IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v69y2009i4p604-612.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

HIV prevention while the bulldozers roll: Exploring the effect of the demolition of Goa's red-light area

Author

Listed:
  • Shahmanesh, Maryam
  • Wayal, Sonali
  • Andrew, Gracy
  • Patel, Vikram
  • Cowan, Frances M.
  • Hart, Graham

Abstract

Interventions targeting sex-workers are pivotal to HIV prevention in India. Community mobilisation is considered by the National AIDS Control Programme to be an integral component of this strategy. Nevertheless societal factors, and specifically policy and legislation around sex-work, are potential barriers to widespread collectivisation and empowerment of sex-workers. Between November 2003 and December 2005 we conducted participatory observation and rapid ethnographic mapping with several hundred brief informant interviews, in addition to 34 semi-structured interviews with key-informants, 16 in-depth interviews with female sex-workers, and 3 focus-group-discussions with clients and mediators. This provides a detailed examination of the demolition of Baina, one of India's large red-light areas, in 2004, and one of the first accounts of the effect of dismantling the red-light area on the organisation of sex-work and sex-workers' sexual risk. The results suggest that the concentrated and homogeneous brothel-based sex-work environment rapidly evolved into heterogeneous, clandestine and dispersed modes of operation. The social context of sex-work that emerged from the dust of the demolition was higher risk and less conducive to HIV prevention. The demolition acted as a negative structural intervention; a catastrophic event that fragmented sex-workers' collective identity and agency and rendered them voiceless and marginalised. The findings suggest that an abolitionist approach to sex-work and legislation or policy that either criminalises this large group of women, or renders them as invisible victims, will increase the stigma and exclusion they experience. For the targeted HIV prevention approaches advocated by the National AIDS Control Programme to be effective, there is a need for legislation and policy that supports sex-workers' agency and self-organisation and enables them to create a safer working environment for themselves.

