Victims and slaves. The risk of social stigma

In the age of globalisation, the slave is the extreme version of the victim and - with the 2000 UN Convention and the one passed by the Council of Europe in 2005 - the beginning of the new century has seen international legal systems also adapt to the changes that have been taking place in the processes of victimisation, which increasingly often reduce migrants to conditions of servitude. In this article, the author analyses the social condition of the victim-slave, starting from research conducted in Italy and demonstrating that empirical evidence contradicts the criminological hypotheses that hold that the victims/slaves’ mere involvement in the ritual of a trial is the necessary precondition and enough on its own to free them from their condition of inferiority and subjection: on the contrary, victims are only capable of breaking out of their condition of social deuteragonism, a term suggested by the author to describe the unusual condition of social and structural minority detected in the empirical research, if the risk of stigmatisation is reduced by the work of agencies of social promotion that aim to restore the victims’ positive identity. On the other hand, the research shows that measures of assistance and support for victims that take mere monetary form exert practically no influence: such measures only offer real opportunities if the authorities that issue these economic subsidies are networked with social agencies capable of inhibiting the processes of stigmatisation and of generating positive expectations of socialisation and independence.

Keywords: Victims, Slavery, Trafficking in persons, Stigma

Marco A. Quiroz-Vitale, Vittime e schiavi. Il rischio dello stigma sociale in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 2/2010, pp 25-44, DOI: 10.3280/SD2010-002002