ABSTRACT
There is now a burgeoning literature on the interrelated subjects of sex tourism, militarised prostitution and trafficking in Asia. Despite the central importance many women who are the subjects of this literature place on relationships, romance and sometimes love in narrating their migration experiences and discussing their lives at work in the clubs and bars around military bases or tourist areas, very little of their concerns have figured in this literature until quite recently. Relationships that circumvent or contradict client-entertainer norms are producing some interest in a growing multidisciplinary body of recent work (for example, Brennan 2004, Cheng 2010). This work allows us to better understand and frame experiences of many women in gijich’on clubs, who are often preoccupied with the tensions between work and relationships, by the way relationships are both expressed and constrained by their status as ‘trafficked entertainers’ and by negotiations over their financial and emotional security.
