Meet our members: LEFÖ
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LEFÖ – Information, Education and Support for Migrant Women is GAATW’s member in Austria. Maya Linstrum-Newman from the GAATW Secretariat conducted this interview with Isabella Chen from the LEFÖ-IBF (Intervention Centre for Trafficked Women and Girls) in July 2022 to better understand the organisation’s work and context.
Maya Linstrum-Newman: Can you give us a bit of background about LEFÖ - when was it founded and why?
Isabella Chen: LEFÖ was founded in 1985 by migrant women, primarily from Latin America. In the 1980s, many women political refugees from Latin America had come to Austria.
Over the years LEFÖ has grown from a self-organised group of women to an institution with several different areas of work. These include counselling for migrant sex workers, education and language courses for migrant women, counselling for Latin American women, and an intervention centre for trafficked women and girls.
Our work on trafficking began in 1998, following a lot of negotiations and lobbying in the violence against women forum alongside many other GAATW members.
We are now a recognised victim protection organisation in Austria, meaning that we work on behalf of the Ministry of Interior and the Federal Chancellery and have a permanent contract to offer wide-ranging support across Austria to trafficked women and girls. We are the only recognised victim protection organisation in the country that works with trafficked girls from the age of 15 and women. (There is one victim protection organisation working with men).
We are also working to improve access to rights for trafficked persons. In fact, we just completed a large project “REST” with Comité Contre l'Esclavage Moderne (France), Proyecto Esperanza (Spain) [and GAATW members] ASTRA (Serbia), CoMensha (the Netherlands) and La Strada Moldova to improve the access to longterm or permanent residence. In the framework of this project, we developed a model law in Austria for granting residence permits on the basis of personal situation which we have given to the Ministry of Interior.
MLN: What are the nationalities and cultural backgrounds of the migrant women that LEFÖ works with today? Are they still primarily from Latin America or has this changed over time?
IC: We have a very high number of women from Nigeria, the Philippines, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, China but this constantly changes. Last year we supported women from over 40 different countries.
It also depends on the focus of the police, and the focus of the trainings that we do. For example, up until 2016, we supported roughly 50% EU citizens, and 50% third-country nationals, but now it has changed to 70% third-country nationals and 30% EU citizens. This doesn’t mean that there are now less EU citizens exploited in Austria. It could be for instance because third-country nationals are more likely to have contact with the authorities or other NGOs for other immigration matters (such as asylum, or residence permits) meaning that there is a higher chance that instances of trafficking and exploitation will be detected for this group.
MLN: What are some of the main challenges for trafficked women and girls in Austria at the moment?
IC: First, there is still a lack of awareness about certain forms of exploitation. We have been working hard to increase recognition by the authorities of instances of labour exploitation in the domestic and care work sectors. Recently we have been working on several cases of exploitation of au pairs, which has often been particularly challenging to prove because au pairs do not have a formal working relationship, they are officially considered to be here in Austria for a “cultural exchange” rather than work.
Second, we try not to depend solely on the police for referrals because labour exploitation of women working in households is too often hidden. In response to this challenge, we do a lot of trainings with different stakeholders. Although our resources are not huge, we try to cover the whole system.
Third, accessing basic rights is a big issue, both at the Austrian level and the European level. This includes residence permits, access to compensation, as well as social rights particularly for women with disabilities, trans women and other women who may face additional barriers in accessing support. At LEFÖ, we have been trying to change some of the restrictive requirements that prevent women from accessing the public health and social safety net.
Fourth, there is a double standard with the very restrictive migration regime in Europe, where States are very good at collaborating on migration control systems, but they’re not able to have the same comprehensive response when it come to the protection of victims of trafficking. For instance, we are seeing a lot of deportations under the Dublin regulation where trafficked persons are deported to their first entry point into the EU, without any risk assessment or taking into account any of the special protections that they are entitled to.
MLN: You spoke about how LEFÖ was founded by migrant women themselves. Do you continue today to incorporate the views of migrant and trafficked women into your work and how?
IC: One of the ways, which is also what drew me to the organisation, is our clear political vision which includes the employment of migrant women in the organisation. In Europe we often see that a lot of the organisations are very white and they may only work with migrant women when they need a translator. At LEFÖ, we try to have our counselling sessions in one language without a translator - the first language of the women receiving the counselling - which means that we have many colleagues working here from different backgrounds who often have experience of migration themselves.
In terms of the survivors’ participation, it’s something that has been a difficult issue for us. On the one hand, we are very serious about providing a space for survivors, but on the other hand we have a very tight framework for our work through the contract with the Austrian Government. To counter this we try to connect survivors with other community groups. For example, we’re very close to self-organised groups, as well as nationality/ethnicity-based community groups. We try to maintain these connections and connect the women we’re working with to these other groups so they can self-organise. It’s hard because in Austria, and I think in Europe, the anti-trafficking movement is very limited to victim assistance, so there’s very little space for us to amplify the voices of survivors, so this is why we try and connect them to these other groups.
We also involve survivors in the development of new communication materials through focus group meetings, as well as consulting with the women living in our shelters who we interact with on a daily basis.
MLN: What does LEFÖ know about traffickers in Austria? Who are they, what has led them to engage in trafficking?
IC: We have some data on this, but as it’s not our main focus of work we haven’t analysed it. Based on the data we have, we think it’s important to point out that there are a number of Austrians involved in trafficking. We try and speak about this in order to challenge the position of the police that it is just foreigners who bring in criminality to Austria.
MLN: In many European countries, we see a conflation between “smugglers”, “brokers,” and “traffickers,” and a tendency of governments to inaccurately characterise people who assist migrants and asylum seekers as “traffickers.” Have you observed this in Austria?
IC: If you listen to a politician, yes. For the police, there is less conflation as their starting point is usually after the exploitation has taken place and so they are not focused on how a person came to Austria. Also, due to our location, people have usually passed the external borders of the EU and so “smuggling” is not as much of an issue here. Of course, there is still a lot of confusion between smuggling and trafficking for sure.
MLN: Is there anything else you would like to add?
IC: For me, GAATW has always played a very important role as a critical voice and by bringing in perspectives from the Global South. GAATW has always been very active in UN spaces and even though the UN can be frustrating, it’s important we hold our place in these processes and we keep engaging. We need to encourage more GAATW members to speak in these fora. For example, at the recent UNTOC Constructive Dialogue, it would have been great to see even more GAATW members.
GAATW has been really good for European organisations by bringing in the perspectives and political history of migrant women from the Global South and linking European organisations with organisations in the Global South who have a deeper understanding of why migrant women are so important in anti-trafficking work.
We would really like to see more contact between GAATW members from across the world, particularly to try and deconstruct Euro-centric attitudes towards migration, such as the view that migrants just come to Europe because they want a better life, when it’s actually so much more complex than that.
It’s important for GAATW to bring these other views into the European context, as the members in other regions have so much to teach us and can enlighten us here in Europe. At LEFÖ we find it frustrating that a lot of the historical movements that founded the anti-trafficking movement are not as prominent today. A lot of the movements that founded the anti-trafficking movement were from the Global South, yet now Europe is wrongly seen as the standard-setter, and European organisations can wrongly view themselves as the gold standard for anti-trafficking work.