From ‘house of horrors’ to ‘sensitive’ governance: sex workers’ shelter detention in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT Indian law prescribes ‘protective custody’ for sex workers, placing them in carceral shelters after police and NGO-initiated raids and rescues. Frequent allegations of abuse and incidents of escape are followed by media and judicial scrutiny, leaving shelter detention itself unquestioned. This article situates shelter detention in two ways. It examines its legal prescription in the Indian socio-legal context and its connections to global anti-trafficking and anti-immigration contexts. It also engages with Foucauldian concepts and feminist, socio-legal, historical, and anthropological work on India to analyze the power shelter detention instantiates. Next, the article critiques shelter detentionby drawing upon my ethnography at a Mumbai shelter and reflections on methods and ethics, and by tracking how the media and judiciary responded to an escape. Through these methods, approaches, and findings, I argue that shelter detention curtails sex workers’ mobilities and impedes their livelihoods through: 1) Its legal prescription, authorizing multiple forms of governance; 2) Its implementation, shaped by challenges of governance delaying sex workers’ release; and 3) Media exposés and judicial interventions further intensifying surveillance. The article shows, further, that sex workers’ escapes and acts of resistance illuminate not just ‘exceptional’ abuse, but the routine, ever-expanding forms of governance animating shelter detention.