ABSTRACT
Grounded in critical ethnographic field research in Mysore, India, this chapter will shed light on the effects of overlapping forms of structural violence surrounding the lives of female, male, and transgender sex workers and how these forms of violence and social inequities were deeply implicated in both the emergence and containment of their subjectivities along the road to mobilization, alliance building, and resistance. With detailed ethnographic accounts, this chapter will emphasize the importance of critical theoretical lens that enables us to see the complex, shifting relationships between the larger social and structural processes, including policy or lack thereof, on the one hand and the everyday lived experiences of people (on the margins of the margins) on the other. It thus will reveal the uniquely creative, reflective, and sometimes conflicting—and messy ways—in which local cultural members and communities of sex workers come together to navigate risks, demand services, expand their rights and freedoms, while fulfilling individual and collective responsibilities.
