Lived experiences of migrant men witnessing and surviving sexual violence in European transit spaces

(2025) 21:38 Linthout et al. Globalization and Health https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-025-01131-6 Globalization and Health Open Access RESEARCH Lived experiences of migrant men witnessing and surviving sexual violence in European transit spaces Leni Linthout1*, Ilse Derluyn3, Caroline Desombre2, Massil Benbouriche2 and Ines Keygnaert1    Abstract Background Despite increased scholarly attention to sexual violence, victimization among migrant men and boys remains under researched. This study aims to explore 1) migrant men’s views on and understandings of sexual victimization, 2) their own experiences with surviving and witnessing sexual violence during their past and ongoing migration journeys and 3) the consequences of such victimization and their coping behaviors. Results Participant observation in Brussels (Belgium) and Calais (France) preceded in-depth interviews with 39 migrant men between 16 and 47. Participants varied in age, nationality, educational level and aspired migration projects yet all of them were undocumented. They held varying, yet consistently gendered understandings of sexual violence, depicting women as victims and men as perpetrators. Although they did not explicitly label their own experiences as sexual violence, both direct and indirect forms of it were part of their past and ongoing migration trajectories. Sexual violence had a profound impact on men, inducing shame and challenging their masculine identity. Coping and prevention strategies ranged from normalizing or minimizing the violence and avoidantly forgetting, to protecting one another against future threats. Conclusions The results advocate for safe legal migration routes, increased awareness of migrant men’s vulnerabilities to sexual violence, and enhanced training and screening of professionals and volunteers working in the field. Keywords Sexual violence, Transit spaces, Migrant men Background Constituting a major public health problem, the World Health Organization (1, p. 5) defines sexual violence as “any sexual act that is perpetrated against someone’s will […] committed by any person regardless of their *Correspondence: Leni Linthout 1 Ghent University, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, VIORESC, International Centre for Reproductive Health, CESSMIR, C. Heymanslaan 10, 9000 Ghent, Belgium 2 Univ. Lille, ULR 4072 – PSITEC – Psychologie : Interactions, Temps, Emotions, Cognition, F‑59000 Lille, France 3 Ghent University, Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, CESSMIR, VIORESC , H Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium relationship to the victim, in any setting.”. Co-occurring with physical, emotional and socio-economic forms of violence, all migrants, forcibly displaced from their home countries due to conflict, war, or persecution, are at high risk of multiple sexual victimization [4, 15, 40]. These encompass, among others, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, (attempted) rape, sexual exploitation, forced transactional sex and sexual violence as weapon of war and torture [68]. Migrants may experience these violations personally (direct victimization) or witness them being inflicted upon others (indirect victimization), both leaving long-lasting impacts on mental health outcomes [45, 49] While sexual violence may constitute a reason to flee in the first place, it also occurs during onward travel, in © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Linthout et al. Globalization and Health (2025) 21:38 transit countries, and upon arrival in Europe [42]. Often used as a means of humiliation or intimidation, sexual violence frequently takes place in contexts marked by unequal power dynamics, most commonly perpetrated by strangers, smugglers, and persons in authority such as border guards and police, as well as local citizens and asylum professionals, initially assigned to care for and protect them [15, 39]. In a migratory context, research shows that sexual victimization affects men and women at more comparable rates than in the general, non-displaced population [15], with some settings showing comparable victimization rates between migrant men and women [66]. These studies revealed migrant men’s and boys’ heightened vulnerability to experience sexual violence at all stages of their migration journey, compared to what is globally reported in men. In recent years, there has been increased scholarly attention to sexual violence against migrant men and boys, both during their journey to and upon arrival on European shores. For example, upon arriving at Lesvos after treacherous sea crossings, 28% of male patients in the Médecins Sans Frontières-run clinic on the Greek island disclosed having been sexually victimized [4]. En route to Europe, sexual violence against men and adolescent boys was similarly found to be widespread when passing through Libya [71]. When considering both direct and indirect victimization, rates of up to 37.20% were recorded among undocumented male Sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco [39]. In the absence of alternative options to meet basic needs or earn money, unaccompanied migrant minors in Greece, mostly male, increasingly resort to forced transactional sex or survival sex [20]. Hosted in asylum reception centers, up to 63.8% of male applicants for international protection in Belgium self-reported experiencing some form of sexual victimization in the year prior to the study [15]. Often disguised as ‘police violence’, certain forms of sexual violence against men – for example violently stripping bodies and intrusively searching genitals by border guards – remain unacknowledged [31, 55]. Taken together, these studies indicate that increasingly restrictive migration policies, including pushbacks and slow bureaucratic asylum procedures [5], contribute to migrants’ susceptibility to sexual victimization. Sexual violence can have manifold short- and longterm consequences for the survivor, their family, and their community [40, 72]. Yet, men are often loath to acknowledge thems (...truncated)