Selección de alternativas

Some of our informants feel they have succeeded: they have made enough money to have a good life, and are free to choose whether to live in Nigeria or Europe. More common are those that, while not especially economically successful, are nevertheless independent and living with relative predictability, and have come to terms with their situation. All these women are quite positive towards returning to Nigeria, either for holiday/shorter periods or for good. The common factor in their situation is choice: they have obtained a permanent residence permit in a European country and/or are economically independent, and thus possess a feeling of autonomy. Christina says she found that life in Italy did not meet her expectations, and decided to commute to Norway to work in prostitution to save money to return to Nigeria. When we met her, she was preparing to return to Nigeria in a month’s time:

47 I will go back to Nigeria to stay. I feel very comfortable and happy to go back, there is no place like home. I decided to go back because I am not living a normal life. I was working in Italy for nine years, hoping to save some money. I was living on less than 500 euros every month. The possibility to go home was not there. I could not even buy the ticket to go home. So I decided to go to Norway to work in prostitu- tion to save up a little money to go home, I have done this the last two years. Christina is more resourceful than most of the other women we met, and appears to come from a family with some assets. She paid her debts years ago and has not been burdened with difficult economic obligations to her family, and thus has had the chance to save up some money before the return to Nigeria. Even if she mentioned saving money to buy plane ticket home in the quote above, she clearly also meant saving up a substantial amount of money to bring home with her. As far as we understood, she had managed to save several thousands of euros in addition to the ticket fare. She says she migrated out of ignorance rather than necessity; she had a good job when she left Nigeria, and is confident she will find a similar job when she returns. Resourceful women like Christina benefit from their qualities during their stay in Europe, as well as also upon a return to Nigeria.

Some women we met had not necessarily reached their initial economic goals, but had come to terms with their situation and reached a certain degree of independence, safety, and confidence. These women had typically obtained a permanent residence permit (or had good prospects of obtaining one), and thus did not have to worry about their right to stay in Europe. Claudia, for example, has a regular full-time job and a house and mortage in Italy. She is in her late forties and, after fifteen years in Europe, has an Italian passport. She has grown children living in other European countries, and has travelled to Nigeria to visit other family members several times. Claudia had been to Norway three times, but only for two weeks at a time using her holiday time from work. Through our conversations we were not able to assess whether Claudia felt content or not, but she did not talk about necessary future improvements or changes in life like most of the women described in the other categories.

What characterises the women in this last category is that they express a feeling of mastering their situation: they perceive themselves as independent agents with freedom of choice. Of the four groups, these women seem to be the least in need of assistance, as they seem to be in a position to make choices based on their own will and without coercion. They have papers and/or an economic situation that enables them to decide independently whether to go back to Nigeria. They can also go back to Nigeria for a trial run, returning to Europe if it does not work out. Yet regardless of their relatively fortunate position, they too may face problems if they choose to return to Nigeria, con- nected to the shame of having worked in prostitution in Europe. The fact that some of them were not forced to migrate to Europe of economic reasons initially, may make it

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even more shameful. For Christina, it is of utmost importance that her involvement in prostitution is not revealed when she goes back to Nigeria:

I will not talk about the work in prostitution when I come back. You can talk about all the things you have done in Europe, but not work. You have a lot of good things to tell, forget about the bad. My family don’t know what I do here.

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6 Fears and Dangers in Repatriation

All the women we talked to express some fears connected to a return to Nigeria. These are concerns shared by many women who are victims of trafficking for prostitution. Simeunovic-Patic writes of the repatriation and rehabilitation of victims of trafficking in Serbia:

Some trafficked women want to return home as soon as possible, while others want to stay in the country/place of destination. Reasons for staying in the destination country include the fear of stigma attached to prostitution, rejection from family and community, fear of reprisals from traffickers, or a perception of a better life for themselves and their families in the destination country (2005:2 and ). The women’s fears and reluctance in connection to a return home are many and diverse,

as seen in the quote above. Whether there is substance to the women’s fears, or they are a consequence of a lack of knowledge about Nigeria today – or a way of claiming a right to be in Europe – is a difficult question, and outside the scope of this report. What is important is that the women’s expressed worries and fears are taken seriously in a repatriation and rehabilitation process. As the women have different backgrounds, and thus different worries and problems, they attach varying levels of significance to many challenges related to repatriation. Still, there are particular issues that recur when the women discuss a possible return to Nigeria.