Working Paper #2021-050
Giving up your body to enter fortress Europe: Understanding the gendered experiences of sextortion of Nigerians migrating to the Netherlands
Corruption is a frequent companion of irregular migrants along their
journey, however, as they often have little financial resources
available or deplete them quickly along the difficult route, paying for
monetary bribes can be difficult. Therefore, this paper analyses the
occurrence of a non]financial form of corruption, i.e. sextortion.
Sextortion is a largely unexplored form of corruption in which sexual
favours function as means of payment. To establish a better
understanding of the occurrence of sextortion, this paper explores the
gendered experiences of this form of corruption for Nigerians migrating
to the Netherlands.
The paper is based on interviews with experts on migration, gender and
corruption in the Nigerian and Dutch context. The results show that
Nigerian migrants are most vulnerable to encounter sextortion in
Nigeria, Libya, Niger, and Italy. The extortion of sexual favours often
occurs in addition to financial bribes, making it not the primary
purpose of the exchange, but not underplaying its importance. While
women are most often seen as the survivors of sextortion, also men and
nonbinary individuals are at risk to encounter sextortion. Besides
gender, the results indicate that age, economic situation, and the
availability of a social network influence a migrantfs vulnerability.
Furthermore, Nigerian migrants often experience different sources of
pressure to succeed their journeys which take away the element of choice
when encountering sextortion.
JEL Clasification: D73,F22,F59
- Keywords
-
- Sextortion
- Migration
- Corruption
- Gender]based and sexual violence
- Nigeria
- South]North Migration
- EU Migration Policy
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.van Heugten, L., Bicker Caarten, A., & Merkle, O. (2021). Giving up your body to enter fortress Europe: Understanding the gendered experiences of sextortion of Nigerians migrating to the Netherlands (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2021-050). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=9139