Between pandemics: sex worker, sexual minority, and transgender activism from HIV to COVID-19

摘要

Public health crises alter political landscapes. This article investigatessocial movement strategies during and between the HIV and COVID-19pandemics. We conducted a set of eighteen in-depth interviews witheleven leaders of organisations working with sex workers, sexualminorities, and transgender people around India, all of whom had beenactively involved in HIV prevention programs, before and after thearrival of COVID-19 in India. First HIV, and then COVID-19, altered thepolitical landscape for these groups in relation to three types ofinstitutions: (1) donors (by creating dramatic increases and decreases inthe amount, type, and conditions of global funding and deepeninginequalities among organisations) (2) the state (by shifting the balanceof advocacy and human rights work toward immediate relief); and (3)other social movements (by expanding solidarities across groups butalso placing them in competition for limited resources). We argue that,to weather these dramatic shifts, organisations relied on internalalliances and resources built in and after periods of crisis. In this way,despite the differences between the two pandemics, the legacies of HIVshaped the response to COVID-19. Though responses to COVID-19 seemimprovised and temporary, they build on a longer-term socialmovement infrastructure.