The psychological consequences of trafficking

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The psychological consequences of trafficking

• Dr. Didier Bertrand
• (PhD Cultural Psychology)
• Project Director, AFESIP in Lao PDR
• Research fellow IRSEA-CNRS Marseille, France.
• Laos_at_afesip.org
• didierbertrand30_at_wanadoo.fr

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Outline

• Migration trafficking context in Lao PDR.
• Condition of departure.
• Push and pull factors.
• Phenomenological analysis.
• Violence abuse multiple trauma.
• Social incidence.
• Recovery process.
• Legal support.
• Coping, Resilience Healing.
• Socio-economic answer.
• Conclusion.

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Migration trafficking context in Lao PDR 1.

• Exploring how does trafficking takes place
• Many youths mostly females leaves the village to
  work in Thailand more recently China or other
  provinces in Laos, (usually in the garment
  industry or as service girls in restaurants,
  hotels guest houses, pr in beer gardens).
• Females tend to be young, under 18 years of age,
  and more vulnerable to sexual exploitation that
  is the main cause of exploitation within
  trafficking.

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Migration and trafficking context in Lao PDR 2.

• The victims interviewed in UNICEF survey 2004.
• Forced prostitution (35)
• Domestic Labor (32)
• Factory work (17)
• Fishing boats (4)

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Migration trafficking context in Lao PRD 3.

• Those that worked in agricultural labor tended
  not to be trafficking and exploited whilst those
  working in domestic household situation
  experienced some of the most extreme cases of
  abuse and mistreatment.
• Males going to Thailand are on the average older
  than female and tend to be less exploited or
  trafficking, while many of these migrants are
  illegal and exploited some of them only fall into
  the category of trafficking.
• The victims/migrants interviewed, approximately
  in percentage.

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Condition of departure having psychological
incidence.

• How much they prepared to Leave?
• Acknowledgement of risks or not? (The recognition
  and the acceptation of the degree of risk are
  variable according to the persons).
• Role of family? Protective or abusive? (many
  victims are from uncompleted families some
  experienced violence at home).
• How family is involved in the departure (pushing
  for expecting some remittances, paid for the
  children to leave or received some money from
  traffickers seems to be rare in Lao PDR).
• When trafficking process starts from village or
  at the employment place?
• Who are the traffickers, the ones who lured?
  Close relatives? Trusted persons or strangers?

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Push Pull factors

• Thus interacting motivators are in need of
  investigation
• How travel out of the village was part of a
  project for new life?
• How decision might be weighted between other
  potential options?
• How it has been discussed with friends or family?
• How does judgment has been developed all the
  process?
• What is the wide range of experience that these
  persons met along their way?

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Phenomenological analysis of the psychological
incidence trafficking 1.

• Undermining of self esteem and depersonalitsation.
  
• Victims suffer from moral and personal
  degradation including shame, resentment, and
  mistrust.
• Exploitation is linked to a lost of the persons
  on their own life.
• When sold by somebody they know they trusted or
  they loved, persons might develop a self-blame as
  if it is their fault to trust somebody. Betrayal
  is affecting deeply the person psychological
  dynamic, her self-confidence and the image of
  herself.
• Victims identity is reduced to work-force or
  sexual object, that induces a depersonalisation
  process supported by the exploiter in order to
  shape or make a kind of robot for work or
  prostitution.
• The person does not know anymore who he/she is
  and when met by social workers lawyers or
  policemen produce short stories with ambiguities,
  uncertainties, denial, omissions, distortion.

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Phenomenological analysis of the psychological
incidence trafficking 2.

• Inaccurate biographies are made and remade, using
  of new name to protect themselves and also to
  provide a new meeting.
• Dissociation of the personality and creating a
  new life story are part of the coping processes
  when reality is too painful.
• Dissociation permits psychological survival of
  unbearable situation in order to face reality and
  not to become mad
• Substance abuse is another main issue met by
  victims of trafficking for labor and sexual
  exploitation.
• The use of drugs and alcohol helps to push away
  real emotions numb out unpleasant feelings and
  ideas and to detach from unpleasant reality.
• But addiction reinforces the power of exploiters
  in terms of control and increasing debt toward
  them (as they are often also the drug providers
  or will advance cash to buy the that is added to
  the debt), while the sell of alcohol increases
  their profit.
• Being addict reinforces the low feeling of
  self-esteem.

