Samenvatting

In the Netherlands, not much research has been done on the ways that Dutch women experience and try to survive a detention abroad. The research, on which this article is based, did focus on Dutch female prisoners abroad, using an ethnographic research method. This study looks at the ways Dutch mulas experience their prison term in Peru and focuses on their strategies of survival. The ways these women react upon their detention can be traced back to existing literature on the importation theory and deprivation theory. Also it became apparent that various coping strategies are used to survive their Peruvian imprisonment. These coping strategies proof to be related to the life experiences of the women (importation theory) and the experienced prison environment (deprivation theory).