Trafficker Next Door
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A01=Rhacel Salazar Parrenas
abuse
au pairs
Author_Rhacel Salazar Parrenas
Category=JBFH
Category=JBFJ
Category=JPVH
Category=KCF
cooks
debt bonding
domestic labor
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
exploitation
forced labor
forthcoming
gardeners
housekeepers
human trafficking
migrant workers
nannies
poverty
savior complex
slavery
workplace standards
Product details
- ISBN 9781324134220
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 20 Oct 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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“Kaya mo ba?” Can you take it? An instructor asks this of a group of migrant workers in the Philippines, as they prepare for domestic work in wealthier countries. Can you take the grueling work? “Kaya,” the women say. “We can.”
The phrase “human trafficking” often conjures nightmarish images of sexual exploitation, but Rhacel Salazar Parreñas reveals that the vast majority of trafficking victims are domestic workers who suffer abuse not at the hands of shadowy crime lords but rather “ordinary” family employers.
Drawing on twenty years of groundbreaking research across three continents, Parreñas exposes the grim realities faced by migrant workers ensnared in forced labor due to poverty and debt bondage. She uncovers how entrenched social and legal norms, coupled with a patronizing “employer savior complex,” foster a troubling sense of ownership among employers over “their” domestic workers.
Through powerful firsthand accounts—including harrowing stories of workers living in hot, windowless rooms, experiencing food deprivation, having their makeup, jewelry, and phones confiscated, and having their wages stolen—Parreñas illustrates the migrants’ desperation, and the power dynamics that lead to a global network of exploitation. Parreñas’s urgent narrative challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about everyday household arrangements and calls for justice and fair treatment for all workers.
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is the Doris Stevens Professor in Women’s Studies and professor of sociology and gender and sexuality studies at Princeton University. The award-winning author of three previous books on labor, exploitation, and human trafficking, she lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
