Vijeyarasa, Ramona --- "Stigma, stereotypes and Brazilian soap operas: Roadblocks to ending trafficking in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine" [2013] UTSLRS 16; (2013) 20(8) Gender, Place and Culture 1015

Last Updated: 12 May 2017

Stigma, stereotypes and Brazilian soap operas: road-blocks to ending human trafficking in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine

*Ramona Vijeyarasa
University of New South Wales - Social Sciences and International Studies
Sydney, New South Wales
Australia
*Email: [e-mail]

WC: 8,670 (+ 1 Table)
CN=Yes
Ackn.=Yes

Stigma, stereotypes and Brazilian soap operas: road-blocks to ending human trafficking in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine

Abstract
For the last 15 years or so, human trafficking has been a significant and increasing focus in the work and research of international organisations, local and international non-governmental organisations, governments, researchers and academics from a range of disciplines. However, the focus remains on presumed structural causes of trafficking, including assumptions regarding victim’s levels of education and sex. Other socio-cultural factors are frequently ignored in trafficking discourse. Based on fieldwork carried out in Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine from July 2009 to November 2010, including 50 interviews with key informants, this article directs attention to some of these oft-ignored factors that continue to act as a barrier to ending human trafficking. Attention is paid to three socio-cultural factors that act as road-blocks to efforts to counter trafficking in all three countries: first, the stigmatisation of both sex work and trafficking; second, a narrow understanding of who constitutes a victim of trafficking; and third, lack of attention by researchers and activists to the role of images of successful migration abroad as an influential pull factor. These research findings indicate the importance of understanding the intersections between race, culture, gender, sexuality and class and the relation between these multiple identities and women’s and men’s involvement in unsafe and/or exploitative migration abroad.

Key words: migration; trafficking; sex work; stigma; Vietnam; Ghana; Ukraine

Introduction
The traffic of women, men, boys and girls is a phenomenon that has been observed on all continents across the globe.^[1] Governments, non-government organisations (NGOs) and other stakeholders have been engaging in counter-trafficking activities for years, particularly since the enactment in 2000 of the United Nations (UN) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol). The Trafficking Protocol defines human trafficking as the movement (recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt) of persons by a range of means, including abduction, coercion, fraud, deception and abuse of power, for the purpose of exploitation (Trafficking Protocol, Article 3(a)). The Trafficking Protocol specifically calls for a ‘comprehensive international approach’ to ‘prevent and combat trafficking in persons’. Nonetheless, an array of barriers to combating trafficking exists, ranging from shortcomings with national trafficking laws and access to justice for victims to obstacles facing victims to self-identify as trafficked victims.
Among counter-trafficking stakeholders, there is an evident, persistent focus on socio-economic causes of trafficking and therefore socio-economic responses. For example, education levels of victims are presumed to be low and barriers to the domestic labour market are often considered a primary cause. Access to education and micro-credit are therefore frequently identified as ‘solutions’ (see, for example, Getu 2006 on micro-finance; Lăzăroiu and Alexandru 2003 on Romania; Poudel and Carryer 2000 on Nepal). Rarely are socio-cultural road-blocks discussed. The purpose of this article is to highlight the global similarities and differences in three socio-cultural barriers to countering the traffic of women and men identified through a comparative study of Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine. Its unique contribution lies not only in the first-hand, empirical data that forms the basis of the arguments made but also my focus on barriers to counter-trafficking that are frequently ignored in policy debates.
This article is based on fieldwork carried out in all three countries from July 2009 to November 2010, including 50 interviews with key informants. In this article, I focus on three key issues. First, I discuss the impact of criminalisation of sex work and stigmatisation of both sex work and trafficking in all three countries. Second, I outline some of the persistent stereotypes concerning who constitutes a victim of trafficking held by a range of stakeholders, from government representatives through to civil society organisations. Finally, I discuss the role of cultural attitudes and myths concerning the ‘successful migrant’ abroad. These are capture in concepts such as the ‘Cinderella Syndrome’ in Ukraine or images of Ghanaian ‘burgers’^[2] or the forming of expectations based on Brazilian soap operas. The creation of false or exaggerated expectations act as a significant barrier to preventing unsafe migration whereby potential migrants risk the possibility of facing exploitative and trafficking-like conditions.
A common thread evident throughout this article is how class, race, sexuality and culture intersect to reinforce women’s marginalisation, including from labour migration opportunities abroad. Globalisation and macro-economic reforms have created increased job opportunities for women migrants and we regularly see women seeking to transform their geo-political reality through migration, in search of a comparatively improved life. Simultaneously, however, barriers to legal migration create the risk of unsafe irregular migration and social and economic vulnerability for women.
Despite this evident rational decision-making involved at some point in the departure from the source country, human trafficking is frequently framed as the result of the involuntary movement of victims, with stories of women who are lured or kidnapped against their will (Jeffreys, 2002: 47; See also Balos, 2004). Trafficking is viewed as something that happens to women, as opposed to exploitation experienced by women who make a concerted and legitimate attempt to change their lives. In contrast to this framework, as research increasingly demonstrates (for example, Banerjee 2006, 192-193; Chapkis 2003, 931-932), modern-day trafficking frequently involves economic migrants, who may even know that the tourist visa on which they travel has been obtained without disclosure of the intention to work in the destination country. A significant number of victims of trafficking, therefore, do consent to their initial entry into a situation that involves unexpected exploitative or coercive conditions of work. It is because of this exercise of agency that I refer to the ‘trafficked migrant’ throughout this article. Nonetheless, at not stage do I wish to deny the victimhood of these exploited migrants.
The particular originality of this article lies in the exploration of several issues often excluded from trafficking discourse and particularly counter-trafficking debates, which instead focus on structural inequalities as both the primary causes of human trafficking and the focus of counter-trafficking responses, such as targeting levels of education or offering micro-credit as a ‘solution’. A feminist approach to the questions of borders, migration, sex work, and economic empowerment has been adopted, highlighting how underlying gender inequality, stereotypes and stigmatisation are at play as women negotiate their movement and livelihoods. Overall, the findings of my fieldwork provide the basis for recommendations for political reform, legal amendments and socio-cultural change in order to build more effective counter-trafficking efforts.

