Labor Migration and Sexuality in India: Reading the ‘Informal Economy’ through Dowry, Sexual Commerce, and LGBTQ Life

Svati Shah is an anthropologist and Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She holds degrees in public health and has worked internationally with non-profit and advocacy organizations in the U.S. and India, in the areas of climate justice, land rights, labor, and sexuality politics.
She is the author of Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai (2014), and has published widely on LGBTQ politics, sexuality, and mobility in South Asia.
Her talk draws from a forthcoming book about the contemporary landscape for LGBTQ activism in India.