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the family entrusts their own children to others without a clear knowledge ofthe consequences and forms of work and exploitation to which they will besubjected, moved only by the hope of redemption from economic difficulties;the family has lost its “grip” on (or has entered into conflict with) the girlwho ends up breaking the relationship and goes away on her own, makingreference to other adult persons or to “equals” also in difficulty.5. In any case, the choice made by the family cannot be isolated from theextended context in which it is situated. In the case of the family of Nigerianvictims, the context which determines the horizon of possible choices ischaracterised, in general, by serious economic problems, by the almost absoluteabsence of opportunities of actualisation and development, whether economic orsocial, if not by having recourse to some “extraordinary” means.To these should be added such elements as: the models of life and consumption imposed on a “global” scale, that feedsentiments of relative deprivation in adults, and adolescents; the break in some traditional models of regulation of relationships within theethnic group, the community, the extended and close family: the contactswith models of “westernised” life, the family nucleus, no longer protected bythe mechanisms on which its own stability was founded, are destroyed withserious consequences above all for women and children; the conception according to which the children (and daughters in particular) -at different age, but in general more precociously than in western societies -have to undertake precise economic obligations for the family, that is to saythey must play an important role in the search for means of sustenance forthemselves and for the family.6. Research has highlighted with sufficient clarity how the grades and contentsof understanding of what is the destiny and the future in Italy for those whoundertake the journey appear quite variable, depending on whether the girl and herfamily have more or less access to information on returning immigrants or thewidely spread information in the contexts where young women have departed forItaly since a long time.The deception can be absolute or relative, it can therefore go from the offer ofprospects without any foundation (in the case for example of proposals to girls thatlive in a geographically marginal context and culturally more isolated), to forms ofpresentation of the possibilities for getting rich that implicitly refer to modelsdifferent from “honest” types, underlining the facility to earn if one is disposed topledge oneself, without taking the details into account.This feeds, in the girls who are more aware of the reality lived by thecompanions that preceded them, the need for self-deception, which assumes theform of considering themselves a possible “exception” regarding the commondestiny or to think that some alternatives are possible, once arrived in Europe oreven, perhaps to be able to conciliate the obligations which one will have.