Context: historical, legal and political context
This research is unique for its deliberate selection of countries from three different regions (Asia, West Africa and Eastern Europe). There are very few comparative studies of human trafficking (Laczko 2005, 9), and of comparative published studies, countries are typically studied and discussed individually and the comparisons made between them tend to be superficial (Anderson and Davidson 2003; see also Kyle and Koslowski 2001). Therefore, one of the most important and innovative aspects of this article is its global and comparative scope.
Turning to the definition of human trafficking, in December 2000, the global community met to negotiate the drafting of the Trafficking Protocol in Palermo (often referred to as the Palermo Protocol), reaching a form of international consensus on a definition of trafficking. Having become a signatory to the Trafficking Protocol on 15 November 2001 and later ratifying it on 21 May 2004, Ukraine’s Criminal Code has been amended several times to bring the definition into alignment. This can be contrasted with the governments of Vietnam and Ghana, neither of whom has ratified the Protocol.
However, several provisions of the Ghanaian Human Trafficking Act of 2005 mirror those of the UN Trafficking Protocol, while other provisions broaden its scope. The primary difference between the Ghanaian and international provisions is the inclusion of internal as well as cross-border movement. Of particular significance for the purposes of this discussion is Article 1(4), where the consent of the child, parents or guardian cannot be used as a defence in a trafficking prosecution. This reflects an adaptation to the Ghanaian context where research has documented the involvement of parents in the selling of children and a history of child fosterage, adoption and migration for school and work (Klomegah 2003; Riisøen et al. 2004).
Both the national anti-trafficking legislation in Ukraine and Ghana address the trafficking of both men and women. By contrast, the exclusion of male victims of trafficking was a stark omission in Vietnam’s former Penal Code’s Articles 119 and 120 which criminalised trafficking in women and trading in, fraudulently exchanging, or appropriating children. Further, Article 1 of the Law on Child Protection, Care and Education (2004) defines children as Vietnamese citizens under 16 years of age, not those under 18 years of age as in international law (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Art. 1). Therefore, male children aged 16 to 18 were excluded altogether from the protection of Vietnamese law on trafficking.
As of January 2010, the same provisions remained unrevised but were expanded to include trafficking of men. More importantly, however, a new law, which entered into force on 1 January 2012, attempts to clarify much of the confusion around particular terms. However, several gaps remain. Article 2 defines ‘labour coercion’ to be ‘the use of violence, threat to use violence or other tricks to force people to work against their will’ (Article 2(5)). This definition excludes other forms of labour exploitation apart from forced work, such as excessively long days or working weeks, or – as I believe is central to understanding trafficking – forcing a person to work beyond the expectations (in terms of conditions or scope of work) negotiated prior to leaving their home country.
Beyond the technical criticisms outlined above, the law is an improvement on previous approaches of the government of Vietnam, calling for victims to not be stigmatised or discriminated against (Article 4(2)). However, the law continues to group trafficking with ‘other social vices’ (Article 5(1)), including sex work, drug use and HIV which is only a minimal improvement of the former language of ‘social evils’ (see Vijeyarasa 2010a, for a detailed analysis on how the language of social evils reinforces and exacerbates the stigma already experienced by victims of trafficking).
In terms of the patterns of movement across all three countries, Ukrainians are trafficked to around 55 different countries, a large majority to the Russian Federation, Poland, and Turkey, but also as far as South Korea, Nigeria and Yemen (International Organisation for Migration (IOM) 2006). According to a report published by IOM in 2006, human trafficking for both labour and sexual exploitation was estimated to involve 117,000 Ukrainian victims (IOM 2006, 12), the largest number of victims from any country in the world. However, given the inconsistencies and the lack of definitional clarify in the domestic law, it is unclear whether the 117,000 victims would similarly be considered ‘victims of trafficking’ if assessed against the UN Trafficking Protocol’s definition or national legislation in other countries. I would therefore challenge the contention that Ukraine has the highest rates of trafficking in the world and would argue that the weaknesses in global and national data collection make this an unreliable statement.
There is a dearth of literature on trafficking, or irregular migration more broadly, from Ghana. Informants identified child trafficking as a widespread problem across Ghana, tied to historical patterns of labour migration that include children, particularly during holiday seasons. The problem of drawing a distinction between child labour and fosterage and trafficking was also identified. According to informants and existing research this child labour involves children as young as four, particularly in the fishing industry, for fetching water and untangling and mending nets (Riisøen et al. 2004, 28-29). Regarding the scope of adult trafficking, whether internally or to destinations outside of Ghana, some informants were explicit about the lack of concrete data. Informants from the Ghana Immigration Service and Ghana Police Anti-Human Trafficking Unit offered varying statistics, even when both referred to the National Database on Human Trafficking. Victims appear to be trafficked from Ghana to destinations that include Senegal, Kuwait, Damascus, Equatorial Guinea, Russia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Côte d'Ivoire, US and Germany, the majority of the identified victims being women. Many irregular migrants previously reached Europe by travelling through Libya (Awumbila 2010). Women from China, Thailand and the Philippines have been identified as trafficked to Ghana to work, both knowingly and unknowingly, in the sex sector.
Currently, trafficking flows from Vietnam reflect the ease of cross-border movement, predominantly and unsurprisingly in the direction of China and Cambodia, and the majority of data concerns these two destination countries (Siren 2008; Marshall 2006, 13; Duong and Thu Hong 2008, 197-198). Estimates in this case vary, with one literature review on trafficking to and from Cambodia suggesting that between 15% to 32% of sex workers, not necessarily victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation, in Cambodia are of Vietnamese origin (Derks, Henke and Ly 2006, 22-23). Data from the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation suggests that 50% of the trafficked persons of Vietnamese origin identified in Cambodia come from An Giang province in the south of Vietnam (Siren 2008, 2). Stakeholders also indicate some evidence of Vietnamese victims in other destination countries, including South Africa, the Czech Republic and United Kingdom, but there is limited information documenting new routes (A. Bruce, IOM, pers. comm., 21 September 2009).

