Posted: September 27th, 2022

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CHAPTER TWO

A REFLEXIVE ACCOUNT OF THE RESEARCH PROCESS1 AND AN INTRODUCTION

TO PARTICIPANTS

Introduction

This chapter2 explains the feminist design and methods which are used to research women’s stories of trafficking agency and introduces the women and professionals featured within the book. The decision to research from a feminist perspective derives from the research aim of understanding trafficked women’s experiences of victimisation and agency (Duelli Klein, 1983; Weston, 1988; Reinharz and Chase, 2003) and making it visible in order to improve the situation of women (Reinharz, 1983; Kelly, Burton and Regan, 1994; Hill, 2003; Allen, 2011). These two feminist principles of visibility and liberation are at the heart of feminist standpoint – a position privileging research from the position and perspective of women for their amelioration and emancipation.

The research intent was to build an experiential understanding of trafficking in areas influencing how women are perceived and treated: namely around identification and identity (Chapter 3), subjective choices and the socio-economic-cultural dynamics behind movement (Chapter 4), and opportunities and constraints in rebuilding lives post-trafficking (Chapter 5). Since feminist researchers privilege the women subjects of oppression and struggle as best placed for giving their identities and experiences meaning (Fonow and Cook, 1986; Davis, 1986; Reinharz, 1992), the research aim drives the research methods of a women’s focus group and semi-structured interviews with women and participating professionals. This is not to suggest that these research methods are intrinsically feminist but rather that they are adaptable for qualitative feminist inquiry. The focus group is picked for its capacity to generate naturalistic knowledge of women’s meanings (Wilkinson 1998a; 1998b; 1999; Madriz, 2000) and the semi-structured interview (SSI) for its co- creative qualities in knowledge building (Fontana and Frey, 2000). As

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 19

Mies (1983:124) observes for feminist inquiry:

“The ‘truth’ of a theory is not dependent on the application of certain methodologies and rules but on its potential to orient the processes of praxis towards progressive emancipation and humanisation”.

In this study, both participant women and anti-trafficking professionals express the hope that their involvement will improve the future reception and treatment of women trafficked into the UK (Chapters 5 and 6). In this way, participants can be seen as actively building praxis – influencing public policy through research into lived experience (O’Neill and Harindranath, 2006).

Producing knowledge

Although the book is referred to throughout as a collection of women’s stories, the term “collection” describes the end product of a book which houses their lived experience and perspectives on trafficking. The methods used are picked for their ability to generate new and vibrant knowledge, as opposed to simply gathering up information waiting to be collected (Dey, 1993). Within feminist enterprise, the production of knowledge has been and remains a deeply contested issue. The paradigm war between quantitative and qualitative knowledge production may have gendered these approaches into a male and a female way of knowing about the social world (Mies, 1983; Graham, 1983; Hammersley, 1992; Oakley, 1997; 1998). However, as feminism has moved on from suffrage (equal rights to vote and own property), through a “second wave” of sociological inquiry (concerned with family, sex rights and work) into a “third wave” fixed on the body (pornography and sexuality), feminist enterprise has met with competing truth claims for knowledge of, on, and about women (Smith, 1974; Haraway, 1991; Reinharz, 1992; Oakley, 1981; 2000)3. According to Olesen (2000: 217), the descriptor which best captures qualitative feminist research since the second wave is one of “complexity”, adding:

“And, indeed, if there is a dominant theme in this growing complexity, it is the question of knowledges. Whose knowledges? Where and how obtained and by whom, from whom, and for what purposes”?

These central questions are addressed in the sections below.

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Chapter Two 20

“Where obtained”: gaining access and finding participants

This study commenced in a decade when asylum and refugee agencies were experiencing high levels of fatigue over researcher requests to access displaced, exiled, and trafficked persons known to them (Robinson, 2002; Poppy Personal Communication, 2007; Clark, 2008). The study also followed the widely publicised opening of the UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) in Sheffield (England) in 2006: a Police-led multi- agency initiative tasked with prosecuting traffickers and co-ordinating the European Convention agenda on protecting and Helping the victims of trafficking crime (CoE, 2005). Given the demands for researcher access and attendant levels of intrusion to projects and their clients, snowball sampling was chosen based on its success in finding other invisible and displaced persons (Bloch, 1999; Atkinson and Flint, 2001). This snowball search reached 76 agencies supporting trafficked women, asylum seekers, victims of gendered crime (rape, forced marriage and domestic violence) and female sex workers, generating sufficient numbers for a focus group and semi-structured interviews (SSIs). Out of twenty four women who came forward, two expressly stated from the start that they had no trafficking experience and their qualitative stories do not feature in this collection. In contrast, all other narratives are told, since to deny these women a voice on trafficking is tantamount to denying them their lived experience. For the qualitative feminist researcher, a fundamental goal of researching women is precisely one of making her experiences visible (Harvey, 1990; Reinharz and Chase, 2003).

Two women without the formal support of a project corresponded directly with me on hearing about it through their networks. As Bosworth et al. (2011: 776) suggest, a correspondence approach to researching “the direct experience of those we wish to understand” provides researchers with another means of sourcing participants. Both these women agreed to an SSI – one following two months of email exchange and the other after numerous mobile-phone conversations. This brought the total of women participants back up to twenty four. Both the focus group composition and the pen portraits of SSI women are provided in the “from whom” section at the end of this chapter.

In contrast to the snowball strategy with women, purposive sampling is better suited for finding participants of relevance to the research topic (Bryman, 2004). The fieldwork stretched from December, 2008, through to the end of February, 2010, by which time the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) for identifying and supporting victims of trafficking

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 21

had been operational for ten months. Purposive sampling secured fifteen interviews with anti-trafficking professionals who, for research purposes, are divided into three categories.

