Abstract
Based on ethnographic research in an US military camp town in South Korea, this article examines camp town sexual commerce as a manifestation of shifting global hierarchies amid Asia's economic ascendance and the decline of US hegemony. Challenging the dichotomous constructions of US GIs as powerful agents and of migrant club hostesses as trafficked victims, the author highlights their shared conditions of “indentured mobility” as constrained subjects bound by migrant labor contracts in their quest for mobility. Revisiting the persisting power asymmetry between US GIs and migrant hostesses, the author's ethnography reveals the ways in which power differentials are deployed by hostesses and club owners as a resource to incite the discourse of benevolence and rescue that attracts US GI customers to the clubs. By engaging the US military camp town as a space of migrant encounter, this article illuminates how global geopolitics, uneven capitalist development, and transnational migration are entangled with intimacy, power, and emotions to shape intimate labor at a critical juncture of the changing global order.
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