Research design
This article is based on fieldwork carried out in Ukraine, Vietnam and Ghana from July 2009 to November 2010. As part of the qualitative phase of this research, I conducted interviews with 50 key informants in all three countries. Informants were contacted via email and provided in advance with a standard set of questions to aid a semi-structured interview. Approval was granted for this fieldwork by the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of the University of New South Wales on 1 June 2010.^[3] In each of the three countries, several people contacted declined to participate in the research.^[4]
Regarding the selection and scope of informants, interviewees were selected based on their expertise and competence in the field and also to ensure that informant data was collected from a diverse range of stakeholders. Interviewees spanned thematic specialists, including in relation to trafficking, migration, women’s and children’s rights and were drawn from management-level, programme and policy staff in UN agencies, international organisations, local and international non-government organisations (NGOs), donors, and if accessible, government authorities, as well as academia. The questions discussed spanned the profile of victims and traffickers, as well as how trafficking is understood by different stakeholders. Informants were also asked about the process of movement, and their views on the causes of trafficking. Attention was paid in interviews to the various push and pull factors and the differing roles these play in driving movement.
In both Ukraine and Ghana, potential key informants were very forthcoming, including recommending other potential interviewees and offering to make introductions for me to others working in the field. Therefore, the selection of informants utilised principles of a snowball approach, with all recommended interviewees either previously or subsequently interviewed for this research. Given that the utility of snowball sampling as a tool depends greatly on the initial contacts and connections made, it should be noted that the initial set of potential interviewees was based on the secondary literature and a compilation of all organisations working on human trafficking in that country.
Informants in Vietnam were particularly reserved, both informants of Vietnamese nationality as well as non-nationals working in Vietnam in the development sector. Only on very few occasions did informants refer to other potential interviewees. In this regard, it is particularly important to note the lack of freedom of association in Vietnam, including freedom of expression among NGOs in what has been called a ‘state-led civil society’ (Lux and Straussman 2004). This is reflected in the large number of informants in Vietnam who chose anonymity, with 10 informants choosing complete anonymity and two choosing partial anonymity.
A further observation, particularly with regard to Vietnam and Ukraine, made throughout the interview process was the tendency for views to be repeated by key informants in a way that raised doubt as to whether they had been informed by the same source. This might include reading the same report or piece of research, listening to the same speech or attending the same workshop or training. Indeed, the anti-trafficking community in both Vietnam and Ghana is sufficiently small, and in Ukraine, significantly larger but well connected, that there is a great deal of information sharing, particularly through the NGO reintegration networks in Vietnam and Ukraine, whose members work in partnership with the government and international organisations. This potentially suggests that the breadth of knowledge is fairly limited and obtaining diverging opinions is a challenge.
This data collection involved both face-to-face interviews (44) as well as email interviews (8). While face-to-face interviews are preferred, the validity of email interviews has been elsewhere recognised (Bampton and Cowton 2002).^[5] While I accepted these email interviews as a valid reflection of the opinion of informants, I also recognise their shortcomings, including lack of spontaneity and the challenge of probing for further opinions. The support of local translators was solicited for translation of interview questions and responses from English into Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Russian and vice versa.^[6] In all three countries, face-to-face responses were recorded and transcribed by the author and analysed through key word coding.


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Finally, this article demonstrates how broader socio-cultural factors hinder efforts to prevent the exploitation of women under trafficking-like conditions from all three countries.I have therefore chosen to focus my discussion on data collected from key informants, rather than on data collected from individual returnees. While I note the importance of the voices and first-hand experiences of individuals, my primary goal in this article is to understand broad patterns of migration and movement. I have therefore chosen to assess the perspectives of key informants of these macro push and pull factors and barriers to countering trafficking and how these relate to existing policy debates, rather than individual migrant experiences.^[7]


Findings: socio-cultural road-blocks to counter-trafficking
In the following section, I discuss evidence from my informants, set against existing literature and other empirical data, of the existence of socio-cultural factors that undermine efforts to counter-trafficking. As discussed below, these socio-cultural factors stifle discussions, exacerbate the difficulties facing trafficking returnees to identify as trafficked and access reintegration services, reinforce the narrow focus on female and child victims and create false expectations for potential migrants about work and life abroad.