The first category – Government Enforcement Organisations (GEOs) – includes interviews with staff in the UKHTC, Border Agency, NRM, Police, Social Services and a policy advisor. These professionals carry responsibility for an aspect of service development within trafficking. The second category – Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) – includes interviews with six staff working for churches and charities or employed by specialist projects supporting trafficked women. These professionals are involved in the day to day running of services for trafficked women and all, but one, had been in formal case discussions with either the Police-led UKHTC or the immigration-led UKBA. The three remaining professionals have been categorised under Partnership Organisations since all are tasked by their employer with a specific remit in community building. Partner A liaises with the Police and Criminal Justice representatives, Partner B with migration, asylum and refugee agencies, and Partner C with local politicians, civic dignitaries and faith leaders. The categorisation of professionals can be found in the “from whom” section at the end of this chapter.

The extent of the two searches was such that, by the end of the fieldwork, the research had acquired enough legitimacy to open doors to stakeholder meetings. Had I been conferred this “insider” credential sooner, I may have gained access to women rescued and hidden within the NRM process. Towards the end, I was granted access to two case studies of trafficked women in custody and, though not ideal, was able to unravel issues of identity, journeys, opportunities and constraints from their Police statements, Probation Service interviews, Pre-sentence Reports, Court transcripts, and face-to-face interviews with their case manager. The stories of these women are also in the “from whom” section at the end of this chapter4, producing a total of 26 lived accounts of trafficking.

“How obtained and by whom”

Methods for producing knowledge

The challenge for methodology was to find a way of researching agency as subjective, experiential, and visible in trafficking without producing “partial” and “distorted accounts” of women’s experiences (Harding, 1993: 56). Fieldwork is partial and situated both in terms of the women it reaches and their individual socio-cultural locations. It is also

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Chapter Two 22

partial and distorted according to the agencies reached. Women rescued and supported by particular programmes reflect the profiles of their supporting projects (Tyldum & Brunovskis, 2005). This helps to explain the high rates of trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced marriage in this collection which, in turn, make these exploitations appear more representative of trafficking experience than might be the case had projects with other remits taken part. The production of knowledge is further and additionally influenced by the researcher’s own subjectivity. Whilst social scientists agree on a link between social location and personal subjectivity – in other words, that factors of gender, class and race inform individual identity, values and experience – there is disagreement on whether sameness or difference aids the exchange of information between researchers and researched. Framed in feminist inquiry terms of “insider” for sameness and “outsider” for difference, I have no real idea of the extent to which participants’ stories might have been different were I a sex worker, a migrant to the UK, or had my own marriage been transnational or forced. My interest was that of an outsider, with a modicum of professional insider knowledge into the disadvantage posed to these women from legislative and social policy shortfalls. If, as feminists argue, all research is in some way subjective, then one way of addressing this methodological dilemma is for the researcher to provide analysis of the interview as a social relation (Oakley, 1981), and of herself as a subject in her own research (Olesen, 2000). Fontana and Frey (2000; 664) refer to this process of knowledge generation as a “practical production”. These three concepts are followed through into the methods of data collection presented below.

Focus Group

Seventeen women in this collection volunteered for a focus group, reputed to be a naturalistic approach to data collection (Wilkinson, 1998b). This focus group was situationally generated, as opposed to researcher constructed, since focus group volunteers were also members of an existing Black Minority Ethnic (BME) women’s group. These women knew one another well and many shared bonds as women trafficked for forced marriage, or as spouses made illegal by the subsequent break-down of their marriage5. The fact that these women had informed opinions based on subjective experience significantly enriched the co-production of knowledge. Their breadth of knowledge created a freer climate of exchange (beyond anything I could have planned for) across difficult and contested issues of agency and victimhood. These women felt less obliged

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 23

to agree with myself as the group leader, and less pressured to agree with the three most outspoken women within the group (Carey, 1994). Such a demonstrable show of power is, in itself, a testimony to the women’s agentic capacities and of their considerable expertise in trafficking matters. For my part, their comfort and enthusiasm instilled confidence in the focus group as a feminist qualitative method suited to researching women’s imposition of meaning on gendered experience (Wilkinson 1998a; 1999; Madriz, 2000).

A number of researchers extol the focus group as empowering of groups further marginalised through their ethnicity (Chiu and Knight, 1999; Madriz, 2000). In spite of all my preparatory correspondence and planning to create the optimal conditions for success [Barbour and Kitzinger (1999) advise having ten to twelve participants], seventeen women from ten different nationalities, and requiring the services of three multi-lingual interpreters, turned up for the focus group. Chairs were lined up against three of the four walls, providing extra seats to the oblong table seating ten, with a trestle table of food and drinks along one side. The buffet table formed a focal point where women congregated and chatted informally about the food, the weather, their children, and their week. Such social interactions – begun at the buffet table – can be seen as transforming the focus group into a “social moment” (Jowett and O’Toole, 2006: 458), where hearing someone’s story can trigger a shared appreciation in another’s experience and encourage more women to share their thoughts and experiences in a naturalistic way.

Reflecting on my inexperience with this particular research method, my unfamiliarity with focus groups may have worked to my advantage in two ways. In complete contrast to my fears of over-regulating the group and producing researcher-led findings, I found myself in Jowett’s (2006) position when interviewing young women on feminism, of running to keep pace with them. I, too, frequently found myself chasing the tail ends of discussion, rather than influencing its threads. One example where control gave way to process regards an outbreak of mirth, following a long pause and then rapid admissions that no one, inclusive of interpreters, had understood what two members speaking in a local dialect had said! The other advantage relates to the issue of a white researcher interviewing an all BME group. Pollack’s experience of this within a focus group on race and power in black women’s experience of prison demonstrates the space this dynamic creates for different and alternate narratives – which she terms “counter-narratives” – to emerge.

“With marginalised and oppressed groups, particularly when the researcher is a member of the dominant group, focus group methodology may be most

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appropriate for countering dominant myths and discourses that construct marginalized people as deviant and deficient” (Pollack, 2003: 471).

