Sex Work and Queer Movements, Money and Space: Land Use, Economic Informality, and Sexuality in India

<strong>CENTRE FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES, JNU</strong> <strong>a Seminar</strong>&nbsp;<strong>on</strong> <strong>Sex Work and Queer Movements, Money and Space: Land Use, Economic Informality, and Sexuality in India</strong> by <strong>Svati P. Shah</strong> Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst <strong>DATE: 13th JANUARY (Tuesday), 2015</strong> This talk reviews the major theoretical contributions of Svati Shah's recently published book, Street Corner Secrets: Sex Work and Migration in the City of Mumbai, which challenges widespread notions of sex work in India by examining solicitation in three spaces within the city that are seldom placed within the same analytic frame - brothels, streets, and public day-wage labor markets (nakas), where sexual commerce may be solicited discretely alongside other income-generating activities. Focusing on women who migrated to Mumbai from rural, economically underdeveloped areas within India, Shah demonstrates that sex work, like day labor, is properly understood as both insurance and a source of income within India's vast informal economy. In the course of this ethnography, Shah discusses policing practices, migrants' access to housing and water, the idea of public space, critiques of states and citizenship, and the discursive location of violence within debates on sexual commerce. The latter part of the talk reviews the theoretical bridges between sex work and queer movements in India, and explores the ways in which a critique of sexuality politics is imbricated within critiques of displacement and the production of space.