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oa Sex work and the city: Liminal lives in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street
- Source: Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, Volume 13, Issue Night Stories: Urban Narratives of Migrant Lives in Europe, Apr 2022, p. 47 - 60
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- 01 Apr 2022
Abstract
Chika Unigwe’s 2007 novel On Black Sisters’ Street centres on the lives of four women illegally trafficked from Nigeria to the sex district of Antwerp. Documenting how these characters negotiate the dark spaces of the city, Unigwe highlights the structural inequalities and legislative failures that keep these women in a state of exception. The novel offers a portrait of the contemporary city and the precarious position of those locked out of legal protection of the state. This article focuses on the urban spaces of Sisi, Efe, Joyce and Ama, and how they become commodities of underground migration system. Visible in the windows of the red-light district each night, they are considered persona non-grata by the legal infrastructure that fails to protect them.