Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-29-2019
Publication Source
Anti-Trafficking Review
Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic work with Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), a grassroots sex worker organisation in Sonagachi, the iconic red-light district in Kolkata, India, this paper explores the politics of the detritus generated by raids as a form of state violence. While the current literature mainly focuses on its institutional ramifications, this article explores the significance of the raid in its immediate relation to the brothel as a home and a space to collectivise for labour rights. Drawing on atyachar (oppression), the Bengali word sex workers use to depict the violence of raids, I argue that they experience the raid not as a spectacle, but as an ordinary form of violence in contrast to their extraordinary experience of return to rebuild their lives. Return signals both a reclamation of the detritus as well as subversion of the state’s attempt to undermine DMSC’s labour movement.
Inclusive pages
127-139
ISBN/ISSN
ISSN: 2286-7511; E-ISSN: 2287-0113
Document Version
Published Version
Copyright
Copyright (c) 2019 Simanti Dasgupta
Publisher
Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW)
Issue
12
Peer Reviewed
yes
Keywords
sex work, law, labour, raids, police violence, India, labor
eCommons Citation
Dasgupta, Simanti, "Of Raids and Returns: Sex Work Movement, Police Oppression, and the Politics of the Ordinary in Sonagachi, India" (2019). Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work Faculty Publications. 94.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/soc_fac_pub/94
Comments
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