The criminalisation and stigmatisation of sex work and trafficking
I contend that counter-trafficking efforts are directly hindered by the stigmatisation of both sex work and trafficking. While it is important to highlight the differences between trafficking and sex work, the stigma experienced by trafficked returnees who have been forced into providing sexual services in many respects parallels the social marginalisation, violence, discrimination and harassment often directed towards sex workers. Stigmatisation is intimately connected to criminalisation. In this regard, it is important to note that the buying and selling of sexual services is prohibited in all three research countries, although selling sexual services is treated as an administrative offence in Ukraine. Capital gain from sex work is also prohibited.
In earlier articles, I have explored how trafficking is a highly stigmatised issue, exacerbated by the stigma associated with sex work (Vijeyarasa 2010a) and in instances where trafficking for sexual exploitation heightens risks of HIV infection (Vijeyarasa and Stein 2010). According to the Canadian sociologist Erving Goffman, stigma reduces individuals ‘from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’, resulting in the person being ‘disqualified from full social acceptance’ (Goffman 1963, 3). More recently, the concept of stigma has been associated with Gail Pheterson’s writings on ‘whore stigma’ in which she discusses women’s socialisation about sexual practices and concepts such as dishonour. Her categorisation of ‘whore’ and those practices which are stigmatised is broad, spanning ‘prostitutes’, women engaging in sex with multiple partners, to ‘victimised women’ who are unable to handle brash, drunk or abusive men (Pheterson 1993, 46).
Stigmas are powerful social labels that have profound consequences for those individuals to whom they are applied. Stigmatised individuals are subject to a range of penalising behaviours, from shunning and avoidance to restraint and physical abuse and assault (enacted stigma) (Hallgrímsdóttir, Kristín, Phillips, Benoit and Walby 2008, 120). Writing on HIV and AIDS, on which much of the literature on stigma is based, Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton have added to these earlier concepts of categorisation and labelling, the notion that stigma is about power relations. Stigma plays a role in ‘producing and reproducing relations of power and control’ (Parker and Aggleton 2003, 16). By causing some groups to feel devalued and others superior, stigma is centrally linked to the question of social inequality and social exclusion (Parker and Aggleton 2003, 16). Culture, gender and the body are at the heart of this analysis, particularly in relation to how we understand social order and therefore disorder (Parker and Aggleton 2003, 17-18). Through the use of words, images and practices, certain groups and their behaviours are marginalised, with stigma used to establish a social hierarchy and social order (Parker and Aggleton 2003, 18). Stigma also plays a role in exacerbating pre-existing inequalities, whether in relation to race, gender, religion, ethnic status etc. (Parker and Aggleton 2003, 19).
Stigmatising approaches to both sex work and trafficking inhibit self-identification as victims. Such approaches further act as a barrier to public recognition that trafficking for sexual exploitation is actually taking place. Stifled discourse on the topic undermines prevention through greater awareness-raising, particularly where an individual may have been aware that they would be providing sexual services in the destination country but is unaware of the conditions they will face. Combating stigma would not only reduce the rights violations suffered by male and female sex workers, but further, changing social norms is a crucial precursor to successful reintegration of returned victims of trafficking.
In Vietnam, for example, the designation of sex work as a ‘social evil’ alongside HIV and drug use, has corrupted attitudes in Vietnamese society towards sex workers generally but also towards victims of trafficking, who in turn, suffer stigma upon their return to Vietnam. This is obviously exacerbated where sex workers and trafficked persons are found to be HIV positive. Underlying this nexus between trafficking, sex work and HIV-related stigma in Vietnam is gender inequality (Vijeyarasa 2010b). Stigmatisation, coupled with inequality in terms of sexuality, gender and class status perpetuate this marginalisation.
Moreover, stigma is highly gendered. Given the Government of Vietnam’s long-standing (although changing) focus on trafficking in women and children (that is, excluding trafficking of men) and female sex workers, women bear the greater weight of these forms of stigma. Trafficking is understood in Vietnam as an ‘urgent and pressing problem, badly affecting the society, customs, tradition, social morals and Government laws, destroying family happiness, increasing the risks of HIV/AIDS transmission and resulting in potential impacts on national and social security’ (National [NPA] Action, Part I, § 1: Government of Vietnam 2004), with the agency responsible for trafficked returnees being the Department of Social Evils Prevention (DSEP). This approach, in my view, serves to implicate victims of trafficking and to stigmatise further an already stigmatised population (see further Vijeyarasa 2010a). In turn, this policy hinders individuals from self-identifying as victims. As one shelter staff noted (Vijeyarasa 2010a, 93):

Returnees seem too often [to] be affected by stigma with all their surroundings. They generally walk the streets wondering who knows of where they’ve been and what they’ve done. One female told us about how she was refused nail service because the nail technician knew that she had been in Cambodia and that anyone who had come back from Cambodia must be HIV/AIDS infected. Families of the victims also have been known to be ashamed of their daughters and reject them upon return (Shelter staff, Vietnam).

