The traffic in women's work : East European migration and the making of Europe / Anca Parvulescu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parvulescu, Anca, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women immigrants--Abuse of--European Union countries.

Women immigrants.

Women--Europe, Eastern--Social conditions.

Women.

Human trafficking.

Women immigrants--Abuse of.

Eastern Europe.

Social conditions.

Human trafficking--European Union countries.

European Union countries.

Physical Description:

ix, 185 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Summary:

When East European countries joined the European Union after 1989, they agreed to the free movement of goods, services, capital, and persons. In this book, Anca Parvulescu analyzes an important niche in this imagined European kinship: the traffic in women, or the circulation of East European women in West Europe in marriage and as domestic servants, nannies, personal attendants, and entertainers. Analyzing films, national policies, and an impressive range of theory, she develops a critical lens through which to think about the transnational continuum of "women's work." Parvulescu revisits Claude Levi-Strauss's concept of kinship and its rearticulation by second-wave feminists to show that kinship has traditionally been anchored in the traffic in women. She reveals that in contemporary Europe, East European migrant women are exchanged to engage in work customarily performed by wives within the institution of marriage. Tracing a pattern of what she calls Americanization, Parvulescu argues that these women thereby become responsible for the labor of reproduction. A fascinating cultural study as much about the consequences of the enlargement of the European Union as women's transnational mobility more generally, The Traffic in Women's Work questions the foundations of the notion of Europe today. Book jacket.

Contents:

European kinship: East European women go to market

Import/export: housework in an international frame

The female homo sacer: the traffic in coerced reproduction

"Give me your passport": the traffic in women in a "Europe without borders"

Ways out: hospitality and free love.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226118246

022611824X

9780226118383

022611838X

OCLC:

858749141