This section provides an analysis of how participants viewed their past selves, their present selves and their envisioned future selves, and of how the representations and valuations of their past and future influenced them in the present.
The past
Talking about their trafficking experiences can be difficult for people who were trafficked [
44]. Therefore, the interviews did not feature any questions about participants’ pasts unless participants indicated clearly that they felt comfortable talking about it. Rather, general questions were asked, such as: “Could you explain to me why you are here in the shelter?” This allowed participants to decide for themselves what they wanted to speak about.
Many study participants did speak about their pasts. Speaking about the time before they were trafficked, many described that their trafficking situation was not the only difficult experience in their past. People spoke, for example, of: the general dire situation in the home country; working as a sex worker from a young age; experiences of growing up in a broken home; being in a forced marriage; being wrongfully imprisoned; various forms of violence, including rape; and the murder of parents and spouses. However, not all stories were all negative, many started positively. Several then described a defining moment when things turned for the worse, ‘a turning point’, distinguishing between one past state of the self in which all was still good and another when all went downhill to the present. One participant, for example, described how she was happily married and had her own business before her husband was murdered and she had to flee her country, which ultimately led to her being trafficked: “I’m trying to change, to be back to the way I was. But it’s difficult! Sometimes I think I am on my way”. Similarly, another participant described a turning point when his parents were murdered: “Since then, since that day, let me not lie to you, up to now, since that day up to the time I’m talking to you, I don’t … I cannot recognize myself well, you know?” As these quotes exemplify, the turning point was not always the trafficking experience itself; for some the turning point happened before they were trafficked.
Some also spoke freely about what happened during the time they were trafficked. However, when they did, they mostly referred to their experiences in general terms, such as one participant who simply stated that she was abused and another who spoke of “the one who hurt her”. Some spoke about the physical consequences of the abuse but not about the abuse itself. Finally, some indicated that it was not something they could speak about: “They ask me to … they force me to … That one I will not be able to explain, that one”.
Almost all participants came to the Netherlands hoping for a better life. Some were deceived: they expected to get a job (not as a sex worker), thought they were coming on a student visa and were expecting to enrol in a university, or came with someone they had fallen in love with. Some came to the Netherlands themselves to find work, ended up working illegally, and thus became vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking within the Netherlands. And some came to work as a sex worker but ended up being financially exploited or having to pay back a huge ‘debt’ (a common method of exploitation by traffickers).
Participants mostly linked being trafficked to a range of negative emotions, including shame, fear, anger, distrust and depressive feelings. Studies that have focused more specifically on the health consequences of trafficking confirm these findings [
1,
4]. However, this was not the case for all: one participant was thankful to her trafficker for having helped her escape from her home country and spoke about him in positive terms, even though he later tried to force her to have an abortion, which she did not want to do. As a result, she fled.
Some participants had resided elsewhere in between exiting the trafficking situation and entering the shelter. Three specific situations were described: staying with a friend; having been in prison; and residing in an asylum seekers’ centre. The second was described as follows by the participant who was in prison: “I was in prison here for five weeks. ( …) Without committing any crime! Because they say I don’t have any documents”. Being in the asylum seeker centre was also described to be a negative experience by one male interviewee, who entrusted someone with details about the physical health problems he was suffering from as a consequence of his sexual abuse. This other person then told other people he was gay, which resulted in him being discriminated against [
25]. Asylum seekers centres are frequently reported to be intolerant environments with regards to men who have sex with men [
45].
The present
In many ways, the present self was an ‘in-between state’ for participants. As one said: “I’m still in recovery, I cannot see outside here!” On the one hand, they had left their past behind them and were now in the shelter, away from the influence of their traffickers. One participant explained, for example, that when she arrived in the shelter she was nervous, but that after that she became more relaxed. Another noted how he was very afraid just after he entered the shelter and had sleeping problems and nightmares, but having been put in touch with a church, he was able to calm down. Thus their entry to the shelter started a transition period that brought safety – not being afraid any longer – and the knowledge that help and support was available when needed.
