Friday 5 July 2019

Danny Keuppens and Sabine Vermeire  

‘A vote of (no) confidence’ Voicing the resistance and solidarity of teenage girls who escaped from contexts of organized teenage prostitution.

Teenage girls in the grip of organized prostitution gangs are often framed as naïve victims. Once they escape from this abusive and violent environment their efforts and behavior aren’t understood as acts of resistance against the abuse or against power relations and dominant discourses.

One of their responses is to become ‘suspicious’ and distrusting others, the world, and even themselves. What knowledges and values does this distrust contain? How can they re-connect with what matters to them and with the world they are living in?

A lack of trust is always predominant between those girls too. How can they be together in ‘support’ and solidarity’ instead of isolating themselves from each other? What would happen if we could gather them together, have conversations with them about safe identity territories, their acts of resistance, their knowledge on ‘love’, ‘sex’, ‘men’,… and submit ‘a vote of (no) confidence’.

Together with these teenage girls, Danny Keuppens and Sabine Vermeire will explore how narrative biographical interviews and group conversations can lead to new self-understandings and actions.