From Occupational Stigma to Mukti: Liberation, Place, and Agency Among Sex Workers in Sonagachi

Abstract

This article examines how former sex workers in Sonagachi, Kolkata, India, navigate occupational and place‐based stigma through spiritual repertoires, of which mukti (liberation) is a central tool. Drawing on critical, embedded ethnography across three fieldwork periods (2001, 2011, and 2019) with long‐term engagement in the Freeset community, the analysis shows how religious imaginaries are translated into everyday practices that rework recognition, work, and belonging. Rather than a linear exit from “dirty work,” mukti appears as a lived, practice‐based capacity orienting moral repair, spatial re‐siting, and intergenerational aspiration. The discussion unsettles Euro‐American secular framings of stigma and liberation, indicating that non‐Western spiritual frameworks can be constitutive—rather than merely contextual—of stigma navigation. It also illuminates how spiritual repertoires mediate relations among tainted places, social identities, and ethical action. The conclusion outlines a comparative, cross‐tradition research agenda attentive to spiritual practice and moral geography in contexts of marginalization.