‘Amidst the Hardships of Life, COVID Did Not Affect Us, nor Were We Scared of It’: The Politics of Contagion, Agency, and Narratives From Bengaluru’s Home-Based Female Sex Workers

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the notion of contagion, rooted in the fear of an unknown pathogen, operated not only as a biomedical concern but also as a governing logic that enabled the social segregation of potentially ‘contagious bodies’ and governmental control over them. This politics of contagion is used to contextualise the lives of Bengaluru’s (Karnataka, India) home-based female sex workers (FSWs), extending beyond the pandemic as a singular event. Drawing on the fieldwork-based qualitative narratives of these FSWs, the article examines the coexistence of their unique vulnerabilities and resilience. The article argues that the interplay between social and medical contagion produced a liminal status for Bengaluru’s home-based FSWs, even as they continued to exercise agency in negotiating everyday survival. Amidst the pandemic turmoil, FSWs navigated the realities of struggle and survival, negotiating the tension between the necessity of human contact and the fear of contagion. This negotiation was further shaped by the compounding effects of the state’s simultaneous presence and absence.