Does Domestic Violence Make Women More Vulnerable to Sex Trafficking?

Purpose – This study explores if there is any link between domestic violence and vulnerability to being trafficked. According to service providers, a majority of trafficked women come from troubled families. Caught in situations of domestic violence and abusive relationships, they feel compelled to escape (Stateva & Kozhouharova, 2004; Shelley, 2005;Rudd, 2003; Boontinanad, 2005).However, this factor of risk has been given little attention in literature on trafficking that focuses on poverty and other forms of gender discrimination. Violence is assumed to be a post-trafficking event and it has not been explored if gender-based violence is a pre-trafficking risk.

Method – Victim profiles present one side of the picture. Without a comparison with a non-trafficked population with a similar socio-demographic profile it would be difficult to identify factors of vulnerability. This study made a comparative analysis of the narratives of migration experience of women (trafficked and non-trafficked) who originated from the same source area (the state of West Bengal in India), who migrated to the same destination (the city of Kolkata), hoping to find work in the same sectors of the informal economy (domestic labour and construction labour). In-depth unstructured interviews were conducted with 15 victims of trafficking and 17 safe migrant women. They were recruited by purposive sampling in a shelter home, two brothel areas, two daily wage labour markets and two residential areas, followed by snowball sampling. The narratives were analyzed according to Grounded Theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1990; Charmaz, 2005), using QSR* NVivo 7.0 .

Results – (a) Domestic violence was reported as the main cause of leaving home by 13 of the trafficked informants and by only two among the safe informants. (b) All these 15 women exited the situation of exploitation, but the factor which determined their safety or victimhood was whether they were supported or ostracised by the family and community. All the trafficked informants were subjected to stigma and ostracism while the two safe informants received the sympathy and support of their families and social networks. (c) Trusting strangers is finely nuanced. At the lowest end of the risk taking spectrum was ‘being deceived by the presentation style of the trafficker'. At the middle of the spectrum was ‘did not think of risk – only thought of work'. The highest end of risk-taking was ‘knew it was risky but was too desperate to care.' All trafficked informants reporting severe domestic violence said that they were too desperate to care about risk.

Conclusions and Implications – (a) This study identifies domestic violence as a significant factor that makes women more vulnerable to sex trafficking. (b) This opens a new point of intervention for social workers who are working to prevent trafficking. (c) It underscores the need to draw in the family and community as stakeholders in preventive interventions. (d) It highlights that mere awareness of risk is no solution – there have to be viable support structures that reduce the desperation to take risk.