Unlike Pollack, my own approach to this power imbalance was to actively model sensitivity to the victim discourse by dressing down (to neutralise power) and purposely removing items of jewellery (suggestive of affluence, success or status). In stark contrast, most of the focus group women dressed up (many in ethnic dress or westernised clothing accessorised with ethnic jewellery) to meet and greet me – displaying a powerful degree of autonomy and individuality. This visible composition of a lone white researcher and a commanding Black and Asian participant group served to re-position power in unforeseen ways. From a position of strength in numbers, women identified their own barriers to well-being and agency freedoms citing, for example, unequal access to work via EU membership. Similarly, women also felt empowered to share personal examples of risk-taking, hoped-for profits, and end gains in leaving home – the “counter-narratives” to a prevailing victimhood discourse.

Women’s semi-structured interviews

A total of seven women volunteered for an SSI. Creating the conditions for truth-telling within a semi-structured interview poses a different set of challenges from the focus group. If as Fontana and Frey (2000; 664) suggest – the semi-structured interview is a “practical production” of meanings resulting from the interactions of researcher and researched – then, creating the right research relationship seemed a productive place to start. As a woman interviewing other women, Oakley (1981) advocates replacing the masculine text book approach with a social and personal relationship supporting dialogue. In looking to facilitate a dialogue on a difficult trafficking story, I tried Socratic or open style questioning (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000) to unpack and explore issues of choice, autonomy, agency, power, control, exploitation and pain. Examples of these are: Can you tell me why you came to this country? Can you tell me about the way in which this was arranged? What were your thoughts and feelings during this journey? What happened to you when you arrived in the UK? Can you describe what your living-working conditions or marriage ceremony was like? How would you describe your situation to me now? What would make life better for yourself and your family? Can you tell me what I should have asked you? The latitude in this line of questioning allows women to ascribe their own meanings to experiences and stay in control of their personal stories, whilst allowing

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 25

the interviewer to probe for dynamics and processes beyond the common- place.

In creating the best conditions for qualitative responses, feminists openly urge researchers to invest something of themselves in the process, either through self-disclosure (Oakley, 1981; Reinharz, 1992) or via the provision of much needed information to women (Oakley, 1979). This can balance power particularly when research is conducted with vulnerable persons (Bergen, 1993; Dickson-Swift et al, 2007; 2008). Often – when women were closest to breaking down – they would ask me questions like: “Did I ever feel that helpless”? “Did my husband treat me bad”? Whilst I could not share insider examples of trafficking, I was able to make myself “vulnerable” (Stanley and Wise, 1983: 181) by disclosing some outsider examples. For instance: a personal story of labour exploitation, an experience of bullying in the workplace, and a marital mix of funny and embarrassing anecdotes. Such disclosure, albeit outside of trafficking, builds trust and rapport which encourages a rich and forthright exchange (Maynard, 1994). This “social relation” dynamic increased as I answered women’s questions on “no recourse” (NRPF, 2006)6 and (though no expert) did my best to advise them on domestic violence rules in immigration cases (Home Office, 2014a).

In this collection, interviews held with and recorded for the two case study women were similarly perceived as practically produced through the interactions of the interviewer and the interviewee. Although the similarities and differences in case analysis have produced their own set of complimentary and competing discourses (Ragin and Becker, 1992), case interviews and transcripts contain first-person accounts of an individual’s actions, experiences and beliefs, which can be interpreted and given voice by the qualitative researcher. This qualitative interpretation of their stories was triangulated with case holder interviews for insights into possible researcher bias over meanings. Viewed as the product of interplay between insider and outsider knowledge, case study materials can usefully be explored for an additional perspective on lived identity, movement, exploitation and agency.

Professional semi-structured interviews

A rounded appreciation of how agency and victimhood is experienced by women calls for interviews with anti-trafficking professionals. As Hunt (2008) observes for the asylum process, all professional actors have some impact on agency both independently and through their job roles. Some individuals employed in a sector also cut across sector boundaries. For

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example, some senior Police and Immigration personnel have an active presence within the CAs, provide training jointly with NGO staff, and chair community fora. Similarly, one NGO with charitable status was a recipient of government funding during the fieldwork. In spite of such overlap, staff allocations to a particular sector are defensible since they are based upon primary roles.

In faithfulness with the feminist goal of revealing women’s meaning (Du Bois, 1983; Duelli Klein, 1983) for social improvement (Kelly, Burton and Regan, 1994) and praxis (Maynard and Purvis, 1994), professional perspectives provide a complimentary as opposed to a validatory lens on women’s standpoint. Questions posed to staff focussed on what they look for in a victim of trafficking; how they assess the signs of trafficking; what needs do survivors present; what happens to women whose experience differs from official guidelines; what aspects of their role do they find most challenging and most rewarding? As with women survivors, care is taken to minimise the portrayal of anti-trafficking professionals as a reified group. A conscious decision was made to learn something about each of them as individual workers, along the lines of what motivates and what most upsets them in their line of work. In keeping with feminist concerns over representation and meaning, each was asked what their “one anti-trafficking wish” might be.

“Whose knowledges and for what purpose”

Ethics

Gatekeepers were vigilant in protecting trafficked women from research-related harms7. Prior to face-to-face meetings with participants, gatekeepers relayed women’s anxieties over consent, confidentiality and anonymity. Gatekeepers went through the research contract with women, which they signed in advance of interviews. The contract gave women permission to withdraw at any point or to refuse to answer a particular question, and all without need for explanation. It allowed SSI women to choose an alias and / or be classified as SSIs, and preserved the anonymity of focus group women through their identification as focus group members. The contract provided a further guarantee that women’s case histories would not be disclosed to any other agency. A page-long questionnaire gathered demographic information on age, gender, ethnicity, class, marital status, number of children, qualifications and employment, pertinent for context.

