Indoor Markets, Forward Migrations and Returns: The shifting contours of Nigerian Trafficking in Italy

For many years Nigerian women represented one of the main national groups selling sexual services in the Italian street markets, with women of African origin making up around 45% of all women working outdoors throughout the country up to 2017 (NVA, 2023). Yet, around this time, and more significantly from 2019, their numbers started to progressively decline and, today, they represent only 16% of those selling sexual services in the streets (ibidem). This has left practitioners working in anti-trafficking organizations interrogating themselves on the factors that might have led to such a radical change. However, to this date, their questions have not yet found an answer. This presentation will retrace the main developments that the Nigerian trafficking phenomenon has gone through over the years. By presenting data collected through the conduction of semi-structured interviews, it will also explore the main hypotheses put forward by practitioners and experts working in the Italian anti-trafficking system to explain this radical change. In doing so, the paper will highlight how there probably is not a single factor that has led to the disappearance of Nigerian women from the street markets but, rather, a multitude of different ones that, combined, have contributed to it, such as secondary migratory movements towards other European countries, as well as a shift towards the indoor and ICT-mediated markets. Finally, the paper will explore another recent development within the trafficking phenomenon: Nigerian women’s requests for assistance to anti-trafficking organizations as they return to Italy after having spent several years in other European countries, and especially Germany and France, often after having experienced further exploitation in the sex markets.