On the other hand, all participants were not quite where they wanted to be yet either, because many struggled to deal with the mental and physical consequences of their trafficking experiences. One said, for example: “And also, you have to think of the past, what happened to me. Am I going to be like this all the time?” The interviewer asked: “Like what? What do you mean …? ” He replied: “Not happy. With all the things that have happened, I have not been happy. All the time fear”. While this study was not at all designed to conduct any formal evaluation of people’s mental or physical health status, many participants described suffering from depressive feelings, fear and anxiety, sleeping problems, nightmares, suicidal thoughts, headaches and stomach aches and several indicated that they would appreciate the opportunity to speak with a psychologist. Common psychosomatic problems, such as sleeping problems, headaches and stomach aches, were regularly mentioned. Studies by other researchers have shown that these are all common health problems among trafficked people [
1,
2,
46]. One participant said: “I am supposed to fall asleep then in one or two hours. But sometimes I lie awake for ten hours, until the morning.” The interviewer asked: “How come you have trouble sleeping?” He said: “When I do something, I am distracted from the past. When I lie down, things come in my head, from different sides.” However, the degree to which participants mentioned suffering from such problems varied. Some did not mention any such problems at all.
As some of the quotes above show, forgetting about the negative events in the past was a daily challenge for many and many expressed a desire to ‘be busy’, which offered distraction. There were several ways to ‘be busy’. Many cited the social interaction in the shelter as a positive influence: “We are here as girls amongst each other, we talk together, joke together, that makes you set your worries aside. It provides distraction.” Another form of distraction was participating in activities organized by the shelter. One shelter offered many activities; the other two very few. Participants in the latter two felt that the lack of activities was a factor in them not being able to stop thinking about the past: “Something happens ( …) and you are reminded. You cannot stop thinking about it. And you cannot forget. You don’t think too much when you’re with people. You think about it when you’re alone in a room. You cannot do anything; that is the problem. Maybe if I had something to do, I would have distraction.” Another participant from the same shelter said: “Maybe if we have opportunity to maybe arrange a football or the opportunity to go for swimming, and other places, meet with other people, you know, that would tend to, to make us forget about the past, maybe. Because if you’re involving in any activity, social activity I mean, you will forget about the past.”
Perhaps the clearest expression of the fact that participants felt they were still recovering from their pasts was that several noted: “I cannot recognize myself”. This appeared to be caused by incongruence in how they viewed themselves. Partially, this stemmed from disbelief, shame and a sense of injustice about how they had let themselves end up in a situation like this. One participant said, for example: “Since I find myself in this place, sometimes I see myself stupid, trust me.” “Why?”, the interviewer asked. “Because … if I’m not stupid, the person does fool me. ( …) Sometimes I wonder, or I imagine, if I am, if this is me […], in this house. If I am the one facing this problem.” For others it stemmed from the fact that they had changed because of what had happened, particularly when they were betrayed or deceived by people they knew: “There are some times when you never trust anyone in your life, because if you consider what you go through, you know you will not trust too many people.”
A second reason why participants felt they were not quite where they wanted to be yet (see beginning of this section), resulting in the feeling of being in an ‘in-between state’, was that there was a gap between the reality of their present lives and where they envisioned themselves to be in the future. However, to be able to explain the effect that envisioning the future had on participants in the present, an explanation of how participants envisioned their futures is first needed.
The envisioned future
The futures that participants envisioned for themselves differed; yet, there were similarities in how they spoke about the future. One key characteristic was that all envisioned a future that was better than the present. There were similarities to what ‘better’ meant: many mentioned the desire to find a job. For some, particularly for men, this included first getting an education. Furthermore, a characteristic of several participants’ aspirations for a job was that they wanted to do work in which they could help others. Finally, some of the women viewed having a job as necessary to be able to support their children, while some of the men viewed acquiring an education and getting a job as a precondition for finding a wife and establishing a family. For example, one participant noted: “Maybe I finish getting my certificate. ( …) Then maybe I will get a job. Then I will start thinking of getting a family.”
This last comment relates to the second frequently mentioned characteristic of a ‘better’ future: finding a partner and establishing a family. Those who had had to leave their children behind in their home country spoke of them specifically with regard to future plans for their family. Making friends was also viewed as important in achieving a successful life in the Netherlands. “You need their support”, one participant remarked. And according to another: “If you know a little Dutch then at least you’ll be able to communicate. To make friends.”
Furthermore, a spoken wish to have one’s own house was part of a broader theme that constituted the desire for autonomy (i.e. to have control over decisions that concerned their own lives). One participant said, for example: “I would like to go to an independent house, but now I need time. After that we will see.” Small steps in attaining autonomy, such as getting one’s own bank account, were celebrated.
