Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-03T17:31:40.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘Voodoo’ on the Doorstep: Young Nigerian Prostitutes and Magic Policing in the Netherlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

Rijk van Dijk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article deals with the moral panic that emerged in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that under-age Nigerian girls were being smuggled into the country to be put to ‘work’ in the sex industry. A massive police investigation not only found hundreds of cases but also uncovered the fact that certain unknown and occult rituals played a part in how traffickers, ‘madams’ and other sex bosses appeared to keep the girls locked in this exploitative system. Soon an unspecified notion of ‘voodoo’ came to dominate the entire police operation, the public image of what was happening to these girls, and the way in which the girls were treated within the Dutch judicial system and its care. The article deconstructs the moral panic and all the images of Africa and the occult which became so crucial to the way the Dutch state tried to deal with the situation. It sets this analysis in the context of an anthropology of globalisation and a cultural exploration of how issues of morality and identity are affected by what the Comaroffs have called the occult economies of late capitalist relations. It concludes that to a great extent the scale of the moral panic can be understood by pointing at the rigidity of the identity politics of the Dutch nation state in previous years. Its policies were meant to curb some of the effects of globalisation (such as illegal immigration from Africa) in order to preserve its integrity, but it now found them seriously undermined by something the policies were not designed to cope with.

Résumé

Cet article traite de la panique morale qui s'est emparée de la population néerlandaise en apprenant qu'on faisait entrer clandestinement des jeunes filles nigériennes mineures aux Pays-Bas pour les faire « travailler » dans l'industrie du sexe. Une enquête de police de grande ampleur a permis de recenser des centaines de cas, mais a également révélé que certains rituels inconnus et occultes jouaient un rôle dans la manière dont les trafiquants, les « mères maquerelles » et autres magnats du sexe semblaient maintenir ces jeunes filles enfermées dans ce système d'exploitation. Une notion non spécifiée de « vaudou » est rapidement venue dominer l'opération de police, l'image publique de ce qui arrivait à ces jeunes filles, ainsi que la manière dont ces jeunes filles étaient traitées au sein du système judiciaire néerlandais et de son système de protection sociale. L'article procède à une analyse critique de la panique morale et des images de l'Afrique et de l'occulte qui sont apparues essentielles dans la façon dont l'Etat néerlandais a tenté de faire face à la situation. Il place cette analyse dans le contexte d'une anthropologie de la mondialisation et d'un examen culturel de la manière dont les thèmes de la moralité et de l'identité sont affectés par ce que les Comaroffs ont appelé l'économie occulte des rapports capitalistes avancés. Il conclut qu'il est possible, dans une large mesure, de comprendre l'étendue de la panique morale en évoquant la rigidité de la politique identitaire de l'Etat-nation néerlandais au cours des années précédentes. Cette politique, qui visait à endiguer certains effets de la mondialisation (comme l'immigration clandestine venue d'Afrique) dans le souci de préserver l'intégrité du pays, se trouve désormais sérieusement remise en cause par des situations qu'elle n'avait pas prévues.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 71 , Issue 4 , November 2001 , pp. 558 - 586
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adomako, A. 1993. ‘To be or not to be a prostitute: the example of Ghanaian prostitutes in the Netherlands’. Paper presented to the DWAS seminar on ‘Women and Development’, Accra: Institute of African Studies, University of Legon.Google Scholar
Anderson, B. 1991. Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Andrews, E. L. 1997. ‘Behind the scams: desperate people, easily duped’, New York Times, January, p. 29, col. 3.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. 1998. ‘Full attachment’, Public Culture 10 (2), 443-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Babatunde, E. D. 1992. A Critical Study of Bint and Yoruba Value Systems of Nigeria in Change: culture, religion and the self Lewiston NY: Edwin Mellen Press.Google Scholar
Balibar, E., and Wallerstein, I. 1991. Race, Nation, Class: ambiguous identities. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Baumann, G. 1997. ‘Dominant and demotic discourses of culture: their relevance to multi-ethnic alliances’, in Werbner, P. and Modood, T. (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: multi-cultural identities and the politics of anti-racism. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Ben Yehuda, N. 1990. The Politics and Morality of Deviance: moral panics, drug abuse, and reversed stigmatisation. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Best, J. 1990. Threatened Children: rhetoric and concern about child victims. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Boas, G. 1966. The Cult of Childhood. London: Warburg Institute Press.Google Scholar
Bradbury, R. E. 1957. The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-speaking Peoples of Southwest Nigeria. London: International African Institute.Google Scholar
Butchart, A. 1998. The Anatomy of Power: European constructions of the African body. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Cohen, R. 1987. The New Helots: migrants in the international division of labour. Aldershot: Avebury.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: the creation of Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon & Kee.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J. 1999. ‘Occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the South African postcolony’, American Ethnologist 26 (2), 279-303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Thouars, B. 1999. ‘Go come. Het re migratieproces van Ghanesen uit het Westen’. Unpublished dissertation, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
De Thouars, B., and van Osch, M. 1995. ‘Tutu: Ghanese Prostitutees in Nederland’. Unpublished dissertation, University of Utrecht.Google Scholar