Victim blame is similarly an issue in Ukraine, where the media was critiqued by one of my informants for making ‘stigmatised statements’. The informant continued by noting that ‘very often the blame is still on the victims which is a big problem because then that leads us to victims not being able to come out and identify and victims suffering deeper trauma and not reintegrating back into society’ (Tatiana Ivanyuk, Counter-trafficking specialist, International Organisation for Migration, 3 September 2009). Two other informants similarly referred to victim blame, with one contending that this ‘perception, that it is their own fault, probably feeds into prosecution,’ a reference to the limited success in prosecuting traffickers in Ukraine (Anon., Senior management, Inter-governmental organisation, 27 August 2009).
The issue of stigma and criminalisation surrounding both sex work and trafficking has arguably had the most extreme impact in Ghana. As in Vietnam, criminalisation of returnees is an issue in Ghana. According to the Assistant Director of Migration from the Ghana Immigration Services, Judith Dzokoto, upon return, some returnees are ‘not treated like victims, they are treated like criminals. So it is difficult for them to come forward unless you assure them that when they return’ (Judith Dzokoto, Assistant Director of Migration, Ghana Immigration Service, 17 November 2010). Moreover, in Ghana, there was an evident discomfort among my informants in discussing sex work and/or trafficking for sexual exploitation, with one informant from a government ministry referring to sex work as ‘doing that’.
Among legislators, judiciary and policy makers, as well as civil society, trafficking is synonymous with child labour and exploitation, with the movement and exploitation of men and women simply unknown, unseen or ignored in Ghanaian trafficking debates. However, movement of adult Ghanaian women has been documented by the police and the Ghanaian Human Trafficking Unit, with women seeking economic betterment and suffering exploitative working conditions in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Cameroon, as well as Holland, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States (see also Taylor 2002 and Adomako-Ampofo 2001, two of the only authors that I have identified that document the traffic of Ghanaian women and girls, including into the sex industry, although both are now out-of-date and at times lack first-hand data to support the claims they make). I contend that the discomfort in Ghana with discussing the choices and experiences of Ghanaian sex workers (whether working domestically or abroad) leads to a tendency to turn a blind eye to migrant sex workers who experience exploitation outside of Ghana.
I discussed at length the issue of research on sex work and sex workers in Ghana with one informant. An academic with the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana, the informant referred to failed attempts, among a group of researchers to obtain first-hand empirical data from what was widely believed, across Ghana (and mentioned to me by numerous informants) to be Ghanaian sex workers working in Koforidua the country’s east. Stating that they were ‘difficult to find [the sex workers]’, he explained to me how he contacted the woman presumed to be ‘their madam’, shared the information he had regarding the existence of sex work in the area and requested her help to speak with sex workers in the area: ‘She denied it. She was even angry. How can you associate that with my workers?’ (Anon., Center for Migration Studies, University of Ghana, 18 November 2010). This anecdotal story raises a range of issues that cannot be explored at length in this article. Perhaps these women were not sex workers in the first place, a situation which speaks to the widespread myths and rumours surrounding sex work in Ghana. In addition, this experience reflects the possible unintended role of researchers in undermining the anonymity of sex workers where sex workers choose not to be public about their work and where researchers might prioritise their own goals over the rights and best interests of informants, including their safety, particularly when researching highly stigmatised topics (on this point, see Harrison 2006 and Andrees and van der Linden 2005 but on trafficking for sexual exploitation and not sex work). Discussing more recent research on the irregular migration of women from the Brong-Ahafo region to Libya, elsewhere in Africa and to Europe, the informant further noted how stigma is a barrier for these sex workers to speak to researchers (Anon., Center for Migration Studies, University of Ghana, 18 November 2010).
Labelling in Ghana is also rife, with one informant noting the ‘high’ numbers of Ghanaian migrant sex workers who in the past worked in Cote d’Ivoire, these girls being referred to as ‘Monrovia girls’, having travelled through Liberia (Eric Peasah, IOM Ghana, Counter-Trafficking Field Manager, technical Cooperation Department, 21 July 2010). As an irregular migrant, if you have ever travelled that way through Libya, ‘then you are this’ (Anon., Center for Migration Studies, University of Ghana, 18 November 2010). The informant went on to note, ‘They will deny that they ever travelled to Libya because it is a problem. If the person wants to get married, it is difficult.’
Consequently, I would contend that in Ghana, the desire to avoid admitting and conversing about known sex work has resulted in a lack of discussion around the issue, with this closed approach similarly resulting in a failure to publicly discuss the trafficking of women abroad for sexual exploitation. The impact on counter-trafficking is reflected in the lack of resources, data and debate on the traffic of Ghanaian women, particularly when compared to child trafficking.
Finally, regarding the gendered nature of stigma, informants in both Ghana and Ukraine also referred to male victim stigma. In relation to reintegration or prevention programmes, one informant, a former ILO-IPEC National Programme Coordinator in Ghana noted, ‘A man going forward and saying I am unemployed and I need assistance, this is not likely. It is more often the women who go. In most of our empowerment activities, we have less than 1% of men’ (Dr Margaret Sackey, Former ILO-IPEC Ghana National Programme Coordinator, 22 July 2010). Similar comments were raised by several informants in Ukraine. When it comes to male identification, ‘[m]en are less willing to recognise themselves as victims, men are less visible, they tend to keep to themselves whereas women come out easier, bond with others. People in similar situations bond with each other, so the data, I would really question (Tatiana Ivanyuk, Counter-trafficking specialist, International Organisation for Migration, 3 September 2009). As a result, Dr Lysenko, medical doctor with the IOM Rehabilitation Center in Kiev, notes how self-identification as a victim is a challenge for Ukrainian male trafficked returnees (Dr Irina Lysenko, Medical doctor, IOM Rehabilitation Center, Kiev, 20 August 2009). Similar views were shared by the Director of a local NGO who identified ‘shame’ as the main barrier to identifying what appear to be a large number of Ukrainian men trafficked from the Lugansk Oblast in Ukraine (Lilia Koveshnikova, Director, Women of Donbass, Lugansk Oblast, trans. pers. comm., 29 July 2009).

