Taking as her subjects migrant Filipina domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles, transnational migrant families in the Philippines, and Filipina migrant entertainers in Tokyo, Parrenas documents the social, cultural, and political pressures that maintain women's domesticity in migration, as well as the ways migrant women and their children negotiate these adversities.

Parrenas examines the underlying constructions of gender in neoliberal state regimes, export-oriented economies such as that of the Philippines, protective migration laws, and the actions and decisions of migrant...