Migration for sex-work, whether by choice or by force, defined by many as sex-trafficking, has become a cause-célèbre in the world of those interested in women's rights and the effects of globalization on women and children in less economically developed countries. The marginalization of women who entertain the US military in Korea is not a new subject, as the excellent work by Katherine H.S. Moon Sex among Allies: Military Prostitution in US – Korea Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), has so powerfully brought this into the public discourse.According to Kathryn Robinson, until recently transnational migration in the global economy was predominantly male. She attributes a feminization of migration to a growing demand for domestic workers and in increase in the international sex worker trade (“Marriage, Migration, Family Values and the ‘Global Ecumene’”). Paper presented at the migration and the ‘Asian Family’ in a Globalizing World Conference, April 16-18, 2001 (Singapore: AsiaMetaCenter and the Centre for Advanced Studies, National University of Singapore, 2001). This is especially true in South Korea where there remains a very large US military presence.
In the emotionally charged and heavily politicized atmosphere of the study of sex trafficking and migration along with the subsequent abuses perpetrated upon women migrants in the global economy, Sealing Cheng's ethnography of Filipina migrant entertainers and sex workers in South Korea analyzes the complexities that not only surround the laws and systems through which migrant workers have to navigate but also the multifaceted and contradictory emotions, goals and driving forces at work within the population of Filipina entertainers themselves. On the Move for Love starts with a seemingly simple description of one incident involving maltreatment and subsequent official complaint by a group of seven Filipina entertainers who work at the Angel Club, an establishment that caters to American GIs in Dongducheon, the largest American military base in South Korea.
As Cheng explains in her introduction, “Just when seven of them thought they were taking things into their own hands by running away from the abusive owner … a cascading series of interventions effectively undermined not only their plans but also their legitimacy” (p. 5). From here Cheng goes on to retrace the motivations and subsequent events through interviews and observations of each of the Filipinas. She has been very careful to try to omit her own prejudices about and aspirations for these women and get to the core motivation of each of her subjects.
Throughout On the Move for Love, Cheng discusses each decision made by these women in terms of their needs and cares as well as the parameters of choices and goals as modified by the laws and mores that have been set by “masculinist” (p. 216) states, politically motivated NGOs, and individual entrepreneurs who set the rules for employment. By and large, her interpretation is that these women have made this choice with a general understanding of the risks involved in the profession of migrant entertainer. Cheng further points out that the Filipina workers have accepted these risks as being a better alternative than the certainty of poverty and lack of excitement in their present situation and that they have tried to better their lives through migration even if it marginalizes them from the concept of the ideal woman as set forth by their religion, culture, and families. As social actors most of these women seem to have accepted marginalization and delegitimization in another culture as the necessary cost of striving for a richer and less predestined life than one of almost certain poverty and predictability in the Philippines.
One of the more fascinating aspects of Cheng's analysis is her description of the role of NGOs, governmental organizations, and laws protecting women as these come into conflict with the aspirations of the migrant Filipina. In a rebuke of some NGOs, and new laws affecting the “trafficking” (p. 199) of women for entertainment and sex work, Cheng has shown how the actions of well-meaning NGOs and some governments often make the lives of the very migrant workers they are trying to protect more severe as the women have to plot a course through the legal impediments that have been erected by illegalization of migration for sex-work as well as of sex-work itself. The definition of migration for entertainment or sex-work as sex-trafficking and the redefining of worker migration for entertainment or sex work as abuse whether or not it has been the choice of the worker have made the goals of these Filipina migrants more difficult to achieve.
Cheng further describes how illegalization of prostitution in countries such as Korea has been a direct result of NGO influence on international organizations such as the United Nations as well as a result of pressure to legislate morality as espoused by more powerful nations especially the US and expressed as “normative claims without empirical basis” (p. 201) onto developing countries through “diplomatic maneuvers” (p. 201) whose moral codes are not in alignment with theirs. Cheng's analysis of this trend is that it is driven by the masculinist ideal that a woman should be a household worker whose sex exists solely for the bearing of children within the family. Cheng discusses this issue as an inconsistency in national policy since the primary cause of the Filipinas’ migration to Korea is to “provide the entertainment that the (US military) boys need” (p. 221). She has also described an anti-US backlash by some NGOs as they pursue a political agenda that bundles the actions of the US and its military as it affects the migration of women into a predetermined anti-US stance.
Readers would benefit from a more thorough analysis of the religious background of the Filipinas and the Koreans. Cheng has not gone into enough depth on what it means to be Catholic in the Philippine society nor has she given the reader an explanation of how Neo-Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity in Korea have worked to further marginalize the Korean and the Filipina entertainer. Korea is now a country where the migration of Asian women for marriage and sex-work have become major issues, on the forefront in the news media and the social agenda. The backlash of racial prejudice directed at these Filipina entertainers due to the contemporary realities of a Korea saddled with an extremely low birthrate and an acceleration of mixed marriages is another issue that could have been more fully explored in this text.
Cheng's ethnography overall is a well-balanced analytical examination of the global migration of the Filipina entertainment workers both as free agents and as objectified subjects. I highly recommend this book for the student of sociology, anthropology, Asian studies, women's studies, migration and globalization and especially for anyone contemplating working with NGOs, government offices and organizations concerned with international policy decisions concerning human rights.
