Intersectionality and Human Trafficked Survivors in India

Human trafficking is a modern day slavery and a gender based violence since it affect women and children with major social and psychological impacts not only on survivors, but their families and communities. A range of socio-economic factors like natural calamity, conflict, war, poverty, discrimination against women and children, marginalisation, child marriage and exclusion exacerbate women and children's vulnerability to the pull factors of human trafficking in India. Trafficking is mostly caused by the culture of a neo-liberal economic order as the causal or sufficient variable. This study employed individual interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and purposive sampling method in North East India and South India. Trafficked survivors were controlled by traffickers, agents and other actors around them. There exists no accurate data on human trafficking in India and researchers often depends on the government data. The trafficked survivors's traumatic experiences are often silenced, unspoken and disregarded. Hence, this paper attempts to explore the intersectional perspectives of trafficked survivors. Intersectionality of trafficking acknowledges that women's experiences of sexual and labour exploitation, oppression and discrimination are shaped by multiple intersecting factors such as gender, caste, race, age and the like. The intersectional framework recognises that women's identities are not uniform and that various systems of power and privilege intersect to create unique experiences of marginalisation and exclusion. This study found that the trafficked survivors are often conscious of what is happening to them but they are not conscious of the feminist ideas which revolves around certain issues like justice, liberation, gender politics, sexuality, individual accomplishment, ambition, and women's autonomy and the like.