and the lived experience of sex trafficking survivors in Kolkata, how this subsequently impacts survivors' ability to be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into their communities. Human trafficking directly limits the human rights and freedoms which development aims to facilitate and realise; it is fundamentally a development concern. Violations of human rights are a cause and a consequence of trafficking in persons, making their universal promotion and protection relevant to anti-trafficking. Females constitute 80 per cent of all sex trafficking victims, demonstrating that it is a significantly gendered crime. India is home to 40 per cent of the estimated global slave population, and operates as a destination, transit and origin country for all forms of human trafficking.   This research involved semi-structured interviews focused on experiences and understandings of social stigma with eight staff of the anti-trafficking NGO Sanlaap, one staff member of a partnering Government-run shelter home, and one focus group with eight sex trafficking survivors. Data were analysed thematically through concepts of human rights, social stigma, gender discrimination and vulnerability.  The results indicated that prioritising the protection and promotion of their human rights was integral to Sanlaap's success in rehabilitating and reintegrating survivors. This research, therefore, reinforces conceptual links between human rights violations and sex trafficking, and argues that preventative action needs to have a more central role in current anti-trafficking efforts. The results demonstrate that stigma is a manifestation of power, which enables the subordination and displacement of vulnerable groups, reinforces inequality and power imbalances, and continues to undermine survivor rights to reintegration. This study also highlights where there is a need to advance discourse about cultural rights and sexuality within anti-trafficking work in India, and to implement broader approaches to women's development as part of sex trafficking prevention strategies.</p>


Author(s):  
Batoul Yassine ◽  
Howayda Al-Harithy ◽  
Camillo Boano

Abstract This article examines the socio-spatial mechanisms that emerge when refugees host other refugees. It argues that there is an underlying social infrastructure of care that impacts the refugees’ choice of destinations and modes of survival. When refugees host other refugees from close networks of relatives and neighbours, they create their own spatial clusters. In the process, the social infrastructure of care offers one mode of security to vulnerable refugees. Care as a concept and an approach is related to ideas of endurance and maintenance. It facilitates multiple dimensions, from space, to affection and to the everyday. It is able to reconfigure a life possible, life-enduring and a life meaningful in an urban setting. We focus on Ouzaii in Beirut, Lebanon. Ouzaii has been a destination for multiple displaced groups over different periods of time. Ouzaii currently hosts an approximate 10,000 Syrian refugees. They chose Ouzaii as their destination after they were helped by existing refugees who offered shelter and access to jobs. The resultant socio-spatial practices, flourishing businesses and leisurely facilities are evidence of successful social networks that form an infrastructure of care. They also play a role in the reconstitution of Ouzaii itself. We conclude with reflections on how urban informality may offer refugees an alternative right to the city while allowing them to escape the gaze of the humanitarian-aid apparatus that can signify their vulnerability by reducing them to only being aid recipients. Instead, they form protective socio-spatial networks that have proved to be powerful in sustaining their livelihoods, guarding them from possible social discrimination or political threats.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147332502091390
Author(s):  
Dimitar Karadzhov

Participatory research methodologies have expanded the opportunities for critical, emancipatory and democratic health and social work research. However, their practical application in research with vulnerable participants has historically been challenging due to ethical, practical and theoretical concerns. Individuals who are homeless are typically seen as ‘hard-to-reach’, transient, ‘hidden’ and even chaotic participant populations. Unsurprisingly, examples of the use of innovative participatory research techniques with those groups have been relatively scarce. This paper aimed to address this gap by discussing the application of one such technique – the mobile phone diary in research with multiply disadvantaged homeless adults. Diary methods are situated within the qualitative research on health, illness and social marginality, and the enhanced capabilities of the mobile phone diary are highlighted. The author illustrates the application of the mobile phone diary in his participatory research on the everyday life narratives of adults with serious mental illness (SMI) who were homeless. The process of designing the mobile phone diary is detailed. Following this, participant testimonies of their use of the mobile phone diary are presented. They demonstrate the participatory and inclusive nature, as well as the cathartic and empowering potential, of this technique. The methodological contributions and challenges and the theoretical generativity of the mobile phone diary method are discussed. The mobile phone diary is a feasible approach for eliciting evocative, contextualised and nuanced accounts of the lived experience of homelessness, social isolation, coping and recovery.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sumu Diya Mukesh

<p>This research examines how social stigmas related to sex work and sexual activity in India contribute to the creation of environments conducive to gender discrimination and the erosion of female rights. It seeks to understand, through the work of anti-trafficking staff and the lived experience of sex trafficking survivors in Kolkata, how this subsequently impacts survivors' ability to be successfully rehabilitated and reintegrated into their communities. Human trafficking directly limits the human rights and freedoms which development aims to facilitate and realise; it is fundamentally a development concern. Violations of human rights are a cause and a consequence of trafficking in persons, making their universal promotion and protection relevant to anti-trafficking. Females constitute 80 per cent of all sex trafficking victims, demonstrating that it is a significantly gendered crime. India is home to 40 per cent of the estimated global slave population, and operates as a destination, transit and origin country for all forms of human trafficking.   This research involved semi-structured interviews focused on experiences and understandings of social stigma with eight staff of the anti-trafficking NGO Sanlaap, one staff member of a partnering Government-run shelter home, and one focus group with eight sex trafficking survivors. Data were analysed thematically through concepts of human rights, social stigma, gender discrimination and vulnerability.  The results indicated that prioritising the protection and promotion of their human rights was integral to Sanlaap's success in rehabilitating and reintegrating survivors. This research, therefore, reinforces conceptual links between human rights violations and sex trafficking, and argues that preventative action needs to have a more central role in current anti-trafficking efforts. The results demonstrate that stigma is a manifestation of power, which enables the subordination and displacement of vulnerable groups, reinforces inequality and power imbalances, and continues to undermine survivor rights to reintegration. This study also highlights where there is a need to advance discourse about cultural rights and sexuality within anti-trafficking work in India, and to implement broader approaches to women's development as part of sex trafficking prevention strategies.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-41
Author(s):  
Sara Fregonese

Urban conflict literature has attempted new comparisons between contested cities in conflict zones and cities with no armed conflict. This literature tends to use representational frameworks around defensive planning and normative government discourses. In this article, I propose to expand these frameworks and to engage with epistemologies of lived experience to produce new relational accounts linking “conflict cities” with “ordinary cities”. The article accounts for the lived, sensory and atmospheric in exploring the legacies of conflict on the everyday urban environments. It then reflects on the everyday and experiential effects of counterterrorism in ordinary cities. While this is designed to minimize threat, it also alters urban spatiality in a way reminiscent of urban conflict zones. It then explores the unequal impacts of counterterrorism across urban publics, and their experiential connections with practices of counterinsurgency. The article is structured around two ‘shockwaves’ entwining lived experiences across seemingly unrelatable urban settings.


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