Street Corner Secrets
eBook - PDF

Street Corner Secrets

Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Street Corner Secrets

Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai

About this book

Street Corner Secrets challenges widespread notions of sex work in India by examining solicitation in three spaces within the city of Mumbai 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, Svati P. Shah argues that selling sexual services is one of a number of ways women working as laborers may earn a living, demonstrating that sex work, like day labor, is a part of India's vast informal economy. Here, various means of earning—legitimized or stigmatized, legal or illegal—overlap or exist in close proximity to one another, shaping a narrow field of livelihood options that women navigate daily. In the course of this rich 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. Throughout, the book analyzes the epistemology of prostitution, and the silences and secrets that constitute the discourse of sexual commerce on Mumbai's streets.

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Yes, you can access Street Corner Secrets by Svati P Shah in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Sciences sociales & Histoire de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Preface
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction
  5. Chapter 1. Day Wage Labor and Migration: Making Ends Meet
  6. Chapter 2. Sex, Work, and Silence from the Construction Workers’ Naka
  7. Chapter 3. Sex Work and the Street
  8. Chapter 4. Red-Light Districts, Rescue, and Real Estate
  9. Conclusion. Agency, Livelihoods, and Spaces
  10. Notes
  11. Bibliography
  12. Index