The ‘quintessential’ victim of trafficking
It is frequently assumed by academics and policy makers that trafficking is gendered and the gender is female. These discussions have two primary angles. First, it is generally assumed that there is a significant causal connection between gender equality and trafficking (see for example United States Government Department of State 2009, 36; Heyzer 2002). Second, and consequently, it is often assumed that the majority of victims of trafficking are female, with men excluded primarily or entirely from trafficking debates, data collection and responses. At other times, it is ethnic minority populations who are considered most vulnerable, while elsewhere the focus might be on child victims (see for example Lawrance 2010, 74 on Ghana). A narrow understanding of who constitutes a victim of trafficking was evident in all three countries. Counter-trafficking initiatives targeting what is presumed to be the ‘quintessential victim’ are consequently skewed. In the following section, I discuss this skewed focus.
In Vietnam, many field workers associate trafficking with the sex industry and exploitation of women and children (pers. comm., Program officer, international organisation, Vietnam, 5 October 2009). However, trafficked women are frequently required to provide sexual services in conjunction with other exploitative labour (Kelly 2005, 235). This bi-dimensional aspect of trafficking is often neglected. In addition, a major factor contributing to this narrow understanding of trafficking has been the lack of legal protections for male victims of trafficking until the recent legal amendments noted above. To the contrary, anecdotal evidence of trafficking of men for labour exploitation has been documented, particularly from Lao Cai, a northern mountainous province of Vietnam, to China as well as for factory work in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia (Duong and Thu Hong 2008, 119).
In addition, a strong connection is often drawn, including by NGO activists and government authorities, between ethnic minorities’ status and trafficking, that is, it is presumed that the mountainous ethnic minority communities of Vietnam are particularly prone to trafficking. I argue that this assumption unjustifiably assumes that Vietnam’s ethnic minorities experience patterns of trafficking similar to that of Thailand’s ethnic minority population (Lyttleton 2002; Raymond et al. 2002, 60, 138) and in fact conflates migration among ethnic minorities with trafficking. As one donor informant noted, ‘[w]e do not have a clear picture of what is really the issue and how serious it is and where are people coming from. Of course, there is an assumption. As far as I know, most of the victims or survivors are from ethnic minorities’ (Elena Ferreras, Programme Director, Multilateral Cooperation and Gender, Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), pers. comm., 9 October 2009). She continued by questioning the validity of conflating their experiences to those of Vietnam as a whole based on geography as opposed to methodologically sound evidence: ‘However, our clients [staying in the Spanish Government-funded shelter] are from the north. The north is Sapa, Lao Cai, they are primarily Hmong people’.
The shared history and ethnicity between populations living on either side of the Vietnam-China border is a historical fact, deriving from the days before national borders were firmly established. Populations move fluidly across both sides of the border. As documented by the Cross Border Programme, for example, Mong Cai is a destination for many children looking for work (Save the Children, n.d.), presenting a considerable challenge for those wanting to define the demographic of women trafficked from Vietnam to China. Certainly, ethnic minorities are among those who have been identified as trafficked in Vietnam. What is problematic is the framing of an ethnic minority as the picture of the archetypal trafficked person.
There is a widespread conceptualisation of Vietnamese victims of trafficking that is both narrow and stereotypical. I asked all interviewees whether it is possible to sketch a profile of a typical victim of trafficking. While participants in Ukraine frequently responded that it is impossible to do so, respondents in Vietnam were more willing to offer a description. In the words of a district level government official, the ‘typical’ Vietnamese victim of trafficking is:

... a 17-year-old-girl of Tay ethnic community from a commune targeted by the Provincial Program 135 [a program to support especially difficult communes]. Her family’s economic situation is very difficult. The majority of its earning comes from farm work. She is not able to go to high school and stays at home to help their parents with the farm work (pers. comm., District level official, Department of Social Evils Prevention, Vietnam, 1 October 2009).

This picture can be contrasted with Ukraine, where there is increasing recognition by both my informants, as well as in existing databases, of the traffic of men. In Belarus and Ukraine, male victims accounted for 28.3% and 17.6% of the IOM caseload respectively between 2004 and 2006 (Surtees 2008). Among my informants, several pressed upon me the extent to which the profile of Ukrainian victims falls outside the scope of the presumed demographics. However, a number of authors continue to promote a narrow understanding of Ukrainian victims (see for example Hughes and Denisova 2002; Hughes 2001), that profiles victims as poorly educated, naive and duped. This picture was at odds with the views of my informants, who argued that ‘education is quite high and there is no specific relationship between trafficking and the level of education of victims’ (Dr Irina Lysenko, Medical doctor, IOM Rehabilitation Center, Kiev, 20 August 2009). Dr Lysenko continued by noting that it is not possible to even make a ‘psychological profile’ of victims ‘because really different people go and different people are trafficked. The only common thing is that they all have some kind of difficult situation and they did not know where to go and did not know what to do’ (Dr Irina Lysenko, Medical doctor, IOM Rehabilitation Center, Kiev, 20 August 2009).
Arguably most surprising is the case of Ghana, where public attention is skewed away from adult victims altogether. As noted above, the dominant understanding of human trafficking is the traffic of children into the fishing or cocoa industry, a narrow response that has spawned the ‘industry regulation’ model (Lawrance 2010, 73-74), epitomised in the regulation of the West African cocoa industry under the auspices of the International Cocoa Initiative. While extensive evidence exists documenting this traffic in children (Tengey and Oguaah 2002; ILO-IPEC 2001; Rissøen, Hauge, Hatløy and Bjerkan 2004), there is only limited research on adult victims. Even empirical data collection is very limited when it comes to trafficking of adult Ghanaians. For example, the International Organisation for Migration in Ghana focuses on child trafficking, while the Center for Migration Studies at the University of Ghana was not yet conducting research on trafficking at the time of my fieldwork. Consequently, trafficking is frequently understood to emerge in the following circumstances:

It is due to the irresponsibility of fathers so we had single mothers and so in the bid to make ends meet, they will traffic their children ... We found in the baseline survey that the mothers did not even know the final destination of their children. Because they are told that their children will be taken to Akotombo, but that is the transit point. So at Akotombo, they are sold to various communities, so the parents sitting in Ga West, the child is at Akotombo, but some of them end up in the Gambia, some in Nigeria, some in dotted islands along the Volta lake (Anon., Program Manager, Human Rights, HIV and Trafficking, Christian Council Ghana, 18 August 2010).

