What's Love Got to Do with It? : Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic Paperback / softback

by Denise Brennan

Part of the Latin America Otherwise series

Paperback / softback

Available to Order - This title is available to order, with delivery expected within 2 weeks

Description

In locations around the world, sex tourism is a booming business.

What's Love Got to Do with It? is an in-depth examination of the motivations of workers, clients, and others connected to the sex tourism business in SosÃºa, a town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic.

Denise Brennan considers why Dominican and Haitian women move to SosÃºa to pursue sex work and describes how sex tourists, primarily Europeans, come to SosÃºa to buy sex cheaply and live out racialized fantasies.

For the sex workers, Brennan explains, the sex trade is more than a means of survivalâ€”it is an advancement strategy that hinges on their successful â€œperformanceâ€ of love.

Many of these women seek to turn a commercialized sexual transaction into a long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, migration, and a way out of poverty.

Illuminating the complex world of SosÃºaâ€™s sex business in rich detail, Brennan draws on extensive interviews not only with sex workers and clients, but also with others who facilitate and benefit from the sex trade.

She weaves these voices into an analysis of Dominican economic and migration histories to consider the opportunitiesâ€”or lack thereofâ€”available to poor Dominican women.

She shows how these women, local actors caught in a web of global economic relations, try to take advantage of the foreign men who are in SosÃºa to take advantage of them.

Through her detailed study of the lives and working conditions of the women in SosÃºaâ€™s sex trade, Brennan raises important questions about womenâ€™s power, control, and opportunities in a globalized economy.