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Violence abuse multiple traumas 1.

• Sexual exploitation as resulting of trafficking
  can be multi-traumatic.
• Victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation
  related the experience of being betrayed,
  degraded and helpless.
• They express feeling of shame, sadness,
  worthlessness, anger, anxiety and shame, of not
  being understood.
• They experience grief and depression, fear and
  distrust, sleep difficulties or nightmares, poor
  appetite and developed a sense of hopelessness,
  resignation and despair that are increased in
  condition of captivity.

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Violence abuse multiple traumas 2.

• The acknowledged risks of aids increase their
  fear and anxiety.
• Psychological distress might result also from
  dangerous and degrading circumstances surrounding
  the condition of exploitation that are physically
  and emotionally painful.
• Violence of trafficking is aimed at control the
  persons, to make them worthless, powerless, to
  ensure their compliance and keep them trapped. It
  includes, threats to bit, to kill, kick, starve,
  burns and all kind of verbal abuses.
• Stories where victims are physically abused are
  common, the extreme being in cases of sexual
  exploitation and domestic servants.
• This violence or threat of violence is coupled
  with the threat of being handed over to police as
  an illegal migrant (or undocumented in Laos) it
  is usually enough to keep the victim trapped in
  her situation.

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Violence abuse multiple traumas 3.

• Trauma is a terrifying sudden experience that is
  emotionally, painful, distressful or shocking,
  for which persons are unprepared inducing both
  physical and lasting psychic effects.
• Traumatic stress refers to three main categories
  of symptoms
• Re-experiencing the traumas for example, and
  forced intrusive memories.
• Avoidance pf reminders of the trauma or
  associated events.
• General protective numbness to all emotional
  topic, having a restricted rang of affects

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Violence abuse multiple traumas 4.

• Associated symptoms can be
• Dissociation and flash back, difficulty to test
  subjective experience facing reality, to be
  spontaneous, denial and dissociation.
• Psychosomatic complaints or physic distress.
• Cognitive restriction difficulty to remember, to
  learn, to be attentive.
• Attitude and behavior changes toward parents or
  children life and future.
• Sense of personal weakness and vulnerability with
  a feeling of powerlessness, and hopelessness.
• Lost of self-confidence or ability to project in
  the future (sense of foreshortened future).
• Anxiety and depression.
• Personality alteration.
• Hyperactivity or hypo-activity.
• The adolescents might present more antisocial
  risk-taking behaviors.
• Decreased interest or participation in
  significant activities, feeling detached or
  estranged, (fear responses, shame, guiltiness).

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Violence abuse multiple traumas 5.

• The PTSD diagnostic should be used carefully at
  it has it own limitations as distress and
  suffering after the trauma can be normal
  responses to abnormal situation.
• There is a danger to call or stigmatize people as
  mentally ill.
• Trauma as an event is not sufficient determinants
  of PTSD.
• There are risk factors that account for
  individuals vulnerability to develop this
  disorder
• Social support attitudes of parents.
• Prior exposition to trauma.
• Individual personality, family history.
• Other life events at the time of trauma.
• Exposure to subsequent reactivating stressors.
• The time course of symptoms development and the
  range of symptoms patterns among victims who have
  undergone similar traumas are not the same.

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Social incidence relation with family and
reintegration in the community 1.

• The role and perception of family and parents
  toward their children departure and the supposed
  to be income generating activities.
• They might be involved in, need to be carefully
  assessed understanding what is to be a good
  daughter for the family and for the person.
• Several studies as well as interviews show that
  family situations of person who left the village
  that can be broadly classified as dysfunctional,
  for any of reasons whether organic, social, or
  psychological are quite frequent.
• Many of children do not live with both of their
  parents at home or suffered from home conflicts.
• Some victims of trafficking report that parent
  persuade them to go for ex they encourage their
  children to go to work in Thailand in order to
  build a new house.

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Social incidence relation with family and
reintegration in the community 2.

• At young age (under 16), separation from family
  might induce a disruption of emotional
  psychological development.
• For the victims of sexual exploitation, family
  ties might be weakened due to the shame felt by
  family and victims, but many will tend not to
  tell their story in order not to face social
  prejudice.
• Reintegration in the family and village is a
  sensitive issue, considering the family dynamic
  and the fact that usually they come back with
  nothing, they might be seen as a burden.
• While returnees might experience a feeling of
  being different, misunderstood, isolated and
  stranger ness.
• For victims of trafficking unworthiness,
  dirtiness, feeling of shame and being spoiled are
  common and push to leave again.

