Beyond compassion: Children of sex workers in Kolkata’s Sonagachi

Article in Childhood August 2011 vol. 18, no. 3, 333-349.

In 2005, children of sex workers from Kolkata’s Sonagachi red-light district formed their own collective, Amra Padatik (‘We are Foot Soldiers’), to work to gain dignity for their mothers and claim their own rights as children of sex workers. In this article the authors speak to Amra Padatik’s founder members to demystify the culture of fear associated with their lives — perpetuated through popular representations. This is not to underplay their acute experiences of disadvantage, but to foreground them as politically astute citizens and decision-makers in policies that concern and affect them.

Their aim is to replace the compassion-driven traditional 3Rs of raid, rescue, rehabilitation with 3 counter-Rs: resilience, reworking and resistance.