Representation of sex trafficking and migration for sex work in Nepal and the quest of victimhood, trauma and the meaning of silences in the margins

This paper problematizes the dominating idea that silence from the persons with experiences of sex trafficking, prostitution or sex work obviously is connected to repressed memories and psychic trauma. This due to the unspeakable aspects of being a victim subject to tragic events such as coercion, violence and sexual exploitation and their psychological traces. However, research with a focus on the genealogy and construction of trauma in general, i.e., the establishment, processes and practices surrounding trauma has shown a distinctive shift in how this category has been perceived over time. From trauma being considered as an illegitimate and suspect status where the victim rarely is considered as such to a legitimate status. Even more so, today the victims silence has come to be recognized as the most authentic expression of psychic trauma and is hardly ever called into question. While not denying the suffering in trauma or questioning trauma as a medical, psychiatric, or psychological category, there is a need to denaturalize trauma as a scientific medical category and to problematize the generalized social values related to psychic trauma as an indisputable moral category. Consequently, through ethnographic fieldwork in Nepal the paper explores returned migrant sex workers memory work and silences related to their experiences of migration for and years in sex work in Mumbai in India. It demonstrates that there is different meaning in and expressions of silences that needs to be recognized to not simplify silences in this context as exclusively psychic trauma.