For those from outside the European Union (EU), who made up the majority of the sample, being able to stay in the Netherlands and acquiring a residency permit was a precondition for their envisioned futures and hence a priority concern. In the Netherlands, the right to permanent residency for someone who has been trafficked is reserved by law almost exclusively for those people whose traffickers are prosecuted ànd convicted. The consequence of non-prosecution for those from outside the EU is that they likely will not be allowed to stay. Participants mentioned several reasons for not wanting to go home, including the unsafe situation back home, the lack of economic prospects there, and that they had become a little bit Dutch in the time they were in the Netherlands.
Some, particularly several men, expressed a sense of urgency in realizing their envisioned future: “I have not been having access to so many things. So I am looking at my future as being bleak. You know? So, where am I going? You know? And at my age now, the age I’m now, either you make it or you break it.”
Looking forward: thinking about the future and its effect on the present
Thinking about the future was not of immediate concern to most study participants when they had only just entered the shelter. Several stated that they first needed to ‘catch their breath’. However, there was a moment at which this changed for them. As one participant said: “The longer you stay here, well, the more your mood changes, so to speak. ( …) There comes a moment when your mood changes, when you start thinking, where do I go from here?” Some appeared to transition quickly to this new state of mind in which the future took up a more dominant part of their thoughts: “I could press charges immediately, but I was really afraid. I had to take my time and three days were enough to take a decision.” Others needed more time; one participant in particular stated at the time of her interview: “I don’t have any plans for the future yet; I need to catch my breath first.”
However, this participant was an exception; with all others their envisioned futures, and issues around those futures, took up a significant proportion of the interview. Interestingly, thinking about the future meant thinking about the past. As one participant said: “The most important thing is, ehm, I just want to get rid of my life, you know, living in places where I will forget about my past, you know, my past, just think about what the future holds for me, you know?” Forgetting about the past and moving towards a better future seemed almost inextricably linked concepts for interviewees. A particularly striking example of this link between the past and future was that one participant noted that two religious verses had particularly helped him to calm down in the shelter: one asking God for protection from evil men (“Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. Take up shield and armour; arise and come to my aid. Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me”); another asking God to help him be a vessel for change in the future (“Lord, make us a channel of thy peace. That where there is hatred we may bring love.”).
This need to ‘turn over a new leaf’ meant that in one move, participants envisioned themselves as leaving the past behind and moving to the next page of life. This theme, like most of the themes in our analysis, was suggested by one of the participants, who said about the interview that she was scheduled to have with the police the next day: “( …) it is a difficult issue to talk about for me. I do not want to talk about it at length. I do not want to go back in my memories. That was a difficult time in my life, which is why I would like to turn over a new leaf now.”
As noted earlier, that leaf had not been turned over yet for participants. Thinking about the future had both positive and negative consequences as described in the following two sections.
Positive effects of looking forward on the present: acquiring agency over goal pursuit
A salient characteristic of participants’ presents was that almost all exhibited signs of actively working towards a better future. This was expressed in terms of some of the activities that they reported appreciating. Dutch lessons, particularly, were appreciated by almost all, as were the integration courses offered by Dutch municipalities to people in asylum procedures. Participants felt these activities would help them establish their future in the Netherlands. Language was seen as a pre-requisite for integration, finding a job, getting an education and, in turn, establishing a family and a social network in the Netherlands. As one said: “This is a different country, (…) you have to learn the language, you have to mix with the culture, believe traditions, and all the rest of it.”
Skills training and the opportunity to volunteer were also broadly appreciated. As one participant explained: activities that you can learn from are good, “such as self-defence, where you learn to protect yourself and control a situation”. Another explained that she appreciated vocational skills training, because it kept her busy, gave her more passion about life and was good for her development, making her more independent. A third said: “I said I can look for work or volunteer work? I said that is ok. Because you cannot be depending on someone for your whole life. I need to do something by myself. I cannot say: give me something to eat, give me this/that … Someone must think: this is someone who can take care of herself. (…) Sometimes it’s good to be busy. To be busy with something good. Or with something better than some of the activities, with things that are necessary.”