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 27

Whilst interpreters and after-care support were central to the granting of ethics approval by the University of Hull, Watts (2006) theorises the research interview as a therapeutic opportunity making counselling skills a pre-requisite in good ethical practice. In light of my lack in counselling skills, unforeseen offers from gatekeepers to refer women to in-house counsellors and use their bilingual interpreters (Thomson et al, 1999), raised the quality of communication and post-interview care beyond my single capacity to gift. Knowing that women had access to these professional services eased my “ethical hangover” with using exploited people for research (Lofland & Lofland, 1995:28). Both of the women who corresponded directly with me – one following two months of email exchange and the other after numerous mobile phone conversations – had a good command of spoken English. Neither requested a formal interpreter or brought a friend along to interpret for them. In terms of their after-care, the first had access to support through her volunteering work and the second to pastoral care from her college, although all participants were offered an after-care phone call from me. All SSI women exercised choice over interview venues, choosing a project room or a coffee house where they felt safe and in control of the research process. The focus group took place in premises housing numerous social and charitable projects, where women could also feel safe.

As with the focus group and SSI women, professionals were asked to choose the location of their interviews and some also chose external venues serving teas and coffees. As with women participants, no professional is identifiable to safeguard anonymity, respect confidentiality and protect staff from organisational repercussions. These privacy measures also serve to differentiate individual opinions from organisational stances on trafficking. In this way, the research adopts a morally responsible position towards agencies and their staff within social policy research (Clifford, 2010).

Handling data

Given feminist concern for researching the social world from the position and perspective of women (Weston, 1988), feminist researchers face a complex challenge in representing the views of others as research data. Accuracy may be the goal of transcription (Sandelowski, 1994) but transcribing is an interpretive as opposed to a neutral exercise (Bailey, 2008). Under this lens, typing transcripts verbatim is a valuable strategy for monitoring the integrity of representations, since verbatim transcripts maintain the data “fresh” for the researcher to review time and again

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Chapter Two 28

(Bertrand et al, 1992: 201). Another stratagem is to transcribe all recordings oneself, especially when handling sensitive transcripts. Warr (2004) strongly discourages employing transcribers from outside of the study. Her argument is that hearing a recorded voice can be traumatising for the outside listener, as well as subjecting the voice to the dangers of an emotive and different interpretation outside of the interview. Being the sole transcriber of recordings in this study placed me in an enviable position of knowing each woman’s story “by heart”, and this familiarity informed the choice of a grounded theory approach to data handling.

Grounded theory researchers often rely on concepts shaped by their respective disciplines (Clarke, 2005; Dunne, 2011; Tummers and Karsten, 2012) to inform both their study and the subsequent coding process. In this study, four trafficking concepts (identity, journey, exploitations, and independent actions) shaped the interview schedules whilst open codes – based on the four concepts – proved helpful in organising the data. A subsequent selective coding on responses brought commonalities, differences, and intersections – as present in women’s narratives – to the fore. Adopting an analytical strategy of re-coding and retrieving enabled concepts to be refined and regrouped (for example, identity into trafficking identity, pre and post-trafficking personas) which better reflected lived, as opposed to text-book, accounts of trafficking.

Within grounded analysis, a deeply disputed area concerns the timing of literature and the role of existing theory in building knowledge. Researchers opposing prior reading and theorising do so on the basis that it introduces bias, adds distortion, and limits insight to preconceived ideas and mind-sets. Glaser and Strauss (1967), Hickey (1997) and Glaser (1998; 2001; 2012) feature amongst those favouring a traditional grounded theory position on this issue. Researchers favouring a more relaxed approach recognise a reality in which many professionals and researchers begin their studies pre-equipped with knowledge of literature and theories in their chosen areas (Morse, 1994; Dunne, 2011; Tummers and Karsten, 2012). Since the qualitative feminist researcher is already squarely located in the knowledge process, and an active collaborator in the co-creation of knowledge, the research data can usefully be interrogated by prior knowledge (Strauss and Corbin, 1990; 1998). From this standpoint, the feminist challenge in handling the data becomes one of synergy – how to use what is known to expand emergent theory and how to utilise emergent theory to problematise what is known about trafficking experience. This synergy compliments the interview process as a practical production of researcher-researched knowledges and explains the interplay of literature and research ideas within upcoming chapters.

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 29

Disseminating research

Feminist concerns over representation extend to the dissemination of research. Feminist researchers tread a fine line between building valid experiential knowledge and converting it into valuable social justice improvements for women (Gottlieb and Bombyk, 1987). The dissemination of personal material for public consumption is a risky undertaking. Opening women’s personal and private lives to the public gaze runs the risk of patriarchal and sexist distortions, over and beyond those already brought to the process by an external researcher (Ribbens and Edwards, 1998). There is further pressure in public presentation to homogenise women’s individual and diverse experiences for the purpose of social change. As Page (2001: 17) reflects:

“The defining of any phenomenon as a social problem implies that this is an occurrence that requires some form of collective response, rather than individual resolution”.

In the public domain, any effective challenge to the dominant victim narrative in trafficking may well disadvantage individual women whose lives do not fit the accepted social model. Conversely, any effective social challenge may not reach those victims who choose to remain outside of the official NRM framework of services. These costs will need to be weighed and evaluated against praxis – the benefits to survivors from politicising personal experiences of trafficking.