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The recovery process working with a victim
centered approach 1.

• Once the person is physically out of harm, a
  process of recovery being, referring to a
  stabilization process during which the survivor
  develops the means (physical and emotional) to
  face a new life situation.
• Depending on the person and the trauma
  experienced, this process can take weeks, months
  or years.
• The recovery can be facilitated with the
  assistance of an individual (social worker,
  counselor or legal representative) or from an
  institution (public or NGO managed home).
• However, in most cases the survivor find their
  own way without the help of others

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The recovery process working with a victim
centered approach 2.

• The recovery can also take place in the shelter,
  in the family of within community.
• The aims of the recovery process are to provide
  comfort and support and to encourage
  self-sufficiency after an assessment of the
  problem and setting case management.
• When the victims have expressed the fact and
  their feelings and they have made sense of the
  events in a way that relates to their current or
  new attitudes and beliefs, then they are ready to
  decide on appropriate action.
• They have a right and a need to fully participate
  in decision making with regard to their future
  but often, women need further information about
  resources and options available to them and to
  facilitate appropriate options.

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Legal support.

• Legal work is a first step to re-establish victim
  legal identity and secure its rights.
• It is important for the person to know that she
  is not a guilty one and even she might claim
  compensation.
• Things might be much more complicated when
  relatives are involved in the traffic itself.
• The juridical intervention is a whole part of the
  healing it is supporting and is related to the
  necessary protection is due to victims.

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Coping, Resilience and Healing 1.

• Coping is a systemic, dynamic and cultural way
  for people who overcome difficulties and involves
  physical and mental processes to mobilize
  personal, familial, environment resources.
• Coping involves creating, reinstating, or
  reinforcing meaning in the midst of stress.
• It is important as to consider person as active
  survivors not passive victims.
• They are able to work on their own environment,
  and they are not only recipients of experience.
• A paradigm shift has to be operated from the
  risk-adversity-pathology terminology to
  protection-resourcefulness-creativity-hope values.

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The recovery process working with a victim
centered approach 2.

• Values, language, tradition, maintaining good
  relation with the spiritual world are reinforcing
  self esteem and identity.
• Basi and Su Khuan (soul calling ceremonies widely
  used in Laos) chase bad influences and call for
  good souls to come into the body and stay with.
• This collective celebrations have also a
  reintegration effect as this ceremony in usually
  performed while inviting relatives and neighbors
  as well local authorities in some cases.
• Purification rituals with holly water (Sue Lot
  Nam) have magical power to clean and to reinforce
  ones energies, it has effect not only on mental
  dynamic but also physical pains.

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Socio-economic answer.

• Support for income generation opportunities for
  the family.
• This activities is the corner stone of the whole
  rehabilitation/reintegration process.
• The focus on reintegration of the victims (to
  family whenever it is possible) is on income and
  financial support.
• This involves liaison with local resource for
  income generation scheme taking into account the
  market opportunities and others environmental
  factors.
• In order the facilitate reintegration, AFESIP
  provides each young women with a business
  starting kit either in kind (stock for
  micro-business) or in cash (through
  micro-credit).
• Providing good quality follow-up of former
  residents is a key the success.
• Top priority is giving to avoid re-trafficking
  situations.

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Conclusion 1.

• Victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation
  often go without medical treatment and suffer
  long-term physical and psychological damage that
  need to be recognized and addressed
  professionally.
• Though a person centered approach, it is intended
  to consider comparatively the choices and
  intentions expressed by the person within the
  experienced set of limitations that he/she is
  facing in the family or community, in order to
  restore his/her dignity in the context of his/her
  life and environment.

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Conclusion 2.

• The ideal situation for facilitated recovery is a
  safe location that covers that basic needs (food,
  shelter and medical support), has a limited
  number of people (between five and ten) in a
  family-like setting, trained counseling staff,
  freedom or movement and a playground for
  children.
• The goal is to help stabilize the survivors
  through a structured short-stay program in order
  to get them back into a safe, protective family
  or community environment as soon as possible.
• The service must be adapted to the needs of each
  individual trafficked person since each case has
  to be understood and unique and requires
  different support.

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• Thank you very much for your attention