Hybrid governance and competing agendas: analysing anti-trafficking approaches in urban India

This article develops attention to the local dynamics and hybrid form of anti-trafficking governance by focusing on multiple governing actors in Sonagachi, Kolkata, India. Sonagachi is one of the largest urban sex work neighbourhoods in Asia/India and is a prime location for involvement of several anti-trafficking actors such as Street-level Bureaucrats, (I)NGOs, and Community Led Collectives. This article discusses how street-level bureaucrats collaborate with national and international NGOs and other actors to govern human trafficking, notwithstanding the ensuing difficulties for the individuals targeted and for consenting adult sex workers. The article also describes a self-regulatory governance approach developed by the sex worker community in response to ongoing anti-trafficking governance collaboration between government and (I)NGOs. This approach and, particularly, its ground-up participatory governance, has contributed to shape the lives and conditions of migrant sex workers in Sonagachi. While this localized hybrid governance offers certain advantages, such as enabling and accommodating community-led regulation and initiatives, amid criminalization of sex work, it remains constricted by legal ambiguity, ideological contestation, and uneven power relations as well as social hierarchies. The findings underlines that hybrid governance does not put an end to structural susceptibilities, socio-economic hierarchies and power relations but regularly reproduces them, particularly along lines of caste, class, religion, political interests/ideologies, and migration status, thereby continuing the marginalization of sex workers within broader social, political, and legal landscapes.