Rescued, Rehabilitated, Returned: Institutional Approaches to the Rehabilitation of Survivors of Sex Trafficking in India and Nepal

Despite participating in rehabilitation programs, many survivors of sex trafficking in India and Nepal are re-trafficked, ‘voluntarily’ re-enter the sex industry, or become traffickers or brothel managers themselves. This thesis discusses the challenges of institutional rehabilitation from a critical theory perspective. Drawing from three months of participant observation, interviews, and focus groups with rehabilitation professionals, this thesis will show that there has been a recent, positive shift in the discourse of survivor rehabilitation at the institutional level. However, a focus on individual rather than holistic change, the structure of the rehabilitation process, and a lack of assessment tools has made these theoretical changes difficult to implement, resulting in a gap between “rehabilitation in theory” and “rehabilitation in practice” and the persistence of the status quo