The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has placed Nigeria on its list of the eight countries with the world’s highest rate of human trafficking. The documentary photographer Elena Perlino has spent the past several years exploring its connections with Italy, where a widespread sex industry has developed based on the trade of African women. Perlino’s work is an attempt to understand the complexity and the contradiction of their experience. She has documented their daily lives in Turin, Genoa, Rome, Naples and Palermo. A former victim of trafficking, Isoke Aikpitanyi has become an important figure for Nigerian women in Italy, publishing two books on the subject: Le ragazze di Benin City (with L. Maragnani, 2007) and 500 storie vere (2011).