Dirks, N. 1992. ‘Introduction’, in Dirks, N. (éd.), Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durham, D. 1999. ‘The predicament of dress: polyvalency and the ironies of cultural identity’, American Ethnologist 26 (2), 389-411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans- Pritchard, E. E. 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among theAzande of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 1972. Power I Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Gilroy, P. 1990. ‘One nation under a groove: the cultural politics of “race” and racism in Britain’, in Goldberg, D. T. (éd.), Anatomy of Racism. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Gilroy, P. 1991. There ain't no Black in the Union Jack: the cultural politics of race and nation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Girshick Ben Amos, P. 1994. ‘The promise of greatness: women and power in an Edo spirit possession cult’, in Blakeley, T. D., van Beek, W. E. A. and Thompson, D. L. (eds), Religion in Africa. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Goode, E., and Ben Yehuda, N. 1994. Moral Panics: the social construction of deviance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. 1998. ‘The European nation state: on the past and future of sovereignty and citizenship’, Public Culture 10 (2), 397-416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, S.Critcher, CJefferson, T.Clarke, J., and Roberts, B. 1978. Policing the Crisis: mugging, the state, and law and order. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, P. 1992. Intimate Enemies: moral panics in contemporary Britain. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
La Fontaine, J. S. 1997. Speak of the Devil: tales of satanic abuse in contemporary England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malkki, Lüsa. 1995. Purity and Exile: violence, memory and national cosmology among Hutu refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, A. 1992a. ‘Provisional notes on the postcolony’, Africa 62 (1), 3-37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mbembe, A. 1992b. ‘The banality of power and the aesthetics of vulgarity in the postcolony’, Public Culture 4 (2), 1-30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Modood, T., and Werbner, P. (eds). 1997. The Politics of Multiculturalism in the new Europe: racism, community and identity. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Newswatch, 1999. ‘Sex export: dirty details of young Nigerian girls being sent to Europe for prostitution’, Newswatch, 26 July.Google Scholar
Pickering, H., and Wilkins, H. A. 1993. ‘Do unmarried women in African towns have to sell sex, or is it a matter of choice?’ Health Transition Review 3 supplement, 17-27.Google Scholar
Richardson, J. T.Best, J., and Bromley, D. (eds). 1991. The Satanism Scare. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, J. 1998. Possession, Ecstasy and Law in Ewe Voodoo. Charlottesville VA: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Rouse, R. 1995. ‘Questions of identity, personhood and collectivity in transnational migration to the United States’, Critique of Anthropology 15 (4), 351-80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheper Hughes, N. 1996. ‘Theft of life: the globalisation of organ stealing rumors’, Anthropology Today 12 (3), 3-11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheper Hughes, N. 2000. ‘The global traffic in human organs’, Current Anthropology 41 (2), 191-211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soros, G. 1998. The Crisis of Global Capitalism: open society endangered. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Staring, R.van der Leun, J.Engbersen, G., and Kehla, J. 1998. ‘Patronen van incorporatie: in en uitsluiting van illegale migranten binnen etnische gemeenschappen’. Research report. Rotterdam: Department of Sociology, Erasmus University.Google Scholar
Staunton, D. 1997. ‘Couple on trial for child torture offer’, Guardian (London), 8 August, p. 13.Google Scholar
Terre des hommes, . 1997. ‘Kinderprostitutie in Nederland: een onderzoek naar aard en omvang’. Report. The Hague: Terre des hommes.Google Scholar
Terre des hommes, 1999. ‘Handel in Nigeriaanse meisjes naar Nederland’. Report. Amsterdam: Terre des hommes.Google Scholar
Thomas, K. 1973. Religion and the Decline of Magic. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Van den Broek, J. 1992. ‘Het is een vreemdeling zeker: een onderzoek naar de aard en omvang van de illegale vreemdelingenpopulatie in Den Haag’. The Hague: Gemeentepolitie, Rapport, Stafbureau Sociaal Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, 20 October.Google Scholar
Van der Leun, J.Engbersen, G. and van der Heijden, P. 1998. ‘Illegaliteit en criminaliteit: schattingen, aanhoudingen en uitzettingen.’ Research report. Rotterdam: Department of Sociology, Erasmus University.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, R. 1992. Young Malawian Puritans. Utrecht: ISOR Press.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, R. 1997. ‘From camp to encompassment: discourses of transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian pentecostal diaspora’, Journal of Religion in Africa 27 (2), 135-69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Dijk, R. 1999. ‘The pentecostal gift: Ghanaian charismatic Churches and the moral innocence of the global economy’, in Fardon, R., van Binsbergen, W. and van Dijk, R. (eds), Modernity on a Shoestring: dimensions of globalisation, consumption and development in Africa and beyond. London: EIDOS/Antony Rowe.Google Scholar
Van Dijk, R.Rasing, T.Tellegen, N. and van Binsbergen, W. 1999. Een schijn van voodoo [A semblance of voodoo].- culturele achtergronden van de handel in Nigeriaanse meisjes voor de Nederlandse prostitutie. Een verkenning. Leiden: African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
Van Kessel, I., and Tellegen, N. (eds). 2000. Afrikanen in Nederland. Amsterdam: KIT/Leiden, African Studies Centre.Google Scholar
WOCON, . 2001. ‘Research on Trafficking in Women in Nigeria’. Report published by the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON) in collaboration with the Netherlands embassy, Lagos.Google Scholar
Young, J. 1971. ‘The role of the police as amplifiers of deviance: negotiators of drug control as seen in Notting Hill’, in Cohen, S. (éd.), Images of Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar