WhatsApp and Cell Phones Among Sex Workers in India: The Impact of ICT in the Banaras Red-Light District

Abstract

The aim of this work is threefold: first, to show how, in the context of the gentrification process in the city of Banaras (now Varanasi) in India, social networking, and in particular WhatsApp video calls, make up an attempt by young sex workers in the red-light district (i.e., Shivdaspur) to overcome the spatial entrapment, physical and identity displacement issues resulting from the policies of “beautification,” and urban development of the city. For young sex workers, information and communication technology represents an opportunity toward an unprecedented self-reflexive drive which, beyond a misrecognition of their profession and the symbolic violence it represents, could reinforce their understanding of the outside world to position themselves better within their surrounding society; second, to describe the testimony of older sex workers, according to whom, the Internet “normalizes” sexual violence on a national scale where it is strictly connected to the spread of pornography on the web; finally, to analyze, through an emic approach based on informal interviews, the complexities and potentiality of the information and communication technology for development in this context to shed more light on the design of research and intervention.