The introduction explains the setting of the ethnography at the intersections of law, NGOs, the Indian state, and the global anti-trafficking regime. It explains the sequence of interventions the book will follow, from rescues to courts to shelters, prescribed by Indian law and implemented by legal actors and NGOs. It lays out the sites and processes the book will explore through encounters between those implementing these interventions, and those experiencing them. It outlines the book’s central aims: how it uses the intersections of anti-trafficking and anti-prostitution interventions as points of entry to foreground how sex workers navigate them, critique the prevalent assumptions and preferred solutions of the global anti-trafficking regime, and explore the complex relationship between law and NGOs in India. It discusses the broader concerns and approaches these interventions bring to the governance of prostitution – global humanitarianism, policing and criminal justice, the paternalism of the Indian state and NGOs, neoliberal women’s empowerment programs, and an anti-immigrant sociopolitical climate. The introduction also explains the author’s methods, research design, and positionality, and the organization of the book.

Chapter 1 provides the contextual and conceptual frameworks shaping the book. It explains the sociolegal context in which the book is situated – in particular, India’s Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA) of 1956, the US-led anti-trafficking regime, and the role of anti-trafficking NGOs. Conceptually, Chapter 1 lays out how the book places postcolonial law in a broader field of neoliberal government including state agencies and foreign-funded NGOs acting upon prostitution. It explains how the book pursues new directions in legal anthropology with an attentiveness to multiple scales of governance and law’s implementation by state and nonstate actors, while remaining deeply rooted in the minutiae of legal practices and spaces. Finally, Chapter 1 shows how the book is in dialogue with interdisciplinary feminist scholars who have critiqued anti-trafficking campaigns and provided nuanced ethnographic insights on the complexities of sex workers’ lives. It explains how, unlike these studies, this book is not an ethnography of sex work, sex trafficking, or even of anti-trafficking interventions alone. Instead, it explores how India’s anti-prostitution law and global anti-trafficking campaigns converge and act upon sex workers, and how sex workers navigate and resist them.

This multisited ethnography is not about sex work or sex trafficking, or even about anti-trafficking campaigns alone. Instead, as an anthropologist of law, NGOs, and the Indian state, the author situates the governance of prostitution in the broader Indian sociolegal and global humanitarian contexts. The book illuminates how Indian law and global anti-trafficking campaigns come together to govern prostitution, combining humanitarianism, paternalism, punitive care, bureaucracy, and morality. It explores the consequences of US-funded anti-trafficking campaigns operating alongside India’s existing legal framework against prostitution, and highlights the significant role NGOs play in suturing and implementing both kinds of interventions. At the same time, the book tracks how women removed from the sex trade – some of whom were trafficked and others voluntary sex workers – navigate these overlapping interventions. The title Immoral Traffic comes from India’s anti-prostitution law, which donor-driven NGOs draw upon to implement their anti-trafficking agenda. This law’s provisions and procedures to “manage” prostitution, and NGOs’ efforts to deploy and extend them, feature centrally throughout the book. Immoral Traffic takes the reader along the sequence of interventions this law prescribes and sex workers experience, from rescues to courts to carceral shelters.

Freedom in a choice does not just requires the absence of interference by another, whether with a preferred option or with any option; it requires the absence of domination: the absence of vulnerability to a power of interference on the part of another. Law and only law can guard citizens equally against the domination of others by identifying a common set of basic liberties and by providing intuitively adequate resourcing and protection against others to enable people to exercise those choices. But the state that imposes law will itself dominate all or some of its citizens if it is not subjected to a system of intuitively adequate, democratic control over its imposition of law. Such a system should enable people to shape the framework of government, to impose operational checks, constitutional and contestatory, on officials in government, and to appoint or oversee the appointment of such authorities.

The chapter discusses regulations and legal reform in medical law, in particular assisted reproductive technology (ART). A combination of Iranian state law, Shiʿi rulings, and national, medical, and clinical guidelines govern access to ART. In 2003, parliament enacted a law allowing the use of embryo donation for treating infertility in married couples. The law also implicitly recognized the permissibility of embryo-carrying and surrogacy arrangements. In comparative terms, this made Iran the most progressive country in the Muslim world regarding ART regulations and has resulted in the phenomenon of medical tourism. The chapter discusses the many ways in which Shiʿi Islamic legal rulings are mobilized to respond to medical and ethical concerns of different constituencies, illustrating the dynamism and adaptability of Shiʿi fiqh. Taking family as a legal concept, the chapter argues that Iranian family beliefs and values play a crucial role in shaping Iran’s permissive reproductive policy. Genealogical continuity and legal parenthood are central to these beliefs and values.

Different countries, states and provinces have different laws and legal systems. Laws also change with time. There are nevertheless some common threads regarding laws which affect hoarding and what may be your legal rights. In this chapter we will start by examining the various laws which may be relevant for people who hoard in England, Wales and much of the UK. We will then outline the differences from these laws in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Finally, we will mention how hoarding laws vary in Europe and the European Union, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and the United States of America

Please note that we are not lawyers and this chapter is meant to be an overview of our understanding of the law as it currently stands. It is aimed at providing a very approximate view of a person’s rights. With any legal issues you or your family may experience, you are strongly advised to consult a solicitor for any legal advice.

This chapter addresses the social barriers to implementing the technical solutions to climate change - enabling the reader to recongnise that the threats we face cannot be solved in a social vacuum. It challenges the narrative of the traditional growth economy and widening levels of inequality. It looks at the mechanisms of the legal system, the role of education and technology, and also highlights the three key areas of politics, media and business which will be explored in further detail in later chapters.

This chapter examines the foundations and evolution of papal legation in the Middle Ages. It frames the development of this ecclesiastical office in the context of burgeoning papal authority and its reception in Christian lands. And it posits the growth of legation as a natural and effective response to the Roman Curia’s administrative, bureaucratic, and legal needs.