In Switzerland, almost 70% of the inhabitants of women’s shelters are non-Swiss nationals and in safe houses for trafficked individuals, the number of Swiss nationals is vanishingly low.¹ As women migrants, they are often positioned outside the nation’s core of what is to be protected; as “victims” of domestic and gender-based violence, however, the state is obliged to protect them.

For some of them, the entry into a victim protection programme is their first time being registered with the state. How do female and feminised migrants experience this entry into the nation-state through Victim Aid, shelters and counselling services?

Here is the story of Nali.

Nali was a sex worker before she was identified as a victim of trafficking by a feminist NGO in Switzerland. She fondly remembers being the first woman who stayed in the newly opened “safe house” run by this NGO for trafficked women. For Nali, the NGO’s shelter is simply the “Frauenhaus”.

For the first few days, she was alone at the safe house and she was a bit scared. She had never lived alone. But soon, there was a cohort of six women who lived, cooked, and talked together on a day-to-day basis for at least two months. She remembers the time as a “moment” that was “very sad, but happy”.

We [were] very happy. We don’t have any commitment because we have to wake up early. We have coffee. We have breakfast. People coming and [telling us] ‘tomorrow you go there, do this, tomorrow that.’ We have a Termin, you know, this is for me new. I never live like that. They send me to school, German school. I come back, I’m tired. I go to sleep after that I wake up, cooking, eating. Sometimes we go out for [excursion], every other week, all women together outside. We go to the Zoo, we go coffee drink, we look Berge, walking. Every Saturday, Sunday. This was very interesting really, really, really.

The shelter with its daily routine brought a sense of order to Nali’s life and so did the school and the Termine (a word she keeps mentioning in German) with social workers and therapists.

Nali barely went to primary school. She grew up in a South Asian city as the oldest child, in an impoverished family that belonged to an ethnic minority. Aged twelve, Nali was given to her teacher’s family, where she worked the household. Later she worked in a factory and by 16 she was selling sex – to finance her gender reassignment surgery, as she says, and to support her family – first in the redlight district of the city she was born in and later in two other countries she was in fact trafficked to.

Only after fleeing her exploitation in Switzerland, during her time at a specialised shelter for victims of trafficking, did she gain an understanding of what she now refers to as “woman trafficking”. In conversation with counsellors and the other women at the shelter, she started interpreting her own history within a broader “women rights” framework.

And then we meet night time together talking. It’s also very nice. That’s why I say, my situation [is] different, she situation [is] different. When we woman all talking our situation, every one woman has a different story. You know, different story. When I heard another woman’s story, I speak better [about what happened to] me.

Nali consistently and somewhat nostalgically refers to the specialised shelter as Frauenhaus. In Switzerland, Frauenhaus refers to the regular shelters designed for victims of domestic violence, run by women. For Nali, the community of women she found at the Frauenhaus and the fact that she was among women who saw her as one of them, added to her new sense of self.

But Nali also noticed that not all her fellow women felt as good about the routine and discipline at the Frauenhaus. Some of them, Nali remembers, sneered at the security measures and the rules and regulations at the house. “Oh, Frauenhaus has too much control”, they would say.

In order for a person to move into a women’s shelter, several security measures are put into place. First, upon entering a safe house, women need to hand over the electronic devices through which they may be tracked by the people they are fleeing from, including headphones, watches, and toys used by any children accompanying their mother to the shelter.

To avoid digital tracking, passwords are changed, Google timelines deleted, and Facebook accounts closed; and bank accounts co-authorised by the violence “perpetrators” cannot be used. In shelters for trafficked persons, additional risk-assessing measures are taken and a “victim” may first be accommodated anonymously at a hotel until all ties to the authors of the violence are cut – “victims” who are still in touch with their “perpetrator” pose a risk to the others seeking safety at the shelter.

Once settled in the shelter, the inhabitants are obliged to follow a set of strict rules and regulations as well as daily routines such as cleaning and cooking chores, which structures communal life in the shared household. While safe houses offer temporary refuge, they also put significant restrictions on the movements and everyday practices (such as the use of electronic devices, eating habits etc.) of its inhabitants who have, in fact, not chosen to live with each other.

Nali did not agree with the women’s complaints about control and did not know exactly what they disliked.

No, I don’t know. I say no, it’s not like this. You have to be strong. The NGO only shows me the way. But you have to go your way.

Nali saw the safe house and its routines as a chance to find calm and stability and felt that other women’s critique missed the point of considering the victim protection programme as their chance. Years later, Nali herself is curious what happened to the others she met at the Frauenhaus and visits some of them in their new places. But she is disappointed as many of them did not start an entirely different life. Some are doing sex work on their own terms now, others are relying on dubious boyfriends or have returned home and, as Nali implies, might be re-trafficked.

Almost twenty years later, Nali has a stable job and lives without support from the social services. Although she struggles to make a living with her meager salary, the job fuels her hopes that her application for Swiss citizenship may be successful. Having a Swiss passport would allow her to get rid of her South Asian passport that still categorises her as a man, although she appears and is read as a woman most of the time. This discrepancy gives her problems every time she passes a border. Nali’s sense of security aligns with her aspirations towards middle-class femininity and respectable citizenship.

While her traumatic past still haunts her, she pursues safety in her moral and spiritual practice. Once a month, she visits the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln, alone or with her boyfriend. This late Gothic figure is iconic within some of Switzerland’s South Asian diaspora. Over the centuries, it turned black from the church’s candle soot. Nali, who comes from a Hindu family but also associates with Catholicism, includes different saints into her spiritual pantheon. Her prayers to the Black Madonna are part of a larger practice of recognising God’s saving powers in the people she comes across in her everyday life:

Because I respect every God the same. I don’t have a religion. The God is the same one, there is only one. We have to believe ourselves at the God. You don’t know, you [may] see some people in the street [and] it’s like a God, I think like this. That is how I found the women’s NGO.

Author: Serena O. Dankwa

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