Love's Labour: Conflicts over Work and Relationships for Trafficked Filipina 'Entertainers' in Korea

There is now a burgeoning literature on the interrelated subjects of sex tourism, militarised prostitution and female entertainers in Asia. Despite the central importance that many women who are the subjects of this literature place on relationships, romance and sometimes even love in narrating their employment experiences and discussing their working lives, very little of such detail figures in this literature. This paper explores the experiences of romance and relationships for migrant Filipina entertainers and the meanings these women attach to such experiences through a discussion of narratives of women living and working in two US military club areas in South Korea. Although relationships that circumvent or contradict client-worker norms are given scant attention in the literature on both sex tourism and militarised prostitution, research with these women in Korea reveals that they are often preoccupied with the tensions between work and relationships, the way relationships are both expressed and constrained by their status as trafficked entertainer and negotiations over their financial and emotional security.