“I am not the type that somebody will oppress. Somebody like me, you cannot bring me down.” Tensions and Paradoxes in Sex Trafficking. An Ethnographic Exploration of Nigerian Street Walkers and Madams in Spain

Background and purpose: this thesis centres on the understanding that assumptions and norms about human trafficking are mainly driven by Northcentric anti-trafficking strategies geared to meeting their own socioeconomic and political priorities. These strategies reduce the complexities and variations of irregular migratory phenomena to simplified and stereotyped representations, and perpetuate hegemonic anti-trafficking notions of passivity and victimhood. Migration and trafficking scholars call for research into the fine-grain detail of irregular sex work economies to widen the limited scope and inclusivity of concepts currently associated with sex trafficking, and develop more appropriate forms of understanding and response. I seek to address these calls by exploring in depth the lived experiences of an under-researched irregular migrant sex work population. Methods: nineteen Nigerian, Edo women working as prostitutes and Madams on the streets of a Spanish industrial estate participated in this long-term ethnographic study. It spanned five years of field preparation and five more in research, including observation and interactive engagement across settings. I adapted the recursive steps of reflexive thematic analysis to develop two data themes (Migrating from Nigeria, Resettling in Spain) and three contextual lenses (Social Systems, Power Dynamics, Faith Norms). These steps resonated with 'patchwork’ ethnography guidelines for sex trafficking research. I employed Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory (CDT; 1957) to help manage and understand shifting sensemaking and decision-making phenomena. Results: eight paradoxes through the findings reflected the women navigating socioeconomic migration intentions and using psychological strategies and tools. I did not originally intend to add conceptual insights to the theoretical framework in this study. However, the women’s data provided lived perspectives and exemplars of CDT and self-concept and induced compliance dynamics; and challenged rather than endorsed the theory. Conclusion: the findings offer unique insights into a marginalised migrant sex work economy across wide-ranging psychosocial, sexual, cultural, and spiritual phenomena. They provide timely, much-needed diversity, depth, and richness of contribution to the above growing body of qualitative research on migrant sex work and scholarly force for change in the anti-trafficking arena; and to discussions on CDT. Future research will centre on university-level anti-trafficking education (i.e., developing critical reflection as a transformative tool and placing lived experiential perspectives at its centre)

Dangerous Fieldwork: Reflections on Ethnographic Research with Irregular, Nigerian Streetwalkers and Madams in Spain

This is the final version. Available on open access from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordRecent calls have been made to investigate the lived experience of migrant sex workers, to broaden the scope and inclusivity of macro-level conceptualizations, and to develop contextually grounded forms of understanding. Our ethnographic study sought to explore the lived perspectives of an under-researched occupational group: migrant women working as irregular streetwalkers in a European city. Nineteen Nigerian Edo women working as prostitutes and Madams in Spain participated in an ethnographic, longitudinal study spanning five years of data collection. In this article, we focus on some of the key challenges, including ethical considerations, of undertaking ethnographic work in a hazardous fieldwork setting that presents psychological and physical dangers to both participants and researchers, including threats of violence, and researcher burnout

Deformation and flow of a two-dimensional foam under continuous shear

We investigate the flow properties of a two-dimensional aqueous foam submitted to a quasistatic shear in a Couette geometry. A strong localization of the flow (shear banding) at the edge of the moving wall is evidenced, characterized by an exponential decay of the average tangential velocity. Moreover, the analysis of the rapid velocity fluctuations reveals self-similar dynamical structures consisting of clusters of bubbles rolling as rigid bodies. To relate the instantaneous (elastic) and time-averaged (plastic) components of the strain, we develop a stochastic model where irreversible rearrangements are activated by local stress fluctuations originating from the rubbing of the wall. This model gives a complete description of our observations and is also consistent with data obtained on granular shear bands by other groups.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Surface instability of soft solids under strain

Using a uniaxial deformation setup, we show that the free surface of an homogeneous elastic material is unstable under compression: parallel grooves nucleate orthogonally to the direction of compression when a characteristic stretch ratio a* is reached. We measure experimentally the variation of a* as well as the wavelength of the grooves as a function of the thickness h(0) of the material. All data collapse on single curves when normalizing h(0) by a characteristic length which is the ratio of the surface tension to the shear modulus of the material. This length scale acts as a regularization parameter for the system. We introduce a theoretical model that captures well the features of the instability. The observed nucleation-like process for the grooves development suggests that the instability is subcritical