Moving On. Family and Community Reintegration Among Indonesian Trafficking Victims (2017)

For many trafficking victims, exit or escape from trafficking is only the beginning of another set of challenges that they face as they seek to recover and reintegrate after a trafficking experience. Not only do they need to come to terms with their exploitation, but they must also navigate the often-complex relationships with family and community after trafficking. Indeed, reintegration takes place within a wide social field – involving different family members and varying community environments. Men and women also experience reintegration differently, as do victims of different forms of exploitation, including those trafficked for sexual exploitation, domestic work, fishing, construction, factory work and plantation work. It is, therefore, important to disentangle the actions and reactions of different family and community members, each of whom may play a different role in either supporting or undermining a victim’s reintegration. This paper explores the challenges faced by trafficked persons as they seek to reintegrate into their families and communities. The paper equally considers settings in which reintegration success is supported and galvanized by family and community members, to identify what can be done to enhance the reintegration outcomes of all Indonesian trafficking victims.