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Table 2-1: The acts, means and exploitations in trafficking

Process + Way/Means + Goal

Recruitment or

Transportation or

Transferring or

Harbouring or

Receiving

A N D

Threat or

Coercion or

Abduction or

Fraud or

Deceit or

Deception or

Abuse of Power or

Position of Vulnerability

A N D

Prostitution or

Pornography or

Violence/Sexual Exploitation

or Forced Labour

or Involuntary Servitude

or Debt Bondage

(with unfair wages) or

Slavery/Similar practices

or Organ Removal

“From whom”

This section introduces the research participants through vignettes and a composition profile of the focus group women and anti-trafficking professionals

Vignettes8

Laila (semi-structured interview)

Laila is the only SSI participant born in the UK. At the time of her interview, she was twenty-six years of age and the youngest woman interviewed. Laila stood out for combining westernised dress with an ethnic, brightly patterned headscarf, which was knotted neatly beneath her chin. She presented as a bright and socially astute individual. During her adolescent years, Laila had attended college and worked in the family business. She described her upbringing as middle class. When Laila turned eighteen, she discovered by chance that her family had arranged for her to be married to her cousin in Pakistan – a young man she had never before

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 31

met and who was three years her junior. Not wanting to be parted from the boyfriend she was in love with, she ran away from home. Laila was found after ten days on the run and forcibly flown to Pakistan, accompanied by one of her brothers. Once in Pakistan, Laila’s passport was taken away from her, with the threat of her never again returning to Britain unless she took part in a marriage ceremony. In describing her marriage day to me, Laila portrays it as if living a nightmare. She was unable to speak the words, hindered by her limited knowledge of the language and in protest at being forced to take part. “I was his passport not his bride”. Laila remained married to him for seven years, spending the first part of this period in Pakistan, learning how to be a “good” wife. The second half was lived back in the UK. Throughout her marriage, Laila described herself as his family’s unpaid servant and her husband’s sex slave. She was subject to episodes of domestic violence. Following bouts of depression, eating disorders, and an attempted overdose from a cocktail of drink and pills, Laila escaped with her daughter to a women’s refuge and was placed in a safe house away from the area. Laila has slowly rebuilt a life for herself and for her daughter, but exists outside of any supportive networks traditionally available to other Muslim women.

Laila’s story fits with the international definition of trafficking (UN, 2000a: 3a) – her story being one of marriage in a context of human trafficking (UN General Assembly, 2007; EUP, 2011: paragraph 11). Her story shows evidence of transportation and receipt (consistent with the acts in trafficking), threats and coercion (consistent with the means in trafficking), as well as exploitation experienced as a forced marriage involving domestic and sexual servitude (the trafficking purpose)9.

Tamara (semi-structured interview)

Tamara was born in the Ukraine. At the time of her interview, she was thirty-three years of age and a widow. Tamara looked immaculate – her hair was styled, her nails were manicured and her outfit was complemented by her matching shoes, bag and accessories. I could easily picture her in her former role as a young bridal designer back home. Tamara described her upbringing as upper class, citing the fact her family ate both black and red caviar as evidence of this. As we drank coffee together, Tamara carefully unwrapped a chocolate “Baci” she had in her handbag and read out the romantic caption to me: “The world may be one but you are one in the world”. This caused her to reflect on how sad her own marriage to a violent, alcoholic man, frequently in and out of prison, had been. Additionally, his recidivism caused both financial and social restrictions on Tamara as sole parent and provider for their three children.

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Whilst he was serving one such prison term, Tamara decided to leave the children with a relative and take up the dual opportunity to travel to Turkey and earn some steady money working in a factory producing leather goods. Here, Tamara was persuaded by a female workmate to pay the workmate’s boyfriend and join her in upgrading to a casino croupier in Moldova. On the day of travel, her friend fell ill, leaving Tamara to undertake the journey accompanied by her workmate’s boyfriend. It was during this journey that Tamara realised she had been “tricked” and found herself sold on by him at the Turkish border. This was a practice which was repeated time and again, across various borders, wherein Tamara would be sold on to other women (and sometimes men), for the purpose of working as a prostitute. Her traffickers controlled her with threats and actual violence. By the time Tamara arrived in the UK, she was in a situation of extensive debt bondage, having had the proceeds from sex work withheld as payment for accommodation and food and now owing her traffickers for the cost of her overland travel and her work clothes. During her second attempt to escape from her trafficker, Tamara was successfully referred by the Police to the Poppy Project for help and support as a trafficked woman. Tamara has been granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK (Home Office Immigration Rules: Part 11) and is now accommodated in the community, where she is studying for a new career. Tamara likes the UK for being a “human” country, but cannot properly settle or fully recover until she is reunited with her three children who are now in Ukrainian state care.

Tamara’s story fits with the international definition of trafficking – her story being one of repeated trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Her story shows evidence of repeated recruitment, transportation, and receipt (consistent with the acts in trafficking), deception and force (consistent with the means in trafficking), as well as debt bondage (involving withholding earnings and unfair payment) and sexual exploitation as a prostitute (the trafficking purposes).

Nina (semi-structured interview)

Nina was born in the Punjab region of India and although thirty-two years old appeared much younger than her years. Being of slight build and extremely softly spoken, Nina had an air of fragility about her. I was surprised when she volunteered her name for interview and felt anxious that she might not be strong enough for the ordeal. Nina spent the better part of our interview in floods of tears.

Growing up in the Punjab, Nina received a basic school education but regarded her upbringing and life experience as sheltered, having neither

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attended college nor worked outside of the family home. At the age of twenty-three, her parents agreed a match and Nina was given a lavish wedding with a reception in a big hotel. Nina described this marriage as forced on her part and steeped in deception. She met her husband for the first time seven days before the wedding and repeatedly voiced a concern that he never spoke with her. Her future mother-in-law attributed this to her son’s inability to speak Punjabi and Nina’s total lack of English language, promising she would enrol her in English classes once they were married. Following the wedding ceremony, she discovered her husband’s disability – he was born deaf and mute – and his family had been unable to arrange his marriage from within the resident UK / Indian community to whom they were known.

When Nina migrated to join her husband and in-laws in the UK, she realised the full extent of the deception. Her marriage had been a trade for her physical and emotional labour as his carer, and also for the purpose of forced labour. Upon arrival, all her documentation was removed and Nina was kept under constant surveillance. She was transported from home to work in a nearby sweatshop without pay and, inside the home, she took care of her husband and was the domestic servant for the entire extended family. Davina described her relationship with her husband as being his “sex slave” and described her overall situation as one of “slavery”. This situation continued for two and a half years.

