Sex work and the city: Liminal lives in Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters’ Street

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.