In the cases of Ghana and Vietnam, narrow and often skewed understandings of trafficking are pervasive, with many victims (males, non-ethnic minorities or even broadly adult victims) falling outside of the framework. This lack of an evidence-based understanding of who could become a victim of trafficking and who might have experienced trafficking and trafficking-like conditions abroad consequently leads to misdirected efforts in terms of prevention, laws, policies and reintegration support.

The ‘Cinderella syndrome’ and Ghanaian ‘burgers’
A major and often neglected consideration in trafficking discussions is the ‘pull factor’ of success stories emerging from destination countries. Whether true, exaggerated or entirely false, these stories play a major role in encouraging irregular migration. While I do not advocate for barriers to migration or closed borders, this imagery can lead to false expectations about the conditions of work and life abroad and thereby help to stimulate irregular and possibly risky migration.
In the case of Ukraine, the role of success stories was labelled by one informant as the ‘Cinderella syndrome’:

I call it the Cinderella syndrome, from the magazines. These girls hear a success story and it only takes one or two success stories that they hear anecdotally to make them think, ‘You know what, I think that is the way.’ And the situation they are living in is so bad, so why not do it (Anh Nguyen, Counter-Trafficking Coordinator, IOM Mission in Ukraine, interview, 13 August 2009).

Anh Nguyen continued by noting how migrants would ‘come back and parade around their village as a success story’, or if able to remit money home, provide enough success stories to motivate others to go abroad. We can add to this view the imagery offered by another Ukrainian informant about life abroad, with Ukrainians seeing ‘endless soap opera from Brazil, and they are interested to go and see this life. People expect it is a very rich country because of what they observe in the soap opera. They see expensive villas, expensive houses and they think in Brazil everybody is living like this, which is not true’. When questioned about people’s understanding of risk and danger, my informant noted that people ‘know about the problem, but they think that it will happen to other people, but it will never happen to them’ Oksana Horbunova, Deputy Coordinator of Counter-Trafficking Program, IOM, 3 July 2009). Similar findings have been made regarding Albanian migrants to Italy, with many Albanian households perceiving migration, whether temporary or permanent, as an effective strategy for sustaining and improving their economic livelihoods (Mai 2001).
Informants shared parallel responses about Ghana, with several stories directly analogous to those emerging from Ukraine. Referring to the case of a migrant sex worker (not a victim of trafficking), one informant shared the story of a woman who, after having worked in Accra, ‘bought herself a few things, fashion items and when she got [home], she charted a taxi, sitting at the back, well-dressed with the few things she had acquired, when she went back to the village’ (Margaret Sackey, former ILO staff, consultant, 22 July 2010). Two informants in Ghana referred to the concept of the ‘burger’, a positive term that was originally used to refer to Ghanaian migrants who had lived and worked in Hamburg, Germany and was later extended to all Ghanaians who had migrated to Europe and North America for work and had since returned to Ghana (Awumbila 2010, 4). One informant noted how having children abroad is a ‘status symbol’, with the mother of migrant children referred to as a ‘burger mommy’: ‘So there is status for her as a mother’, as Judith Dzokoto, a senior expert from the Ghana Immigration Service, noted (Judith Dzokoto, Assistant Director of Migration, Ghana Immigration Service, 17 November 2010). Ms Dzokoto did note, however, that some people are beginning to question this imagery ‘[b]ecause we have come across people who have lived out there, who are not working, who are not making money, they have families back home’. Nonetheless, she noted that some continue ‘dreaming ... not questioning why their father is not remitting’.
The imagery identified by these informants is frequently neglected in research on trafficking. This is particularly the case where trafficking is not associated with attempted migration for economic betterment but rather the selling or kidnapping of women and girls. Consequently, pull factors such as the Brazilian soap opera, the Cinderella story, or desire for ‘burger’ status are ignored as drivers of trafficking and therefore, neglected in formulating responses designed to combat the exploitation of migrants abroad.

