Disrupting the ‘life-cycle’ of violence in social relations: recommendations for anti-trafficking interventions from an analysis of pathways out of sex work for women in Eastern India

This article argues for the need to change the ways in which anti-human trafficking (AT) NGOs and their interventions in India frame and address violence in sex work. The article asserts that AT NGOs need to move beyond their ideological allegiances, and infuse their interventions with a better understanding of the lived realities of women who are coerced into sex work. This argument is based on an analysis of women’s pathways out of sex work in Eastern India, which include both independent routes and reliance on anti-trafficking interventions. The research suggests that AT interventions need to acknowledge the centrality of social relations within the life-cycle of violence experienced by women. These relations influence women’s entry into sex work, affect their experiences within it, and shape their pathways out of sex work.