Nina ran away with her sixteen-month-old daughter after learning that her in-laws meant to keep the child, but trade her back for forced labour in India. With the help of a women’s project, Nina and her daughter have been free from trafficking control for three years.

Nina’s story fits with the international definition of trafficking – her story being one of forced marriage in a context of trafficking and forced labour. Her story shows evidence of recruitment, transportation, and receipt (consistent with the acts in trafficking), deception and the abuse of power (consistent with the means in trafficking), for the combined purposes of a marriage involving domestic and sexual servitude (within the home), and labour exploitation (outside the home) – the purposes of trafficking.

Luul (semi-structured interview)

Luul was born in Somalia and had just turned twenty-nine years of age when I met her. Although registered as single, and despite losing contact with her partner during her journey over to the UK, Luul saw herself in a long-term relationship and was liaising with the Red Cross to find him. Luul was educated to secondary school level and considered herself to be

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middle class. She had undertaken considerable work experience across several continents in order to fund her mother’s treatment for cancer. Perhaps the most lucrative amongst these jobs was making mink blankets in a factory in China. During an outbreak of civil war in Somalia, Luul migrated to Kenya, but being a witness to police corruption and becoming a target of police violence, paid for herself and her baby to be smuggled out of East Africa on a fake passport. During the journey, her smugglers threatened to take her baby and she was forced to make further payments for the child’s upkeep and continued safety, rendering her destitute on arrival in the UK. Luul did not choose the route or her end destination, and although Luul had heard of the UK, she did not know where it was on a map. On arrival in the UK, Luul’s documents were withheld by her handler and she was handed over to another person of Somali origin. Upon seeing her and her baby as more of a burden than a potential asset, they were quickly abandoned on the streets with a fake passport and no means of survival. At the time of interview, Luul was awaiting a decision on her asylum claim.

Luul’s story fits into the mixed population flow which crosses smuggling and trafficking. By legal definition, “smuggling becomes trafficking once a person who is smuggled experiences exploitation at any point from recruitment through to arrival at their destination” (Goodey, 2008: 422). Luul experienced exploitation (extortion of further monies en route and a withholding of pre-paid papers en route and arrival), exercised through fear, control, and threats of harm.

Fatuma (semi-structured interview)

Fatuma was born in the Gambia and was thirty-six years of age when interviewed. Fatuma was a striking woman who came dressed in bright ethnic clothing. She was tall and, having good posture made a strong first impression. Fatuma described her family circumstances when growing up as very poor. Fatuma described a forced marriage in her own country in her early teens as slavery – becoming the property of her husband without any rights or say over her life. This union produced a son. As the extended family’s ability to eke out an existence declined with the addition of an extra mouth to feed, Fatuma was sent to the nearest town to work as a “house girl” (house maid). During this period, she met the man who she referred to as her second “husband” and they had a daughter together. Unable to return to her village, the elders traded her to her second husband and made clandestine arrangements for her and her daughter (but not the son) to travel to the UK to be with him. The UK was chosen by the village elders for having “colonised us” (Africa). When she arrived in the UK

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(without her daughter who was to follow once they were settled), she remained unmarried but was told to describe herself as his wife. Her passport was taken away and her “husband” rarely lived in the same flat with her, returning only for sex. He also sent other men (his “friends”) over to her for sex (for which she wasn’t paid), arranging cash in hand payments to her for cutting black women’s hair as a means of supporting herself. When she confronted him for keeping her “as a prostitute in my home and in my marriage”, he became violent towards her, threatening to have her killed, keep her daughter away, and make sure she never saw her son again. Following a particularly savage assault in which he cut off all of her hair, the Police were anonymously called out to the flat and arranged for her to be placed in a safe house. By the time I interviewed her, Fatuma had been granted “Humanitarian Protection” (Home Office Immigration Rules: Part 11) and had been living in the UK for a total of five years. She remains deeply distressed by her continued separation from her mother, her son (now aged 15) and her daughter back in the Gambia. Her father has since died.

Fatuma’s story fits with the international definition of trafficking – her story being one of human trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation. Her story shows evidence of recruitment and transportation (consistent with the acts of trafficking), deception via a false promise of marriage (consistent with the means in trafficking), as well as a combination of debt bondage and sexual exploitation through marriage and prostitution (the trafficking purposes).

Cemile (semi-structured interview)

Cemile was born in Turkey and, at age forty, was the most mature of all my participants. Growing up with a teacher for a father and having four sisters, all of whom turned out to be artists of one kind or another (artist, painter, interior designer, art teacher) Cemile chose dance as her genre of creative expression.

This choice, coupled with a comfortable middle class upbringing, introduced her to competitions and travel abroad from a relatively early age. Whilst performing and travelling as a professional folk dancer over a period of eight years, Cemile learnt to speak English and developed an interest in other cultures and in travel. At the age of thirty, Cemile entered university to study fashion design and on graduating met the man she was eventually to marry. This decision to marry was a surprise to Cemile herself, as she was still mourning the tragic loss of her lover in a traffic accident. Despite the speed with which she consented to marry, Cemile was at pains to relate how carefully and honestly she had discussed

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marriage – her expectations, her virtues and vices – with her prospective husband. Although sharing a Turkish background, he had lived all his life in the UK, so Cemile reluctantly agreed to migrate once they were married.

Cemile relates how she struggled with her mother-in-law’s “total control” over her both before and after the marriage and how married life rapidly declined into one of domestic servitude, sexual objectification within his circle of friends, and control exercised as emotional abuse. When I interviewed Cemile, what struck me most was how sad and changed her whole life had become since her marriage and migration. At the time of her interview, she was separated from her husband and had sole care of their young son. Although Cemile has leave to remain in the country permanently, the UK is not her country of choice. However, Cemile feels she cannot return to Turkey for fear of shaming and dishonouring the family name back home.

