In 2004, the U.S. State Department declared Filipina hostesses in Japan the largest group of sex trafficked persons in the world. Since receiving this global attention, the number of hostesses entering Japan has dropped by nearly 90 percentOCofrom more than 80,000 in 2004 to just over 8,000 today. To some, this might suggest a victory for the global anti-trafficking campaign, but Rhacel Parreas counters that this drastic declineOCowhich stripped thousands of migrants of their livelihoodsOCois in truth a setback.
Parreas worked alongside hostesses in a working-class club in Tokyo's red-light district, serving drinks, singing karaoke, and entertaining her customers, including members of the "yakuza," the Japanese crime syndicate. While the common assumption has been that these hostess bars are hotbeds of sexual trafficking, Parreas quickly discovered a different world of working migrant women, there by choice, and, most importantly, where none were coerced into prostitution. But this is not to say that the hostesses were not vulnerable in other ways.
"Illicit Flirtations" challenges our understandings of human trafficking and calls into question the U.S. policy to broadly label these women as sex trafficked. It highlights how in imposing top-down legal constraints to solve the perceived problemsOCoincluding laws that push dependence on migrant brokers, guest worker policies that bind migrants to an employer, marriage laws that limit the integration of migrants, and measures that criminalize undocumented migrantsOComany women become more vulnerable to exploitation, not less. It is not the jobs themselves, but the regulation that makes migrants susceptible to trafficking. If we are to end the exploitation of people, we first need to understand the actual experiences of migrants, not rest on global policy statements. This book gives a long overdue look into the real world of those labeled as trafficked.

"In her earlier important work, Servants of Globalization, Rhacel Parrenas described the extraordinary migration of Filipinas to care jobs in the North. In this book she turns to the children left behind. Through superb interviewing, Parrenas uncovers the poignant story of absent mothers, present but unaccommodating fathers, kin helpers, and children haunted by the feeling of being left behind. These children are, Parrenas shows us, the 'fall guys' of a powerful global logic far beyond their control. This is a brilliant book we all should read."--Arlie Hochschild, co-editor with Barbara Ehrenreich of Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy and The Commercialization of Intimate Life
"With an ethnographer's ear and a social critic's lens, Rhacel Salazar
Parrenas illuminates the care deficit of the immigrant second generation, the children of transnational Filipino families left behind by mothers and
fathers who labor in the global economy. Her uncovering of the gender paradox--the intensification of the gender division of labor, of male providers and female nurturers, despite women's wage work--is nothing less than brilliant!"--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Servants of Globalization offers a groundbreaking study of migrant Filipino domestic workers who leave their own families behind to do the caretaking work of the global economy. Since its initial publication, the book has informed countless students and scholars and set the research agenda on labor migration and transnational families. With this second edition, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas returns to Rome and Los Angeles to consider how the migrant communities have changed. Children have now joined their parents. Male domestic workers are present in significantly greater numbers. And, perhaps most troubling, the population has aged, presenting new challenges for the increasingly elderly domestic workers. New chapters discuss these three increasingly important constituencies. The entire book has been revised and updated, and a new introduction offers a global, comparative overview of the citizenship status of migrant domestic workers. Servants of Globalization remains the defining work on the international division of reproductive labor.

In 2004, the U.S. State Department declared Filipina hostesses in Japan the largest group of sex trafficked persons in the world. Since receiving this global attention, the number of hostesses entering Japan has dropped by nearly 90 percent--from more than 80,000 in 2004 to just over 8,000 today. To some, this might suggest a victory for the global anti-trafficking campaign, but Rhacel Parrenas counters that this drastic decline--which stripped thousands of migrants of their livelihoods--is in truth a setback.
Parrenas worked alongside hostesses in a working-class club in Tokyo's red-light district, serving drinks, singing karaoke, and entertaining her customers, including members of the "yakuza," the Japanese crime syndicate. While the common assumption has been that these hostess bars are hotbeds of sexual trafficking, Parrenas quickly discovered a different world of working migrant women, there by choice, and, most importantly, where none were coerced into prostitution. But this is not to say that the hostesses were not vulnerable in other ways.
"Illicit Flirtations" challenges our understandings of human trafficking and calls into question the U.S. policy to broadly label these women as sex trafficked. It highlights how in imposing top-down legal constraints to solve the perceived problems--including laws that push dependence on migrant brokers, guest worker policies that bind migrants to an employer, marriage laws that limit the integration of migrants, and measures that criminalize undocumented migrants--many women become more vulnerable to exploitation, not less. It is not the jobs themselves, but the regulation that makes migrants susceptible to trafficking. If we are to end the exploitation of people, we first need to understand the actual experiences of migrants, not rest on global policy statements. This book gives a long overdue look into the real world of those labeled as trafficked.

"In her earlier important work, Servants of Globalization, Rhacel Parrenas described the extraordinary migration of Filipinas to care jobs in the North. In this book she turns to the children left behind. Through superb interviewing, Parrenas uncovers the poignant story of absent mothers, present but unaccommodating fathers, kin helpers, and children haunted by the feeling of being left behind. These children are, Parrenas shows us, the 'fall guys' of a powerful global logic far beyond their control. This is a brilliant book we all should read."--Arlie Hochschild, co-editor with Barbara Ehrenreich of Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy and The Commercialization of Intimate Life
"With an ethnographer's ear and a social critic's lens, Rhacel Salazar
Parrenas illuminates the care deficit of the immigrant second generation, the children of transnational Filipino families left behind by mothers and
fathers who labor in the global economy. Her uncovering of the gender paradox--the intensification of the gender division of labor, of male providers and female nurturers, despite women's wage work--is nothing less than brilliant!"--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Servants of Globalization offers a groundbreaking study of migrant Filipino domestic workers who leave their own families behind to do the caretaking work of the global economy. Since its initial publication, the book has informed countless students and scholars and set the research agenda on labor migration and transnational families. With this second edition, Rhacel Salazar Parrenas returns to Rome and Los Angeles to consider how the migrant communities have changed. Children have now joined their parents. Male domestic workers are present in significantly greater numbers. And, perhaps most troubling, the population has aged, presenting new challenges for the increasingly elderly domestic workers. New chapters discuss these three increasingly important constituencies. The entire book has been revised and updated, and a new introduction offers a global, comparative overview of the citizenship status of migrant domestic workers. Servants of Globalization remains the defining work on the international division of reproductive labor.