A shifting narrative: Perspectives on human trafficking, crisis, and time among minors who are victims of human trafficking
Assistant Professor Trine Mygind Korsby has published the article ‘A shifting narrative: Perspectives on human trafficking, crisis, and time among minors who are victims of human trafficking’ in Tidsskriftet Antropologi (in Danish).
Based on fieldwork among a group of young women at a shelter in Rome for minors who are victims of human trafficking, the article analyses their experiences of the past, present and future and the role of the official label as "victim of human trafficking" in their lives.
The main argument of the article is that the young women at the shelter see their lives as unified but changing plots, and that the changeability of their narratives is a way in which they cement their agency in their current lives at the shelter, as well as in opposition to the victim category. The young women do not see themselves as victims, but as individuals with agency who have come a long way in life despite many hard experiences. This clashes with the background of their presence at the shelter, which requires the label of officially identified victim of human trafficking.
The concepts of temporal proximity and temporal remoteness are proposed in the article to capture that the young women are mostly oriented towards the temporally distant, both in the past and the future.