Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the forefront the vulnerability of the most marginalized populations, thus exposing the faultlines in neoliberal governance. Be it immigrants in the US, domestic migrant workers in India or violence against black bodies in western democracies, the pandemic has now enthused academics to think about the role of precarity and the resultant differential distribution of resources across the world. Amidst this, sex workers have been hard hit. On April 8, 2020 UNAIDS released a press statement asserting that as already criminalized, marginalized and living in financial precarity, ‘sex workers must not be left behind in the response to COVID-19’ (UNAIDS, Sex workers must not be left behind in the response to COVID-19, 2020). Yet, sex work precarity is by no means recent phenomenon. Sex work has been, for a long time, theorized as precarious labor and sex workers as precarious bodies. Sexual labor posits the body at the center stage of neoliberal biopolitics, whereby commodification, consumption and controlling of precarious bodies go hand-in-hand with and become integral for preserving the gendered/racialized neoliberal body politic. Thus, sexually precarious bodies become the site for several legal and pathological securitization initiatives.
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Notes
- 1.
Viewing sex work as an exception to juridical law as well as transgressions against ‘natural’ social/moral codes, frequently termed as social pathology.
- 2.
- 3.
Securitization theory views how global issues (like migration and climate change) are socially constructed as a security threats through powerful discourses.
- 4.
See Agamben (1998).
- 5.
Conducted as part of my dissertation research on Sex work governance in India: agency, subjectivity and resistance in bare life.
Abbreviations
- AINSW:
-
All India Network for Sex Workers
- DMSC:
-
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee
- FCDA:
-
Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis
- GCF:
-
Global Fund for Children
- HIV/AIDS:
-
Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
- ICRSE:
-
International Committee on Rights of Sex Workers in Europe
- ITPA:
-
Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act
- NSWP:
-
Global Network of Sex Workers Projects
- SAARC:
-
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
- SEM:
-
Standard Employment Model
- UNAIDS:
-
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS
- UNODC:
-
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
- VAMP/Sangram:
-
Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad/Sasmpada Grameen Mahla Sanstha
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Chatterjee, S. (2022). Gendering Precarity in Postcolonial Sites: Health Securitization and Sexual Labor in India’s Commercial Sex Trade Industry. In: Hewamanne, S., Yadav, S. (eds) The Political Economy of Post-COVID Life and Work in the Global South: Pandemic and Precarity. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93228-2_7
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