Cemile’s story fits with the international definition of trafficking – which negates consent when the act, means and exploitations in trafficking apply (UN, 2000a: 3b). There is evidence of act and means consistent with trafficking in the form of recruitment through false promise and deception, as well as an abuse of power (the exercise of control over her by another person – her mother-in-law), and an abuse of her position of vulnerability (by her husband and mother-in-law). Additionally, trafficking exploitation exists as domestic servitude (slavery or similar practices). However, in terms of professional recognition and fit, Cemile’s story of marriage in a context of trafficking presents complication. Although consent and exploitation are legally complex issues which carry some latitude in professional decision making, Cemile’s retention of her documents make her story vulnerable under official scrutiny. Cemile’s story is included – first and foremost – as its omission from this collection would be a denial of her lived experience of trafficking. Beyond this, it is helpful for the insights it provides into the “swampy lowlands” of lived experience and professional practice – from where imaginative praxis often derives (Schön, 1983: 42)10.

Aarti (semi-structured interview)

Aarti was born in India and being thirty-eight years old was the second eldest of my participants. Aarti presented as a confident and worldly-wise woman who held informed social and political opinions on all manner of controversial issues, including trafficking, crime, and social welfare. She had attained her degree, her Masters and a PhD in the field of Chemistry and had agreed to an arranged marriage to a “non-Indian friend” of her

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 37

sister and brother-in-law, living in the States. With her family originating from the Punjab (one of India’s wealthiest regions) and being from an “upper class background”, Aarti accepted some risks in marrying this man. This was partly in response to family pressure to secure the perceived benefits in a professional and westernised union, and partly to enhance her own life opportunities beyond what would have been possible at home despite her upper class situation. So, based upon a long distance telephone relationship, Aarti’s family organised a wedding and arranged a meeting with him fifteen days before the ceremony was due to take place. The prospective husband arrived in India two days before the wedding ceremony causing Aarti to question the wisdom of marrying. However, at this late stage in proceedings, Aarti felt outmanoeuvred by family and married him in a lavish wedding followed by a forty-dish banquet. Following the wedding, Aarti migrated to join her husband and start married life firstly in the States and then in the UK. Aarti described her subsequent reception from her husband (within the home and marriage) and her treatment from her employers as exploitative and degrading. The details of this are given in the findings chapters, but the financial and social poverty she experienced, combined with the personal misrepresentation she encountered, led Aarti to tell me “I thought I am modern slavery”. At the time of interview, Aarti was already divorced, but as the couple shared custody of their son, starting a new life for herself and her son was proving difficult.

Placing Aarti’s story within the official definition of trafficking raises dilemma and centrally connects with discourse, explored in subsequent chapters, over what experience does and does not qualify for UK trafficking help and support (particularly around marriage). Aarti’s story shows trafficking means and exploitation (deception, emotional- psychological coercion, and descent into a servile marriage). However, there is no clear evidence of act (between the two families) and, without this, Aarti’s transnational marriage does not qualify her for official victim of trafficking (VoT) status, trafficking protections, or trafficking support. Given women’s patriarchal disadvantage and migrant women’s secondary status in refugee scholarship (Bloch et al, 2000), dismissing any woman’s story once collected felt at best disrespectful, and at worst exploitative. Aarti’s experience is, therefore, included for her story’s insight into the intersections between free and forced migrations, and also for its praxis insights into thorny issues of consent, coercion and exploitation – the benchmarks defining experience as trafficking.

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Sofia (case study)

Sofia is one of two case studies I was given access to. Sofia was born in Moldova and aged thirty when she was arrested by the UK Police and remanded in custody. She had been separated from her husband for a period of two years when interviewed and had no children of her own following a miscarriage during the marriage. She held a diploma and was qualified to work as a radiologist. Her family were of working class origin and her parents, brother, and two sisters had undergone considerable hardship to put her through University. Sofia had also doubled up jobs to help finance her studies in support of the family’s collective effort to raise their standard of living. Her jobs were blue collar in nature and included shop work, farm hand, and selling goods to see her through university. Sofia decided to seek ways of travelling to the UK for work when her local hospital closed and the family needed money to pay for her mother’s cancer treatment. A friend arranged her travel to Brussels, where she was to pay a female contact 500 euro for a false Lithuanian passport. This woman arranged Sofia’s overland passage and travel agents at borders between Brussels and the UK, promising Sofia hotel work en route and a live-in hotel post once she reached her destination country. By the time Sofia arrived in the UK, she was in considerable debt bondage and was handed over to a group of men who took her documents and put her to work in a sauna, forcing her to have sex and perform other entertainment services. Her pay was taken at source to pay off her debt and Sofia was only allowed out of the sauna when accompanied by a member of staff to buy clothes for work. She was controlled through fear that her traffickers would harm her family back home. Sofia was apprehended during a police raid on the brothel and detained for having used a false passport to enter the country. Sofia received a twelve month custodial sentence, which she served in a women’s prison, where she remained post-sentence awaiting deportation. Sofia has since been deported and all contact with her has ceased.

Sofia’s story fits into the mixed population flow which crosses smuggling and trafficking. Whilst it is not clear at which precise stage Sofia was recruited (the act), she was deceived and her family in Moldova threatened with physical harm during the course of her journey (the trafficking means). Sofia was exploited via a combination of debt bondage en route and forced prostitution on arrival (the trafficking exploitations) legally entitling her to trafficking recognition.

