JENDA: A JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND AFRICAN WOMEN STUDIES ISSN: 1530-5686 Issue 8 (2006)

May-Len Skilbrei, Marianne Tveit and Anette Brunovskis

Fafo-report 525; (Fafo was founded by the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions in 1982.I)

Executive Summary

Since the summer of 2004, Nigerian women have dominated street prostitution in Norway - both in the Norwegian capital Oslo and in other cities - and both in numbers and in public attention. The women from Nigeria are in a very different position than most other women in prostitution in Norway, and have different histories than e.g. eastern European women. The Ministry of Justice and the Police therefore funded a project aimed at creating knowledge about the situation of the women from Nigeria, and about under what circumstances they have come to Norway. The main focus of the study is the women’s current situation in Norway. The information about Nigeria, their travel out of the country, and stays in other European countries function as a backdrop to understand and explore this topic.

To answer these questions, Skilbrei, Tveit and Brunovskis undertook a qualitative study among Nigerian women working in prostitution in Norway. They performed a fieldwork consisting of in-depth interviews with 13 women working on the street in Oslo and Stavanger, group interviews and conversations about the issues with additional 70 women. They also performed interviews with professionals working with the group in different capacities, such as social workers, NGO staff, police officers and border controllers. In addition they observed in street prostitution areas in the two cities, and followed the outreach work three organizations do among women in prostitution.

Skilbrei, Tveit and Brunovskis find that the women have ended up in Norway in different ways, but they have their reasons to leave Nigeria in common. The women talk about individual poverty and family responsibilities, and they talk about how it felt like living in a society where they trusted no one outside their families and where the future is uncertain. The decision to migrate was not always their own. For some of the women the migration process had started as a family decision. Sending a family member to Europe was seen as an investment for the whole family, in addition to, hopefully, improving the life of the migrant herself. Many of the women or their families started accumulating debt already in Nigeria, because the women or their families had to rely on assistance from agents or moneylenders. Few travelled directly to Europe from Nigeria. Most of the women had travelled to Europe through different Western and Northern African countries. This travel was financed in different ways, and the women had varied control over their situation.

Their first meeting with Europe had been Italy or Spain. Nearly all the women we have been in contact with during this research have a legal residence permit in Italy or Spain. Most of them possess a Schengen-visa and may therefore travel freely to other European countries. Travelling through Africa and travelling from Africa to Europe, the women are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. The need assistance to fulfil their plan to migrate, and some receive offers they are too desperate to decline. Their vulnerability continues also after they have entered Europe. The debts they have accumulated are difficult to repay with the kind of work and conditions they receive on the legal and illegal labour market in Italy and Spain, and this leaves them with a wish to travel onwards into Central and North Europe.

As many of the women have close ties to Italy or Spain, they are "commuting" to Norway on a regular basis. Some of them also sell sex in Southern Europe, while others only work in prostitution in Norway. Many stayed in one of these countries until they had secured a residency permit, and then went to other European countries looking for money and work.

One important question was whether the women are victims of trafficking or if they have faced other forms of exploitation in the migration process. The women often had experiences with both prostitution and regular work in Italy or Spain, but had problems earning enough money for repaying debt to people smugglers, traffickers, banks or relatives in Nigeria, sending remittances to family in Nigeria or paying money for pimps or traffickers in Europe. Some of the women say that they themselves and most other Nigerian women in prostitution in Norway still owe large amount of money, often as much as 50,000 Euros. Others say that they themselves and most other women had paid back their debt in Italy and Spain before they travelled to other countries, and that is impossible to leave Italy or Spain while still indebted. When talking to the women about what consequences the debt has on e.g. their freedom to travel and to end prostitution, Skilbrei, Tveit and Brunovskis find that the boundaries between the different degrees of involvement and abuse, between helpers and traffickers, can be difficult to identify. The women themselves explain the debt bondage in different ways: some pay money to a Nigerian woman living in Norway, and some pay a male pimp in Italy or Spain, men they often have or have had intimate relationships to. In some cases these people, male or female, will be traffickers rather than pimps.

The majority of the women expressed disappointment in their living conditions in Norway and felt deceived by their helpers, organizers, pimps or traffickers. They believed that once they arrived in Norway, they would shortly after be able to get out of prostitution and into regular work - a process many of them have experienced as a fairly easy one in Southern Europe. Many of the women also express frustration over having to work in the streets as most of them have only sold sex in indoors prostitution arenas in Italy and Spain. In addition, they make far less money in Norway than expected. There are also characteristics of the Nigerian women’s prostitution that make them even more vulnerable than other groups of prostitutes in Norway. The Nigerian women have few possibilities to bring their costumers indoors as the women are very visible and easy to identify by hotel owners and police. As they also usually live in very cramped quarters, often sharing their bedroom with four or five other women, they are more likely than other sex workers to serve the costumers in the customers’ homes - which is known to be more risky for the women.

The informants describe their lives in Norway and Europe as very hard and difficult, but still most of them say that they do not wish to go back to Nigeria. Some of the women are prevented from going back to Nigeria by debt or traffickers, but others also are negative towards returning to Nigeria. The economic obligations they have to their family combined with the enormous expectations tied to the migration process—the possibility to go to Europe is looked upon as a “once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity,” “a golden ticket”—make the women feel that it is impossible to return home without bringing with them huge, and partly totally unrealistic, sums of money.

Skilbrei, Tveit and Brunovskis find that women from Nigeria in prostitution in Norway is a vulnerable group, both because of debt, traffickers, pimps and family obligation and because of the situation they are in in Norway with lack of knowledge about the Norwegian society, poor living conditions and risk taking in prostitution.

Citation Format:

May-Len Skilbrei, Marianne Tveit and Anette Brunovskis. “African Dreams on European Streets: Nigerian Women in Prostitution in Norway” JENDA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 8, 2006.

Copyright © 2006 Africa Resource Center, Inc.