Final Report Summary - UNBOUND23 (WELFARE UNBOUND. THE CASE OF URBAN POLICIES AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING: FROM CHICAGO TO SICILY)
Human trafficking represents an elusive social problem that needs to be reconceptualised beyond criminological constructions and moralized stereotypes on women. In such a context, the issue of empowerment, the prevalent policy frame in dealing with the rehabilitation of vulnerable groups, as women are supposed to be, shows the following controversies. First, the medical one: according to the model of the therapeutic state, an abuse represents a trauma that can be overcome only through individual resources. Two, the functionalist one: “mobilization of resources” and “political opportunity structure” are assumed to be the proper approaches to understand women’s behaviour and actions. Three, the moral one: mainstream welfare policies are still based on control and compassion toward migrant women as victims of abuses and discriminaton.
At the same time, women’s studies show us that women can change gender relationships and connect physical, social, economic and political spaces in very personal ways: what emerge are transnational spaces made up of people, goods, ideas and cultures that need to be explored.
The research project “Unbound23” had two main goals: (a) to give a contribution to the search of a new European model of social solidarity beyond that of the welfare state; (b) to develop a frontier-research profile capable of overcoming the dualism urban/social where academic disciplines are still entrapped. The research was based on the US/Italy comparison of two urban forms of care for victims of human trafficking. The deep ethnographic engagement, conversely, made the researcher overtake two deviations: first, beyond the boundaries of women as victims of human trafficking, towards the broader issue of violence against women; two, towards the rethinking of the concept of empowerment by focusing on cities as spaces of women’s self-reforming.
During the first year of the project, the Chicago fieldwork called for: (a) the de-structuring of human trafficking as public problem and the focus on three arenas at its borders: labor exploitation, sex work and refugees. The fieldwork developed as a three-site ethnographic engagement in community organizations with the aim to investigate personal experiences of violence and the capacity of self-reforming of three women’s groups: US sex workers, Latino workers, international refugees.
During the second year of the project, the fieldwork carried out in Sicily called for the shift from violence against women as a public problem and a social emergency to the modalities by which a women’s group, the Senegalese female streetvendors in Sicily, deal with troubles and create their times and spaces of do-it-yourself empowerment in emergency and ordinary situations. The fieldwork became a “two-heads” ethnography strongly shaped by the opportunity given by a Senegalese female hawker to the researcher: the corporeal experience of Sicilian outdoor markets as daily spaces of life.
In terms of training, the research project called for the experimentation of ethnography as a vehicle for territorial action, a tool of empowerment in itself for social groups and a public-making process including the fieldwork, the writing and the knowledge transfer. This led to: three lectures in academic environment in US and in Italy; a lecture in a civil society association in Italy; a first networking between community organizations in Chicago and in Sicily on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers policies; the on-going preparation of one articles for international journal on the Chicago experience and the book “Al mercato, con Aida. Una donna senegalese in Sicilia”, that will be published by an Italian publisher at the beginning of 2015.
Sex workers, migrants and refugees show their experiences of public problems as practices of a post-national citizenship redefining spaces of attachment and frontiers between morality and justice. Looking at cities as spaces of women’s empowerment, the research focus was:
- in Chicago, on the community organization as a space of recovery from violence against women: solicitation and courage, rather than control and compassion, bring the interaction community organizer/victim towards personal women’s experiences of self-reforming: here, regimes of action can not be explained through causality, intentionality, rationality, but only through a trade-off attachment/detachment between past and present women’s worlds.
- in Sicily, on the market as the workspace of a Senegalese woman: different trade-off competition/cooperation characterize the triple interaction - with institutions, the client and the work colleague – within which she experiences micro-spaces of power asymmetry and attachment: her personal prevention of discrimination at work seems to be linked to the woman’s capacity of hybridization between the economic, the religious and the social, rather than to the opportunities given by institutional contexts.