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 39

Tijana (case study)

Tijana is the second case study I was given access to. Tijana was born in Nigeria and aged twenty-four when convicted by a UK criminal court. Tijana was orphaned at age two when her parents were killed in a car accident. She was taken in by a friend of her mother but lost contact with her two older siblings as a result of this. She remained in school until she turned eight and was then treated as the house servant and sent to sell food on the streets for her keep. When in her teens, Tijana was befriended by an Italian woman who offered to take her to Italy and send her to school, in return for acting as a live-in nanny to her children. Once in Italy, Tijana was put to work as a prostitute and routinely beaten by her pimps to keep her under control and dissuade her from escaping. Whilst street working, Tijana formed a friendship with another Nigerian woman, who in turn brought her over to the UK on false documents with the promise of a better quality of life. Tijana was handed over to “friends”, whom she was told would look out for her. These people retained her documents and kept her prisoner within the house. On the third day, Tijana felt under enormous pressure to perform a task for these people, which involved cashing some travellers’ cheques in the local post office using a false passport. She was accompanied there but went in alone. The transaction failed and the Police were alerted. Two official processes came into play and Tijana was detention fast tracked (DFT) through the system. An immigration check recommended “automatic deportation” but gave way to allow for an eighteen-month term of imprisonment to be served, concurrently, on two charges of false representation and possession of false documents. Whilst appealing her deportation towards the end of her prison sentence, Tijana was reclassified as trafficked and transferred to a trafficking safe house. The outcome of her asylum claim and her whereabouts are presently unknown as the trafficking project operates a strict policy of non-disclosure.

Tijana’s story fits with the international definition of trafficking – her story being one of two episodes of human trafficking; the first for sexual exploitation and the second for the purpose of criminal activity (EUP, 2011: paragraph 11). Her story shows evidence of recruitment and transportation (consistent with the acts in trafficking), force and deception (consistent with the means in trafficking), as well as sexual exploitation as a prostitute (the trafficking exploitation). During the field work, the trafficking of persons for the commission of criminal offences was recognised as taking place but not embedded in any domestic or international policies. The EU Directive (EUP, 2011: Paragraph 11) now endorses a trafficking purpose in forcing an individual to commit a criminal act for another’s financial gain.

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Table 2-2: Composition profile: focus group

Focus Group Composition Number of women 17 Age range Between 22 and 42.

Nationality

Algerian 2 Bangladeshi 2 British born Pakistani 1 Chinese 1 Gambian 1 Indian 3 Iraqi 2 Pakistani 3 Sudanese 1 Turkish 1

Interpreters present 3 – each multi lingual

Reason for coming to the UK Forced transnational marriage Sexual exploitation Labour exploitation

Length of time resident within the UK between 1 and 7 years Contributions made 48 Time Frame 95 minutes and 16 seconds

Focus group observations: Given the focus group’s BME identity and

experience of forced marriage, there is obvious representational bias. This noted, all participants bar three (the Algerian, Turkish and British-born woman of Pakistani ethnicity) hailed from the ten top sending countries for UK trafficking at the time of the fieldwork (SOCA, 2009 /10: 42). Subsequent statistics provided by the NRM for 2013 highlight some changes: China remains in the top ten as the 7th principal country of origin for adults trafficked into the UK, but Pakistan and India exit the top ten occupying 14th and 17th place respectively (NCA, 2014: 4)

During the fieldwork, China and Pakistan also featured in the top ten asylum producing countries, with Iraq occupying the second top producing country for the UK in 2008 (Asylum Support Partnership, 2009). Currently, Pakistan hosts the highest number of refugees globally at 1.6million (UNHCR, 2013) and remains the highest producer of Asylum Seekers in the UK (3, 343 persons), with Bangladesh in 7th place (1,123 persons) and India in 9th place (965 persons: Home Office, 2014b).

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A Reflexive Account of the Research Process 41

Table 2-3: Composition profile: anti-trafficking professionals

Research Categories Participants

Competent Authorities

Senior Government Enforcement Officer 1 Senior Government Enforcement Officer 2 Senior Government Enforcement Officer 3 Government Enforcement Officer 4 Government Enforcement Officer 5 Government Enforcement Officer 6

Non-Governmental Organisations

NGO Information Officer NGO Programme Co-ordinator NGO Outreach worker NGO Support worker NGO Project Manager NGO Education Officer

Partnership Organisations Partner A (Police and CJS link) Partner B (Asylum and Refugee link) Partner C (Civic and Faith Leaders link)

Notes

1 Olesen (2007:432) defines reflexivity as “the manner and extent to which the researchers present themselves as embedded in the research situation and process”. A reflexive researcher should not only explain how practical and analytical issues are handled, but also reflect on how her own background and emotions affect representations in the “practical production” of knowledge (Fontana and Frey, 2000: 664). 2 This chapter moves between the first and third person in solidarity with feminist calls on the researcher to reveal her investment in the research process (Oakley, 1981; Reinharz, 1992). 3 As example, Dorothy Smith argues a feminist standpoint informed by women’s sex-class location; Donna Haraway argues a standpoint of all knowledge (both male and female) as partial and situated knowledge; Shulamit Reinharz calls for women’s meaning for women’s improvement; Ann Oakley critiques the gendering in methods and knowledge production. 4 Access to case studies required ethical clearance from additional parties, in addition to ethics approval granted by the University of Hull. 5 Women – who are trafficked into a forced marriage and thrown out (once their usefulness for bearing children, caring for a disabled husband, or earning from prostitution wane) – face deportation without a spousal or work visa proving their eligibility to be in the UK.

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6 “No Recourse to Public Funds” (NRPF) is a State classification implemented by the UK Border Agency and denies welfare benefits (including income support, child benefit, disability allowance), Local Authority housing, and asylum support to any person deemed unlawfully present in the UK (NRPF, 2006). 7 For wider discussion of institutional gatekeepers in trafficking, see Bosworth (2011). 8 Following NGO protocols on protecting the anonymity of women research participants, all individual SSIs have been re-named for publication. 9 The finer details and individual complexities in women’s stories form the empirical findings presented in subsequent chapters. 10 Schön (1983: 42) famously describes “the swampy lowlands” as professional areas “where situations are confusing messes incapable of technical solution and [which] usually involve problems of greatest human concern”.

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