In her book Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work, Rhacel Parrenas examines the role that Filipina domestic workers have played in our increasingly globalized economy. Parrenas focuses her study on the experiences of Filipina domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles, expecting that the women studied would have significant differences in their experiences given the differences between the two cities. However, Parrenas concluded that, for the most part, the experiences of Filipina domestic workers in Rome and Los Angeles were strikingly similar. Both shared "the experience of quasi-citizenship," which was marked by segregation and a number of other challenges (Parrenas, 2001, p. 244). Both experienced the pain of family separation and formed trans-national households. Both experienced the strange dichotomies of being well educated but performed menial jobs, of earning more money than what would ever be possible in the Philippines but losing their social status by undertaking low-status occupations. In addition, of course, both experienced the alienation of living far from home in a migrant community.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book because it made me consider the immigrant experience, particularly through the perspective of a gender issue. In America, we pride ourselves on being an immigrant nation, and yet I think that people often fail to consider the wrenching dislocation that migration engenders. The book did a fine job of placing me in the world of these women, who "often cannot help but compare their activities to those of their employer's and in the process usually notice that one of their main functions is to free them of time for leisure, rest, and relaxation" (Parrenas, 2001, p. 184). Particularly harrowing are the tales of families torn apart by the need to send the women out of the country to work, of children who barely know their parents and do not appreciate the sacrifices their mot...