What all these things (Dutch language training, skills training and volunteer work) have in common is that they allowed participants to learn and that they were useful: they helped them get one step closer to their envisioned futures. Volunteer work, for example, brought them one step closer to finding a job, an essential part of those futures. As one participant noted: “When I go out from here, living on my own, I need job also, so I need only that job from [name shelter] to help me.” Moreover, volunteer work gave participants a feeling they could contribute to “things that are necessary” – also a part of their envisioned futures. In other words, doing volunteer work, learning Dutch and acquiring skills allowed participants to ‘have a meaningful day’, by feeling competent and by giving them a sense of agency over pursuing their future goals.
‘Putting down roots’ was also an important theme in terms of looking forward. It indicated that participants were already starting to move towards their better future. There was more to this theme than settling in; over time participants anchored themselves more and more to their environments, both in terms of their relationships and the activities in which they were engaged. They started making friends both in- and outside the shelter: the latter happened via churches that they visited, but also via other groups, such as peer-support groups: “Imagine you meet people who speak the same language, eat the same food as home – I was so very happy that day.” Some participants had also grown attached to certain service providers, such as their psychologist. One noted, for example: “I felt good with this psychologist, my nightmares had stopped and I felt less stress. (…) With her it was possible to discuss your problems, and she understood and gave recommendations. That is sometimes enough, if someone just listens to you and understands.”
Putting down roots was a positive experience. This might have been because the ability to develop a network of friends and to establish familiarity with people who they interacted with allowed participants to develop a secure base for themselves. As migrants, this was a development of significant relevance to them, and as people who had been through a traumatic experience, arguably, even more so. While the activities mentioned (language lessons, skills training and volunteer work) were considered positive by participants because they might help them in attaining their future goals, putting down roots must have felt for them like they were already moving forward: step by step, the present and envisioned future were blending together.
However, this positive development had the potential to turn into a negative one. Particularly, the COSM shelters are a form of crisis shelter, intended to shelter people for a maximum of 3 months: the consequence of these long stays was that many participants started to put down roots. However, all at some point had to leave and the long-term shelter to which they then moved was often in an entirely different city. One participant’s second interview was conducted after she had moved to such a long-term shelter. She reported travelling back regularly to the city where she was originally sheltered to see her friends and noted that several others did the same. She said: “It’s very far from the people you know, from my church, from the activities I started.”
Several other participants also moved during the research, because one COSM shelter moved. Two of them described having developed a fruitful relationship with a psychologist in their first place of residence, which they were not able to continue after they moved. Thus, although putting down roots meant for participants that they could start moving forward, when they had to move, they were set back, not allowed to take off into their envisioned future, having to start anew again somewhere else.
Negative effects of looking forward on the present: the gap between reality and the envisioned future
For most, there was a large gap between their present realities and their envisioned futures, a sign of the ‘in-between state’ they were in. This gap became very clear from the fact that the future for all study participants was characterized by great uncertainty. “Do you think I have a future?” one asked at some point. Later she said: “You will never know your future here”. Similarly, another described: “Look at my situation, yeah. Where am I going to? Where is my future? What will happen to me?” There were several reasons for uncertainty about the future: doubts about residency status were a common concern; as were doubts about being able to find work or an education and to establish a family and make friends; the legal case against the trafficker; and for some, uncertainty about the future was linked to the whereabouts of loved ones.
All this uncertainty led participants to worry. One explained, for example, that while she had trouble forgetting about the past, her worries about the future were particularly hard to deal with: “First, I have no residency status here. I’m afraid they’re going to send me back. Besides that, I have no education or work experience, so that’s why I’m worried.” These worries about the future were a source of stress that added to the stress associated with dealing with the past. When participants spoke of ‘being busy’ as a form of distraction from their problems, they did not speak only about distraction from thinking about the past, but also from worrying about the future. As one noted: “Everything is sometimes stupid, you just have to be quiet sometimes, and think about the future, and the past and everything in your life. That is not going to be happy.” Another described well how these various stressors could accumulate: “Sometimes it’s just too much. I thought: Why? Why me? One thing come, and then the other.”
