@article{ref1,
title="Of raids and returns: sex work movement, police oppression, and the politics of the ordinary in Sonagachi, India",
journal="Anti-trafficking review",
year="2019",
author="Dasgupta, Simanti",
volume="12",
number="",
pages="127-139",
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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2286-7511",
doi="10.14197/atr.201219128",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.14197/atr.201219128"
}