My life is beautiful” – 2021 Anti-trafficking day Seminar at University Iuav in Venice

On Tuesday 19th 2021, we held the seminar “My life is beautiful” at University Iuav in Venice. It was the first occasion in which the INSigHT Action Research Team could meet again the professionals of the N.A.Ve (now N.A.V.I.G.A.Re) network with whom we collaborated as part of the research we carried out to explore the organisational structure and the institutional cultures of the Veneto Region anti-trafficking project, with specific focus on the target of young Nigerian women.

This seminar was organised to report specifically on the findings and reflections deriving from the interviews carried out with the beneficiaries of the N.A.Ve project in September-October 2020, shortly after the lockdown was over and when the curfew was being implemented.

The INSigHT Team researchers explained that the interviews illustrate well the variety and complexity of trajectories of Nigerian women and point to the need of increasingly indivualised projects that pay improved attention to the needs and aspirations of this target group – as well as others.

The researchers provided examples to show that Nigerian women constantly deal, in their trajectories, with a back and forth movement between their present, past and future and find ways to make sense of their lives while projecting themselves into the future, in spite of the traumas they have suffered and the multiple forms of victimisation to which they have been repeatedly subjected too.

The seminar was also an occasion to reflect on the fruitful collaboration between researchers and anti-trafficking professionals, that not only provided an opportunity for mutual reflections and capacity building but also a chance to reflect on the elaboration of the possible dispositives that anti-trafficking projects can adopt to ensure they are participatory and involve beneficiaries in the definition of services targeted to them.