Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Welcome to the European family!and#8221; When East European countries joined the European Union under this banner 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 film, national policies, and an impressive range of work by theorists from Giorgio Agamben to Judith Butler, she develops a critical lens through which to think about the transnational continuum of and#147;womenand#8217;s work.and#8221; and#160; Parvulescu revisits Claude Land#233;vi-Straussand#8217;s concept of kinship and its rearticulation by second-wave feminists, particularly Gayle Rubin, to show that kinship has traditionally been anchored in the traffic in women. Reading recent cinematic texts that help frame this, she reveals that in contemporary Europe, East European migrant women are exchanged to engage in labor 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 womenand#8217;s mobility,and#160;The Traffic in Womenand#8217;s Workand#160;questions the foundations of the notion of Europe today.
Review
and#8220;In The Traffic in Womenand#8217;s Work, Parvulescu makes a compelling case for the role of East European women in the creation of a and#8216;new Europe.and#8217; Thanks to the invisible labor of cleaners, housewives, sex workers, caregivers, and other women on the move, the map of Europe is being radically redrawn. Parvulescuand#8217;s sophisticated arguments are essential reading for scholars in European studies, gender studies, and transnational studiesand#8212;as well as anyone interested in bold and boundary-pushing thought.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;What is the hidden link between the famous four freedoms on which the European Union is based and the infamous traffic in women? Parvulescu magisterially explores how the one tacitly implies and produces the other. The endless flow of women from East to West is the less glamorous subplot of the celebrated European freedom, implying new postcolonial divisions, raising far-reaching issues not only about gendered labor and the nature of globalization but also fundamental questions about the very nature of the exchange lying at the basis of the social. The book explores these questions with great verve, erudition, and passionate engagement through the spyglass of some exceptionally well-chosen recent films, paving new ways of conceiving feminism and politics.and#8221;
Synopsis
A cultural study of the traffic in women within the European Union. It builds upon the challenging situations that a staggering number of Eastern European women face today: at the two extreme poles of the law, the traffic in women in marriage and the traffic in women in coerced sex work, as well as a middle ground of women circulating as domestic servants, nannies, personal attendants, and entertainers in Western Europe and the UK.and#160; Drawing on film, national policies, and an impressive range of cultural criticism, the author tells a story that turns out to be not just about female trafficking, but about the enlargement of the European Union and the massive flows of people between eastern and western Europe (and to a lesser degree from postcolonial Africa). At its best, the study questions the foundations of the notion of and#147;Europeand#8221; today.
About the Author
Anca Parvulescu is professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of Laughter: Notes on a Passion.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. European Kinship: East European Women Go to Market2. Import/Export: Housework in an International Frame3. The Female
Homo Sacer: The Traffic in Coerced Reproduction4. andldquo;Give Me Your Passportandrdquo;: The Traffic in Women in a andldquo;Europe without Bordersandrdquo;5. Ways Out: Hospitality and Free LoveNotesIndex