When Push Comes to Shove: Sites of Vulnerability, Personal Transformation, And Trafficked Women's Migration Decisions‪.‬

Introduction In this article I explore the reasons women from the "Third World" continue en masse to migrate to more developed regions globally for tenuous and vaguely understood work opportunities, particularly in the entertainment and service sectors where there are often strong associations with prostitution. Specifically, I focus on Filipino and Russian women working as "entertainers" in South Korea (hereafter referred to as Korea), where the term "entertainer" does indeed carry negative connotations of various forms of sexual labour and where Korea is fast developing a reputation in the Asian region as a major destination for sex trafficked women. I focus particularly on how women describe their lives at home prior to migration, which both helps to understand why they would "take their chances" in a volatile and extremely challenging context like Korea, and also why "ambivalent return" (Suzuki 2002, p. 99; Constable 1999) marks their reflections about returning to their homeland once in Korea. By recounting Filipino and Russian women's stories about their broader lives at home I aim to reveal the types of experiences that commonly contribute to women's decisions to go abroad in situations where they may be vulnerable to sexual and other forms of exploitation.