Sex Work and Social Movement in India: Mobilizing in the Time of Pandemics

This book examines and theorizes about the emergence, growth, impact, collapse, and rejuvenation of a sex worker movement in India, exploring the manner in which the two pandemics – HIV and COVID-19 – bookended a feminist movement through more than a quarter of a century, shaping its trajectory over the course of that time.

Focusing on the sex workers’ collective Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) in Kolkata, the book asks these questions: How did a sex workers’ collective rise from th...