Suggested Citation

  • Shahmanesh, Maryam & Wayal, Sonali & Andrew, Gracy & Patel, Vikram & Cowan, Frances M. & Hart, Graham, 2009. "HIV prevention while the bulldozers roll: Exploring the effect of the demolition of Goa's red-light area," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(4), pages 604-612, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:69:y:2009:i:4:p:604-612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(09)00391-8
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Campbell, Catherine, 2000. "Selling sex in the time of AIDS: the psycho-social context of condom use by sex workers on a Southern African mine," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(4), pages 479-494, February.
    2. Downe, Pamela J., 1997. "Constructing a complex of contagion: The perceptions of AIDS among working prostitutes in Costa Rica," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(10), pages 1575-1583, May.
    3. Scambler, Graham & Paoli, Frederique, 2008. "Health work, female sex workers and HIV/AIDS: Global and local dimensions of stigma and deviance as barriers to effective interventions," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1848-1862, April.
    4. Desmond, Nicola & Allen, Caroline F. & Clift, Simon & Justine, Butolwa & Mzugu, Joseph & Plummer, Mary L. & Watson-Jones, Deborah & Ross, David A., 2005. "A typology of groups at risk of HIV/STI in a gold mining town in north-western Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(8), pages 1739-1749, April.
    5. Wight, Daniel & Plummer, Mary L. & Mshana, Gerry & Wamoyi, Joyce & Shigongo, Zachayo S. & Ross, David A., 2006. "Contradictory sexual norms and expectations for young people in rural Northern Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 987-997, February.
    6. Asthana, Sheena & Oostvogels, Robert, 1996. "Community participation in HIV prevention: Problems and prospects for community-based strategies among female sex workers in Madras," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 133-148, July.
    7. Cornish, Flora & Ghosh, Riddhi, 2007. "The necessary contradictions of 'community-led' health promotion: A case study of HIV prevention in an Indian red light district," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 496-507, January.
    8. O'Neil, John & Orchard, Treena & Swarankar, R. C. & Blanchard, J.F.James F. & Gurav, Kaveri & Moses, Stephen, 2004. "Dhandha, dharma and disease: traditional sex work and HIV/AIDS in rural India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(4), pages 851-860, August.
    9. Kerrigan, D. & Moreno, L. & Rosario, S. & Gomez, B. & Jerez, H. & Barrington, C. & Weiss, E. & Sweat, M., 2006. "Environmental-structural interventions to reduce HIV/STI risk among female sex workers in the Dominican Republic," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 96(1), pages 120-125.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thembelihle Zuma & Rachel King & Nothando Ngwenya & Francis Xavier Kasujja & Natsayi Chimbindi & Rachel Kawuma & Maryam Shahmanesh & Sarah Bernays & Janet Seeley, 2021. "Lives Interrupted: Navigating Hardship During COVID-19 Provides Lessons in Solidarity and Visibility for Mobile Young People in South Africa and Uganda," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 21(4), pages 419-434, October.
    2. Shira M Goldenberg & Andrea Krüsi & Emma Zhang & Jill Chettiar & Kate Shannon, 2017. "Structural Determinants of Health among Im/Migrants in the Indoor Sex Industry: Experiences of Workers and Managers/Owners in Metropolitan Vancouver," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-18, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Goldenberg, Shira M. & Strathdee, Steffanie A. & Gallardo, Manuel & Rhodes, Tim & Wagner, Karla D. & Patterson, Thomas L., 2011. ""Over here, it's just drugs, women and all the madness": The HIV risk environment of clients of female sex workers in Tijuana, Mexico," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(7), pages 1185-1192, April.
    2. Cornish, Flora & Ghosh, Riddhi, 2007. "The necessary contradictions of 'community-led' health promotion: A case study of HIV prevention in an Indian red light district," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 496-507, January.
    3. Evans, Catrin & Lambert, Helen, 2008. "Implementing community interventions for HIV prevention: Insights from project ethnography," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 467-478, January.
    4. Shandro, Janis A. & Veiga, Marcello M. & Shoveller, Jean & Scoble, Malcolm & Koehoorn, Mieke, 2011. "Perspectives on community health issues and the mining boom-bust cycle," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 178-186, June.
    5. Jocelyn Elmes & Morten Skovdal & Kundai Nhongo & Helen Ward & Catherine Campbell & Timothy B Hallett & Constance Nyamukapa & Peter J White & Simon Gregson, 2017. "A reconfiguration of the sex trade: How social and structural changes in eastern Zimbabwe left women involved in sex work and transactional sex more vulnerable," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(2), pages 1-22, February.
    6. Ushma Upadhyay, 2000. "India's New Economic Policy of 1991 and its Impact on Women's Poverty and AIDS," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 105-122.
    7. Rachel Jewkes & Minja Milovanovic & Kennedy Otwombe & Esnat Chirwa & Khuthadzo Hlongwane & Naomi Hill & Venice Mbowane & Mokgadi Matuludi & Kathryn Hopkins & Glenda Gray & Jenny Coetzee, 2021. "Intersections of Sex Work, Mental Ill-Health, IPV and Other Violence Experienced by Female Sex Workers: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Community-Centric National Study in South Africa," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-13, November.
    8. Cooper, Jan E. & Dow, William H. & de Walque, Damien & Keller, Ann C. & McCoy, Sandra I. & Fernald, Lia C.H. & Balampama, Marianna P. & Kalolella, Admirabilis & Packel, Laura J. & Wechsberg, Wendee M., 2017. "Female sex workers use power over their day-to-day lives to meet the condition of a conditional cash transfer intervention to incentivize safe sex," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 148-157.
    9. Katie Hail-Jares & Ruth C F Chang & Sugy Choi & Huang Zheng & Na He & Z Jennifer Huang, 2015. "Intimate-Partner and Client-Initiated Violence among Female Street-Based Sex Workers in China: Does a Support Network Help?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(9), pages 1-16, September.
    10. Robillard, Chantal, 2010. "The gendered experience of stigmatization in severe and persistent mental illness in Lima, Peru," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(12), pages 2178-2186, December.
    11. Ruth C Chang & Katie Hail-Jares & Huang Zheng & Na He & Jennifer Z H Bouey, 2018. "Mitigating circumstances: A model-based analysis of associations between risk environment and infrequent condom use among Chinese street-based sex workers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-15, May.
    12. Stoebenau, Kirsten, 2009. "Symbolic capital and health: The case of women's sex work in Antananarivo, Madagascar," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(11), pages 2045-2052, June.
    13. Poulin, Michelle & Dovel, Kathryn & Watkins, Susan Cotts, 2016. "Men with Money and the “Vulnerable Women” Client Category in an AIDS Epidemic," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 16-30.
    14. Coast, Ernestina, 2006. "Local understandings of, and responses to, HIV: Rural-urban migrants in Tanzania," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 1000-1010, August.
    15. Davey, Calum & Dirawo, Jeffrey & Mushati, Phillis & Magutshwa, Sitholubuhle & Hargreaves, James R. & Cowan, Frances M., 2019. "Mobility and sex work: why, where, when? A typology of female-sex-worker mobility in Zimbabwe," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 322-330.
    16. Saunders, Vicky, 2018. "What does your dad do for a living? Children of prisoners and their experiences of stigma," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 21-27.
    17. Poulin, Michelle, 2007. "Sex, money, and premarital partnerships in southern Malawi," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(11), pages 2383-2393, December.
    18. Carlos Mestanza-Ramón & Demmy Mora-Silva & Giovanni D’Orio & Enrique Tapia-Segarra & Isabel Dominguez Gaibor & José Fernando Esparza Parra & Carlos Renato Chávez Velásquez & Salvatore Straface, 2022. "Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM): Management and Socioenvironmental Impacts in the Northern Amazon of Ecuador," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-16, June.
    19. Taylor, Julie J., 2007. "Assisting or compromising intervention? The concept of 'culture' in biomedical and social research on HIV/AIDS," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 965-975, February.
    20. Townsend, A. & Abraham, C. & Barnes, A. & Collins, M. & Halliday, E. & Lewis, S. & Orton, L. & Ponsford, R. & Salway, S. & Whitehead, M. & Popay, J., 2020. "“I realised it weren't about spending the money. It's about doing something together:” the role of money in a community empowerment initiative and the implications for health and wellbeing," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:69:y:2009:i:4:p:604-612. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.