Rethinking Sexual Labor in the International Introduction and Dating Industry

• In Event: 380 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Labor Market and Economy

Abstract

The ‘mail order bride’ industry connects American men to women in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia through online dating websites. Men join agencies like A Foreign Affair through their websites and pay a monthly fee to access the database of female profiles that are online.While the majority of recent scholarship on the international dating industry focuses on establishing women’s agency in the process of marriage migration in order to distinguish the industry from human trafficking, less has been said about international dating itself as a form of commercialized intimate labor. I argue that international dating lies within a continuum of sexual labor that is both paid and unpaid, challenging the notion that intimacy and monies belong to separate and hostile worlds.Many women in the Global South participate in online dating and romance tours as way to generate supplemental income. Therefore, I consider international dating to be a form of commercialized intimate and sexual labor that includes correspondence with foreign men, as well as engaging in intimate relationships with men that may or may not include sex acts. In doing so, I highlight the ways in which international courtship represents an avenue of income generating activities for women in the Global South that is often overlooked in scholarship about marriage migration and challenge the notion that all women who join introduction agencies are hoping to migrate.

Author

• Julia Meszaros, University of South Florida