Conclusions
Governments, NGOs and other stakeholders have engaged in counter-trafficking activities intensively at least over the last ten years. Attention is primary focused on presumed structural causes. Assumptions about the education levels of victims are matched with efforts to ensure access to education with the goal of preventing trafficking or re-trafficking. Similarly, micro-credit is used to respond to perceived barriers to domestic labour markets. I contend that while driven by a genuine attempt to combat unsafe migration and trafficking-like conditions abroad, the focus on these assumed structural barriers skews focus away from other socio-cultural factors that are frequently ignored in both theoretical discourse and policy responses.
We see in all three countries sexual and other stereotypes that shape the view that trafficking is an issue largely impacting women and that the majority of victims are trafficked into sexual exploitation. This is most extreme in Ghana where stigma and the silencing of sex work has seen a shift away from adult victims to child victims of internal trafficking into the fishing, cocoa and other sectors. These stereotypes in turn feed the already-existing stigma surrounding trafficking, as well as sex work, exacerbated by the criminalisation of sex work in all three countries. This not only stifles public discourse but also creates a barrier for identification as a victim by sex workers who experience exploitation abroad and at home, as well as for those individuals who identify as victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation. These stereotypes also foster male victim stigma, a significant barrier to both a broader understanding of the nature of trafficking as well as male victim identification.
Cultural attitudes concerning economic betterment abroad also drive migrant movement in the first place, particularly in Ukraine and Ghana where the image of the successful migrant worker living abroad plays a significant role in circulating myths and undermining awareness-raising regarding risks of exploitative labour abroad. While potential migrants should be supported in accessing labour migration opportunities, exaggerated stories of the successful migration abroad create a barrier to a more realistic appreciation of the opportunities and challenges facing potential migrants, particularly those who are undocumented.
Several factors can be given for the lack of attention to these causal factors. As stigmatised topics, they are neglected in public discourse. Challenging to address, it is easy to imagine why attention might be paid to education and labour market barriers, which if identified as the problem, have relatively simple, identifiable solutions. In the case of migration ‘myths’ of success, the shame of failure partially explains why unsuccessful returnees might not willingly espouse an alternative narrative.
Reforms are required to ensure that counter-trafficking efforts actually challenge existing stigmas, particularly in relation to sex work, adopt an evidenced-based response to trafficking in order to include all victims (adult men and women, and children) and ensure an approach to awareness-raising that recognises that migration is inevitable. Counter-trafficking measures should not attempt to put an end to migration but instead aim to ensure a realistic appreciation of life and work abroad among potential migrants.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my doctoral supervisor, Dr Helen Pringle, at the University of New South Wales, and to José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, for their very valuable comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Gender, Place and Culture for their helpful feedback. I bear sole responsibility for the opinions expressed in this article.

Notes

Notes on contributor
Ramona Vijeyarasa is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, researching trafficking from Ghana, Ukraine and Vietnam. Her current research uses a feminist, legal, socio-economic framework to assess the assumptions made about the demographics of victims of trafficking, using these three countries as case studies. Ramona earned her LL.M. degree (specializing in human rights) from New York University School of Law and a combined Bachelor of Arts (Politics and History)/Laws from UNSW. She has published on reproductive rights; transitional justice; trafficking, sex work and feminist discourse; stigma and HIV; and the Millennium Development Goals.

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^[1] This article is based on a presentation delivered at the International Colloquium, ‘Debating women: Past and present’ 1-4 June, 2001 in Funchal, Portugal, entitled, ‘Roadblocks to counter-trafficking: A comparative analysis of Vietnam, Ghana and Ukraine’.
^[2] A ‘burger’ is a positive term that was originally used to refer to Ghanaian migrants who had lived and worked in Hamburg, Germany and was later extended to all Ghanaians who had migrated to Europe and North America for work and had since returned to Ghana. See Awumbila (2010, 4).
^[3] As required by the HREC, a participant information statement and consent form was distributed to all participants to explained the purpose, methods and intended possible uses of the research; why the informant’s participation in the research was requested; the confidentiality of information supplied and their anonymity if desired; that their participation was purely voluntary and free from coercion.
^[4] All informants who were contacted in Ghana, except two, agreed to participate in an interview. No response was received from one of these two potential informants, while the other who declined to participate offered the contact details for a different informant. In Vietnam, nine additional informants were contacted for potential participation in this research. This included four local NGOs, three of whom did not respond and one of whom responded by declining to participate on the basis of their insufficient depth of knowledge; one academic with a Hanoi-based research institution and two gender specialists at a multilateral donor organisation, from whom no responses were received. Two staff working for UN agencies accepted to participate but were unable to do so due to a clash in schedules and illness. In Ukraine, staff from two Ukrainian ministries declined to participate in this research (Ministry of Gender Equality and Ministry of Justice). Staff from two additional organisations in Ukraine were contacted, namely La Strada Ukraine and another inter-governmental organisation (which has chosen anonymity), but were unresponsive during this period of fieldwork in Ukraine. Given the significant role played by these organisations in the field of trafficking in Ukraine, requests for an email interview were re-sent via email in November 2010, and responses to the list of questions were received in the same month.
^[5] Advantages of email interviews include savings in time and financial resources (Bampton and Cowton 2002, 25), as well as creating more comfort for interviewees who are engaging in an interview in a foreign language than they might be in a face-to-face interview (Bampton and Cowton 2002, 19). Email interviews are also beneficial when interviewing subjects with closed or limited access (Opdenakker 2006), in this case, shelter management or staff.
^[6] In Vietnam, two email interviews were conducted in Vietnamese. The questions were translated from English into Vietnamese, with responses later translated into English. Translation was provided by a Vietnamese translator. Ms Do Thi Thai Thanh holds a Bachelor of English from the Hanoi Foreign Language College and has experience translating documents related to HIV and AIDS and migration for both local and international NGOs and international organisations in Vietnam. In Ukraine, questions and responses were translated from English to Russian and vice versa by Roman Ilto, a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. One interview, with Dr Irina Lysenko, a medical doctor at the IOM Rehabilitation Center in Kiev, was conducted in Russian, with Irina Titarenko, Senior Reintegration Programme Assistant from IOM’s Mission in Ukraine, translating from Russian to English.
^[7]As part of my PhD research, I also collected data from 104 individual trafficked returnees from Ukraine and five individuals trafficked from Vietnam through a self-completed questionnaire. The analysis of this data has not yet been published.