Beyond Victimisation: Violence, Vulnerability and Agency in Female Migrations from Sub-Saharan Africa

This contribution presents the preliminary findings of a study that investigates the nexus between migration, violence and vulnerability in the trajectories of sixteen Ivorian, Cameroonian and Guinean women encountered in an Extraordinary Reception Centre (Centro di Accoglienza Straordinaria, CAS) in southern Lazio. By adopting a biographical methodology as a decolonial epistemological practice, we propose to shift attention from the category of “vulnerable groups” to the processes that produce vulnerability. The distinction between fundamental vulnerability (shared relational exposure) and problematic vulnerability (socially and politically produced forms of harm) guides the analysis of the biographical trajectories. The stories reveal a continuum of violence – domestic, structural, institutional and racialized – which, along the trajectory from departure, through transits in North African countries (with a focus on Tunisia), to arrival in Italy, transforms ordinary forms of dependency into injurious exposure. Gender emerges as a structuring principle of experiences: it shapes mobility strategies, access to resources and the definition of risks. Within narrow margins, situated practices of agency – negotiation and resistance – can be observed, shaping certain choices but at an extremely high cost in terms of danger and loss. A clear policy implication follows: genderbased violence in migration should be addressed as a matter of public responsibility, realigning policies away from the criminalisation of migration and towards the effective protection of persons, with respect for dignity and international law.