Research & Reports
RESEARCH & REPORTS
Research Team
The State of Rescue was led by Dr. Kimberly Walters of California State University, Long Beach, and was conducted in partnership with Meera Raghavendra of Women's Initiatives (WINS), Tirupathi. The field research team included two MMW members – Devi and Radha Vyshnavi – working alongside them. All members of the research team completed CITI Program ethics certification in human subjects research prior to fieldwork.
MMW members conducted fieldwork at fifteen institutions — fourteen protective homes in Andhra Pradesh and one in Telangana. They carried out private interviews with women detained under the ITPA and recorded systematic field observations of conditions inside the homes and of the practices of shelter staff.
RESEARCH & REPORTS
Why Research Matters
We're not all victims.
Women detained in protective homes are routinely classified as ‘victims of trafficking’, but in a majority of cases this label is wrong. For a voluntary sex worker incorrectly detained as a ‘victim of trafficking’, speaking openly is risky. Academics, NGO workers, counsellors, and officials may all appear part of the same system to her.
We know our truth.
When sex workers ask the questions, the conversation changes. Sex workers are best placed to recognise when another woman is in sex work by choice, and when she has been trafficked. With them, a detained sex worker is no longer expected to perform victimhood or praise rehabilitation. She is speaking to someone who understands her work and shares her world.
We define our needs.
The State of Rescue reversed the usual arrangement: sex workers were not the subjects of research about their lives. They were its authors. Some of the knowledge placed before India’s Supreme Court before the Prajwala judgment passed first through MMW’s hands.
RESEARCH & REPORTS
What Our Study Found
The State of Rescue (Walters & Raghavendra 2021) found that India's anti-trafficking shelter system routinely detains adult women who were not trafficked. The ITPA's “rescue” framework treats voluntary sex work and trafficking as the same thing, and the institutions built on that framework act accordingly: women picked up in raids are held for months in protective homes against their will, cut off from their families and their earnings, and required to demonstrate the remorse and the desire for “rehabilitation” that the system expects of a victim.
SOURCE:
The State of Rescue, 2021. Based on coded interviews with the thirty-two Ujjawala women who completed interviews.
The rehabilitation offered — most often low-paid tailoring or similar training — cannot replace the income the women have lost, and many return to sex work on release, having lost months of earnings in the interim. The study found that detention itself, rather than any trafficking the women had experienced, was in many cases the most serious harm done to them. The report's recommendations follow directly: consent must be the threshold question, adult voluntary sex workers must not be swept into rescue operations, and no woman should be held in a protective home against her will.
The State of Rescue: Findings at a Glance
84%
Entered sex work voluntarily
Were never forced or coerced at entry
94%
Were not being coerced into sex work at the time of the raid
62%
Received no personal visitors during their detention
87%
Reported mental distress as a result of their detention
94%
Incurred debt, or took family help, to work toward release
30x
Gap between sex-work earnings and what “skills training” could replace
RESEARCH & REPORTS
Read the Research
DOWNLOAD REPORT
The State of Rescue — White Paper
PDF, 37pp, 2021