Returning to sexual stigma : post-trafficking lives

Abstract

This article is concerned with returning to sexual stigma in two key respects. First, it prompts a return to the conceptual understanding of sexual stigma and makes an important contribution to critiques of the individualised frameworks that have dominated much of the literature on stigma to date, through a critical analysis of sexual stigma as a collective process at different scales and locations. Second, using empirical data from a qualitative study of post-trafficking experiences of women in Nepal as a case study to develop theoretical understandings of the production of stigma, it explores modalities of sexualized stigma encountered on return from trafficking situations. Within the trafficking literature there has been very little attention to what happens after trafficking. This article addresses this gap in focusing on lives post-trafficking and, in addition, contributes to the limited research on trafficking in Nepal.