It's a frigid spring day in the outskirts of Catania, Sicily, in Italy. On a narrow highway winding through a landscape of light industry and slumbering vineyards, trucks and Lycra-bound cyclists whiz past a dozen or so sex workers waiting for clients on the side of the road.
Many of the women are from Nigeria. One pair, dressed in matching short, curly wigs, red turtlenecks and fishnets, sit on plastic chairs, listening to a tinny rendition of Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" on a cell phone.
Another woman stands alone, hovering close to a fire she's made to keep warm. There's trash everywhere β flattened water bottles, discarded clothes and mangled plastic bags β marking the long, empty hours these women, and women before them, have counted on this desolate stretch of road. So when two Italian social workers approach for a chat, most of the women welcome the company.
The Italians, who work for a nongovernmental group called Associazione Penelope in Catania, come here regularly to hand out their organization's phone number and tell the sex workers where they can see a free doctor, talk to a lawyer or go for Italian lessons. We need documents, and we need work," she says in exasperation. We know that. But we just need work. Nigerian women have worked as sex workers in Italy since the late s. They migrated north on promises of good jobs in factories and farms but ended up on the streets.
In recent years there has been a dramatic rise in the number of women that authorities fear are being trafficked into Italy for sex work, mostly from Nigeria. The International Organization for Migration IOM estimates 80 percent of the Nigerian women arriving in Italy β which spiked from 1, in to 11, in β are potential trafficking victims, and more and more are minors. To identify trafficking victims, IOM teams try to speak with arriving migrants at ports in Italy and listen for "indicators" that might suggest a woman has been trafficked.