The research project “Unbound23” gives a contribution to the reconceptualization of the issue of empowerment by focusing on the women’s public experiences and action. It calls for the adoption of a microsociological and cultural insight as complementary to the approaches of “resource mobilization” and “political opportunity structure” where the concept of empowerment has originally been developed. It suggests that ethnography can be a vehicle for the de-professionalization of policy research and the production of new arrays of knowledge blurring the boundaries between policymakers and policytakers. Aiming at the creation of an European social solidarity model, the research project shows an effort to rethink moral and political limits of urban policies against human trafficking; to experiment transversal policies crisscrossing the boundaries between welfare, labour and migration issues; to envision new ways of interaction between policymakers, researchers and ordinary people in order to produce shared knowledge, thereby, new spaces of democratic participation.
At the same time, women’s studies show us that women can change gender relationships and connect physical, social, economic and political spaces in very personal ways: what emerge are transnational spaces made up of people, goods, ideas and cultures that need to be explored.
The research project “Unbound23” had two main goals: (a) to give a contribution to the search of a new European model of social solidarity beyond that of the welfare state; (b) to develop a frontier-research profile capable of overcoming the dualism urban/social where academic disciplines are still entrapped. The research was based on the US/Italy comparison of two urban forms of care for victims of human trafficking. The deep ethnographic engagement, conversely, made the researcher overtake two deviations: first, beyond the boundaries of women as victims of human trafficking, towards the broader issue of violence against women; two, towards the rethinking of the concept of empowerment by focusing on cities as spaces of women’s self-reforming.
During the first year of the project, the Chicago fieldwork called for: (a) the de-structuring of human trafficking as public problem and the focus on three arenas at its borders: labor exploitation, sex work and refugees. The fieldwork developed as a three-site ethnographic engagement in community organizations with the aim to investigate personal experiences of violence and the capacity of self-reforming of three women’s groups: US sex workers, Latino workers, international refugees.
During the second year of the project, the fieldwork carried out in Sicily called for the shift from violence against women as a public problem and a social emergency to the modalities by which a women’s group, the Senegalese female streetvendors in Sicily, deal with troubles and create their times and spaces of do-it-yourself empowerment in emergency and ordinary situations. The fieldwork became a “two-heads” ethnography strongly shaped by the opportunity given by a Senegalese female hawker to the researcher: the corporeal experience of Sicilian outdoor markets as daily spaces of life.
In terms of training, the research project called for the experimentation of ethnography as a vehicle for territorial action, a tool of empowerment in itself for social groups and a public-making process including the fieldwork, the writing and the knowledge transfer. This led to: three lectures in academic environment in US and in Italy; a lecture in a civil society association in Italy; a first networking between community organizations in Chicago and in Sicily on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers policies; the on-going preparation of one articles for international journal on the Chicago experience and the book “Al mercato, con Aida. Una donna senegalese in Sicilia”, that will be published by an Italian publisher at the beginning of 2015.
Sex workers, migrants and refugees show their experiences of public problems as practices of a post-national citizenship redefining spaces of attachment and frontiers between morality and justice. Looking at cities as spaces of women’s empowerment, the research focus was:
- in Chicago, on the community organization as a space of recovery from violence against women: solicitation and courage, rather than control and compassion, bring the interaction community organizer/victim towards personal women’s experiences of self-reforming: here, regimes of action can not be explained through causality, intentionality, rationality, but only through a trade-off attachment/detachment between past and present women’s worlds.
- in Sicily, on the market as the workspace of a Senegalese woman: different trade-off competition/cooperation characterize the triple interaction - with institutions, the client and the work colleague – within which she experiences micro-spaces of power asymmetry and attachment: her personal prevention of discrimination at work seems to be linked to the woman’s capacity of hybridization between the economic, the religious and the social, rather than to the opportunities given by institutional contexts.
The research project “Unbound23” gives a contribution to the reconceptualization of the issue of empowerment by focusing on the women’s public experiences and action. It calls for the adoption of a microsociological and cultural insight as complementary to the approaches of “resource mobilization” and “political opportunity structure” where the concept of empowerment has originally been developed. It suggests that ethnography can be a vehicle for the de-professionalization of policy research and the production of new arrays of knowledge blurring the boundaries between policymakers and policytakers. Aiming at the creation of an European social solidarity model, the research project shows an effort to rethink moral and political limits of urban policies against human trafficking; to experiment transversal policies crisscrossing the boundaries between welfare, labour and migration issues; to envision new ways of interaction between policymakers, researchers and ordinary people in order to produce shared knowledge, thereby, new spaces of democratic participation.