“What happened when you came to Sweden?”

Abstract

Depicted as someone without agency, with no free will and completely in the hands of the trafficker, the ideal trafficking victim can be seen as diametrically different from the guilty prostitute. By analysing how responsibility and victimhood are negotiated in forensic interviews with alleged adolescent trafficking victims, this article scrutinises this image by asking how victim-status is handled when questions turn to sex and prostitution and which interactive and narrative conditions, related to agency, stake and interest, apply for talk in this specific institutional setting. Our findings suggest that in order to sort out the "real" victims, the interviewer need to pull apart the two categories victim and prostitute even if there may be substantive problems with this clear-cut distinction since the categories tend to blend together. Further, talk about sex can be problematic for the interactants as it may undermine the victim narrative instead creating a subject with interests.A victim is commonly referred to as someone who has unjustly suffered injury or harm by forces beyond their control, with no responsibility on the victim's part, and with the victim not being held accountable. Moreover, the victim is expected to have taken measures to protect her-or himself from becoming a victim. Children -not least sexually exploited children -are among those who are most easily, Requests for further information should be directed to:

Assessing violence in the family – social work, courts, and discourses

“…This victim-blaming has been found to be part of many institutional encounters (Drew 1992;Jokila 2010;Keskinen 2005;Lindholm, Börjesson, and Cederborg 2014;Matoesian 2000). This study found that it was especially a discourse used by child protection, and that it was used to blame mothers for their children's -and their ownvictimization by fathers.…”

“…This victim-blaming is very common in many different sites, where responsibility for violence is defined (Drew 1992;Hart and Bagshaw 2008;Jokila 2010;Keskinen 2005;Lindholm, Börjesson, and Cederborg 2014;Matoesian 2000). The conflict discourse was gendered in the ways in which it disregarded gender in cases of fathers perpetrating violence towards mothers and children.…”

“…Buchanan, Wendt, and Moulding 2014;Douglas and Walsh 2010;Humphreys 2008;Landsman and Hartley 2007) similar blaming of the alleged victim also occurs in other institutional contexts, such as in, for example, rape trials (Drew 1992;Jokila 2010), police interviews of human trafficking victims (Lindholm, Börjesson, and Cederborg 2014;Matoesian 2000), or maternity healthcare (Keskinen 2005), among many more sites.…”

‘Do you think it’s a crime?’ Building joint understanding of victimisation in calls for help

“…For example, women reporting rape to police orient to 'rape myths' as common-sense ways to make sense of their experiences and accounted for their behaviour to pre-empt blame (MacLeod, 2016). The common-sense association between victims and passivity means attributions of responsibility in police interviews invalidate women's victim membership and officers' accompanying obligation to help them (Lindholm, Börjesson, and Cederborg, 2014). Thus, categorising victims and crimes is part of the "micro-politics of everyday and institutional life" (Baker, 2000, p. 99).…”

Disclosing violence in calls for help

“…Analysing disclosures as they occur can demonstrate how cultural understandings of gender and violence occur in practice. For example, Lindholm, Börjesson Cederborg (2014) examined police interviews where officers attempted to determine if women were victims of trafficking, or sex workers of their own volition. Through narrative analysis, the authors documented how discourses and moral hierarchies of victimhood were invoked by emphasising either responsibility or passivity.…”