This is a critical read, and yet, one I know for a fact will not be picked up by the people who could most use it. This was a meticulously-researched book on the absolutely inhumane treatment of domestic workers. It's often too easy for people to give the industry a hand-wave, as people are often unwilling to acknowledge how brutal and unfair the labor can be, but this book demands that we throw off these blinders and see it for what it really is: a deeply cruel and unregulated industry

The Trafficker Next Door is an eye opening and shocking read that reveals the mistreatment and abuse faced by domestic workers; often by people who seem like ordinary employers. What’s happening is essentially human trafficking, and it’s happening all over the world.

The book is clearly structured into four sections and is really well researched. Through interviews, observations, and deep investigation, the author gives a voice to people who are so often overlooked. I received a free advanced review copy and this is my honest review.

[5 stars]

There’s a few nonfiction books where I almost feel like I need to suspend my disbelief. Like, there is no way that people can be this cruel. Yet, through interviews, published accounts, and firsthand witness recorded by the author, it gets proven.

176 pages and made up of five parts, an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion, Parreñas takes us through the experiences of the millions of migrant domestic workers in countries like the UAE, Canada, the UK, Singapore, and others. She explores the abuse that these women face, only one day off a month (if even), inhumane work schedules, withholding pay, peonage, and holding onto passports/other documentation is commonplace. She interviews both the workers and their employers, analysing the different social, cultural, and economic aspects that create these conditions. This is one of the most skillfully written nonfiction books that I have read in a while. Parreñas makes a perfect balance between quotes from her interviews, statistics from various sources, her personal experiences in her research, and her analysis of these facts.

We begin with an extremely strong introduction with both the defining of her main thesis, the idea of the “employer savior complex”, and previews into the various situations of trafficked domestic workers that we will explore. Parreñas describes her own past research on the topic, including her time working with those Filipina entertainers in Japan, in a way that is both captivating and informative. It truly sets the stage for the rest of the book.

The first chapter explores the story of a Filipina woman who was sent to work for a distant relative in the US when she was 18, only to not be paid for her labor once there (see: “My Family’s Slave” by Alex Tizon). She was rarely able to leave the house and so had no private or social life outside of caring for the house, besides regular phone calls with a niece of hers. We first explore the essay by the son of her original “employer” (his mother), who later became her employer following his mother's death. Parreñas looks into the ways that the employer distances himself and his mother from any blame and that their laborer would have experienced much worse conditions had she remained in the Philippines - an obvious example of Parreñas’ “employer savior complex”. She then moves to her own visit to the laborer hometown in the Philippines and her interviews with her family members who rightfully have a very different opinion than the employer did. The author explores both the family's opinions on the situation as well as the cultural context that led to it and the laborer’s lack of fighting against it. We're given short but informative explanations of these different cultural, gender, and “social contract” contexts that fed into this woman's exploitation for nearly seven decades. The balance of information is done expertly all while staying captivating.

The third chapter, focusing on the employees and their place in the system as well as the mindset that allows them to absolve themselves from this exploitative system, goes more in depth in its analysis. It brings up topics such as orientalism, positive liberty, and pernicious ignorance to explain the ways that employers, no matter their race (whether Western expats in Singapore or Arabs in the UAE) participate in this system. Goes through multiple examples of employers that Parreñas interviewed, her research into how “maid agencies” function, and her analysis of how these examples fit into the previously mentioned ideas. We see how employers withhold pay from their employees in repayment for the debt that they accrued to the agency as well as how actions such as holding onto passports and only giving the mandatory one day off a month is commonplace even among the employers that consider themselves the kindest to their workers. It's an extremely well-researched and strong piece of writing that further proves her concept of the employer savior complex while showcasing just how pervasive it is.

Again, his book is extremely well-written. Parreñas does not rely on long segments of quotes or interviews (not inherently a bad thing when done right) but weaves them into a discussion of each example. Small examples are presented in conversation with each chapter's main story, using the words from one to extrapolate conditions and information from the other. Equal emphasis is given to the words, point of view, and explanations of both the enslaver and the enslaved. When confronted with an “employer” stating that “slavery can turn into love”, she explores the wrongness of this with:

”Love exerts such gravitational force because it is often the only source of dignity for victims of slavery like Pulido. Love counters the indignity of sleeping next to a dog, wearing hand-me-down clothes, eating leftovers, and suffering regular beatings. It cloaks the violence of being ripped from one's family. Love hides the crime of abusers who demand that victims like Pulido displace their love for their own family onto their employers.”

Just so, so well written with gems like this embedded in the interviews describing workers’ experiences and Parreñas’ analysis.

It’s hard to write reviews for non-memoir nonfiction, especially as a layman. This book is expertly researched and written beyond expectations. It is not bogged down with statistics but gives enough to support her points and the horrors that she explores. Smoothly concise but never lacking, I could have read another whole book of just more of this (an obvious sign to look into her other works). An essential look into an overlooked and under-checked pandemic of human rights violations.