Abstract
This chapter discusses challenges in youth mobility, traditionally understood as young people moving abroad for education, work or training, interpreted as a demonstration of the power to design one’s own life. In reality, young people from backgrounds characterized by social deprivation and extreme poverty may be ambitious but lack the social and economic resources needed to successfully assemble a migration trajectory. This chapter introduces the story of a young Nigerian woman who migrated to Europe for professional development, Jane. Several years later, she participated in a qualitative study of life and career development in survivors of trafficking, living in Norway. Her story was analysed with a voice-centred relational method (The Listening Guide) resulting in I-poems, revealing the complexity of youth mobility. As explained in the chapter, Jane’s story can be framed as human trafficking due to the presence of various elements such as false job offers and threats. Out of respect to Jane and her family, several details that could have identified her and endangered their lives, considering retaliations from the global trafficking network, are excluded.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to acknowledge the staff and volunteers at Marita Stiftelsen and Kirkens Bymisjon (non-profit NGOs) who, with little or no funding, reach out to people in need. They introduced me to (former) substance abusers, sex-workers and victims of modern slavery, one of them being ‘Jane.’ I am very grateful to her and the others who allowed me to hear, listen to and share their ‘voices,’ which are seldom heard in scholarly literature. Indeed, their contribution was essential to this chapter.
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van Halteren, J.B. (2021). Crossing the Line: Current and Future Challenges in Youth Mobility. In: Cairns, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Youth Mobility and Educational Migration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64235-8_37
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64235-8_37
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