Navigating Victimhood and the Politics of Intervention
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2025
Chapter 2 highlights how rescues are swift and chaotic events, fraught with confusion and uncertainty, tensions between NGOs and police, and a range of choices sex workers make, from actively pursuing their escape, to resisting rescues. The chapter, rooted in ethnographic observations and a comparison of two rescues, brings forth how they are shaped by questions, uncertainties, tensions, and choices that are rarely acknowledged in mainstream media and policy representations of rescues. It builds upon and departs from existing feminist critiques to foreground the tensions between NGOs and police, rooted in different gendered moral frameworks, interpretations of the law, resources, and priorities of intervention. It explores how NGOs and police constantly negotiate these tensions, and examines their impact on the construction, navigation, and contestation of victimhood. Comparing two very different NGO-led rescues in New Delhi and Meerut, it also brings forth how the experiences, choices, and approaches of women’s entry into the sex trade, and the outcomes they seek, vary greatly.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.