A key facet of participants’ feelings of uncertainty was the lack of autonomy that they experienced. Indeed, in many decisions of importance to their futures, the locus of control did not lie with participants themselves, and they experienced a great sense of dependency on the police, lawyers and social and health providers. Examples of such dependency for participants while they resided in the COSM shelters were: that one participant had her child taken away from her by the Dutch child services; that residency status was decided upon by the police and by lawyers; that procedures around human trafficking are complicated and often ill-understood; and that most service users were legally not allowed to look for work and education. One participant remarked, for example: “You’re the one who needs help, so you’re the one who needs to accept everything”. And: “I am here but I don’t know what is going on. They will never tell you what will happen. You’re just here and never know what is next.” And: “Life just happens to me”. A striking demonstration of the lack of power that participants had over their own lives occurred when they received a letter that the police did not have enough evidence to prosecute the trafficker, meaning they would likely not be allowed to stay in the Netherlands. This was devastating to many.
In some instances, the shelters contributed to the lack of experienced autonomy. The shelters had rules and regulations by which service users had to abide. Examples were: mandatory activities, curfews, mandatory visits to psychologists, not being allowed to have a phone, having no choice in the assignment of roommates, not having ownership over one’s own government benefits, and being asked upon arrival at the shelter to sign a form (in Dutch) agreeing with the shelter rules. Participants spoke in particular about their objection to not being allowed to have phones and the mandatory assignment of roommates. One interviewee continued to clash with service providers over these rules. She said: “My social worker forced me to sign a protocol. And if I break the protocol three times I am removed from the house. I told her: You can make five more protocols, but this is the worst house I have ever lived in.” In the end she decided to leave the shelter. The number of rules and regulations differed considerably by shelter; one in particular had more rules than the other two.
Another part of the gap participants experienced between reality and their envisioned futures was that they felt ostracized in the Netherlands; they still had to adapt to the language, the culture and the traditions. As belonging in Dutch society and building a life there were part of their envisioned future, their experienced difficulties in this regard were particularly salient to them. Lack of integration was demonstrated most extremely by the fact that several participants told of instances when they were met with hostility and racism. Such instances appeared to occur more frequently for those who were sheltered rurally than in a large city. With one rural shelter in particular, there were several examples of service users being discriminated against, including being denied parts of their benefits to which they were legally entitled by the city council and being denied care by a general practitioner and a dentist. Several also encountered hostilities from local residents, such as being bullied by local teens and being maltreated or ignored by adults. Participants found being treated as such dehumanizing: “Imagine the situation wherein, you know, some people don’t want to talk to you, then you feel you are left out, you feel maybe I’m not in this world, or maybe I’m a different human being, you know?” The opposite of such dehumanizing treatments was found by some participants to lie in their interaction with service providers in the shelters. As one explained: “They refer to us as maybe say we are ‘asielzoeker’, which means something like refugee, something like that. But because of some [service providers], they come closer to us, we feel as if we are amongst them. (…) You know, so we feel as if really we are part of this society.” This particular sentiment appeared to be part of what participants more broadly considered being the most important aspect of a good service provider: somebody who shows interest, listens, understands and gives advice when needed.
Thus, while study participants desired strongly to move towards a better future, they lacked agency in bringing about that future, resulting in uncertainty about the future and leaving them thwarted in their goal pursuit. The rules and regulations in the shelters added to participants’ lack of experienced agency in moving forward and their ostracized place in Dutch society increased the gap that they experienced between their realities and their envisioned futures. The result of all this was that participants felt as if they were ‘standing still’ while wanting to move forward, as in a state of limbo. This feeling stemmed partly from the gap between reality and their envisioned futures, but mostly from the gap between wanting to work towards better futures (pursuing their goals) and being thwarted in doing so. One participant said, for example: “I’m seeing my days here as something like, what can I say, perhaps I should say it’s my waste days, you know, like I’m wasting my time here.” Another perhaps made clear best the degree of ‘standing still’ that they experienced, by explaining about a trip to the general practitioner: “If I have an appointment with my doctor for, for … I mean that would be my happiest moment. Because, the reason, I look at it that I need to get up early, I need to go down to get bus station, go get bus, you know, that time that we spend in the bus, I will see different people, then the time it will take to go to […], I will see different places, then when I reach […] again, before my appointment with the doctor, I need to see different people, you know? You know, that different environment alone that I’ve seen, you know, that create a new, different thing in my mind.” Standing still was not only a negative experience in itself, but also resulted in participants not ‘being busy’, resulting in turn in a lack of distraction from past problems and future worries. As the same participant explained: “But sitting here all day, you know, since morning evening, morning evening, morning eve – you don’t get any other places you just sitting down in one particular place, it’s very, very, very difficult, in fact that one make the situation more difficult than the situation is.”