Illicit flirtations : labor, migration, and sex trafficking in Tokyo / Rhacel Salazar Parreñas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women foreign workers--Japan--Tokyo.

Women foreign workers.

Foreign workers, Filipino--Japan--Tokyo.

Foreign workers, Filipino.

Human trafficking.

Hostess clubs.

Japan--Tokyo.

Hostess clubs--Japan--Tokyo.

Human trafficking--Japan--Tokyo.

Physical Description:

325 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2011]

Summary:

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 Parreñas 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, Parreñas 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : the indentured mobility of migrant Filipina hostesses

The migration of entertainers to Japan

The labor system in hostess clubs

Buttressing masculinity

The risky business of love

Cultures of flirtation

Making love for a visa

The invisibility of hostesses

The segregation of hostesses

Conclusion : ensuring the safe passage of migrant hostesses.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804777117

080477711X

9780804777124

0804777128

OCLC:

726819184