Denise Brennan
Biographic Data
| ID | 640965 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Denise Brennan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Denise |
| FAMILY NAME | Brennan |
| SIGNATURE | BRENNAN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgetown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2733-2833 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Practices of Everyday Authoritarian Life: Anthropological Knowledge Production Under Trump 2.0
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Interview: Currents of Despair: The political ecology of migration and trafficking in the Mekong region
One of the special issue guest editors, Denise Brennan, conducted this interview with David Feingold to learn more about his experience of witnessing the impact of climate change and ecological changes on people’s lives and livelihoods in Southeast Asia
Climate-induced Exploitation: Workers’ rights and protections on a heated planet
This article envisions new approaches to worker protections on a heated planet. As worksites become increasingly hazardous, legal frameworks that regulate workplace standards as well as provide protections for forced labourers do not account—as of yet—for the heightened risks they face due to climate change. The article calls for the re-evaluation of the socio-legal dimensions of forced labour as climate-altered working conditions worsen. It focu…
Palestine as exception, Palestine as norm-Critical perspectives on Gaza from North America
My body is my piece of land’: Indebted deportation among undocumented migrant sex workers from Thailand and Nigeria in Europe
Set at the intersection of debt and deportability, this article analyses how undocumented migrant sex workers in Europe navigate deportability and its effects. While sex trafficking into the EU has received mounting attention as part of global migration dynamics, the role of debt in the lives of migrant women has been overlooked. The migrant women in this study arrive in Europe heavily indebted after traveling through the Sahara Desert and across…
Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border by Sarah Luna
Reviewed by: Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border by Sarah Luna Denise Brennan Sarah Luna. Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. 256 pp. Both sex workers and missionaries have long struggled to have their labor recognized as such. Sarah Luna’s terrifically engaging and accessibly written ethnography Love in The Drug War: Selling …
Magical Thinking
Vulnerable Here or There? Examining the vulnerability of victims of human trafficking before and after return
This article deals with how return programmes for rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants construct and create vulnerabilities. Few studies have explored the role of assistance provided through such programmes for the sex worker returnees and victims of trafficking who return through them. Even fewer holistically examine a return programme through data elicited in both destination and origin locations, before and after return. That is what…
Undocumented People (En)Counter Border Policing
This article examines undocumented people's everyday lived experience in the United States where their legal status is criminalized. It asks how they live with constant threat and surveillance. It highlights their strategies of invisibility as well as their generous contributions to their communities. It argues that these acts of "community caretaking" are acts of "hospitality" that demonstrate their "good citizenship." Every time undocumented pe…
Migrant Resilience and Refuge in the Trump Era
God brought you home - deportation as moral governance in the lives of Nigerian sex worker migrants
Set in Nigeria among deported sex worker migrants and the institutions that seek to intervene in their migration, this article explores how deportation serves the dual function as a tool for migration governance as well as a tool for moral governance. Deportation has often been analysed from a Global North perspective and as a technology of migration governance imposed upon migrants and their nation states in the Global South. Yet, among Nigerian…
Sex, Deportation and Rescue: Economies of Migration among Nigerian Sex Workers
This contribution explores the economies interlinked by the migration of Nigerian women sex workers. The literature and politics of sex work migration and human trafficking economies are commonly relegated to the realm that focuses on profits for criminal networks and pimps, in particular recirculating the claim that human trafficking is the “third largest” criminal economy after drugs and weapons. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Nigerian s…
The Art of the Possible: Making films on sex work migration and human trafficking
Fiction films and documentaries increasingly bring the themes of sex work migration and human trafficking to the big screen. The films often focus on women who have experienced a range of abusive conditions within the sex industry, experiences which in the films typically are all labelled 'trafficking' and narrated through the capture of innocents and their rescue. Images of 'sex slaves' have thus entered the film scene as iconic figures of pain …
Life Interrupted
How can I meaningfully thank so many who have been remarkably generous throughout the years of this project-for their time, insights, wisdom, personal stories, trust, and friendship?These words seem all the more inadequate since I cannot thank by name those who have courageously shared their stories.I am deeply grateful for the trust they put in me and for their commitment to helping others in similar situations of exploitation.There were two piv…
Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States
Having spent nearly a decade following the lives of formerly trafficked men and women, Denise Brennan recounts in close detail their flight from their abusers and their courageous efforts to rebuild their lives. Life Interrupted is a riveting account of life in and after trafficking and a forceful call for meaningful immigration and labor reform.
Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States
Trafficking, Scandal, and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Argentina and the United States
This article examines the varied consequences that the label "trafficked" holds for migrants and for the organizations that assist them. In the case of migrants from the Dominican Republic to Argentina, threat of U.S. economic sanctions prompted the two governments to document incidents of trafficking by labeling all forms of migrant labor exploitation as trafficking. Collapsing a range of coerced and noncoerced labor experiences under one label …
Thoughts on Finding and Assisting Individuals in Forced Labor in the USA
This article draws from interviews with formerly trafficked persons who have resettled in the USA. It has not been easy finding trafficked persons in the USA. The author contends that this is due, in part, to a focus of most antitrafficking activities on one industry — the sex industry — to the exclusion of investigations into exploitation of migrant workers in other labor sectors. At the same time, undocumented workers stay quiet about workplace…
Competing claims of victimhood? Foreign and domestic victims of trafficking in the United States
Methodological Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons: Tales from the Field
What's Love Got to Do with It: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
What’s Love Got to Do with It: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
In locations around the world, sex tourism is a booming business. What's Love Got to Do with It? is an in-depth examination of the motivations of workers, clients, and others connected to the sex tourism business in Sosúa, a town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Denise Brennan considers why Dominican and Haitian women move to Sosúa to pursue sex work and describes how sex tourists, primarily Europeans, come to Sosúa to buy sex che…
What's Love Got to Do with It: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic (Latin America Otherwise)
Women Work, Men Sponge, and Everyone Gossips: Macho Men and Stigmatized/ing Women in a Sex Tourist Town
This article focuses on gossip about Dominican womens sexual labor as an entry point into documenting shifting gender relations and ideologies in Sosúa, a sex tourist destination frequented primarily by German tourists. In Sosúas sexscape, new meanings of masculinity have emerged alongside womens earning capacity. While sex workers must temper their displays of monetary gains so as to not compromise their reputations as mothers sacrificing for th…
Tourism in Transnational Places: Dominican Sex Workers and German Sex Tourists Imagine One Another
This paper considers how Dominican sex workers and German sex tourists imagine each other across national borders. They meet in a transnational space, Sosúa, a tourist town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Sex tourism has redirected migration patterns within the Dominican Republic to Sosúa, as well as off the island by building new transnational connections to Germany. I examine why Dominican women migrate to Sosúa's sex trade, how t…
Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States
Methodological Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons: Tales from the Field
Women Work, Men Sponge, and Everyone Gossips: Macho Men and Stigmatized/ing Women in a Sex Tourist Town
This article focuses on gossip about Dominican womens sexual labor as an entry point into documenting shifting gender relations and ideologies in Sosúa, a sex tourist destination frequented primarily by German tourists. In Sosúas sexscape, new meanings of masculinity have emerged alongside womens earning capacity. While sex workers must temper their displays of monetary gains so as to not compromise their reputations as mothers sacrificing for th…
Sex, Deportation and Rescue: Economies of Migration among Nigerian Sex Workers
This contribution explores the economies interlinked by the migration of Nigerian women sex workers. The literature and politics of sex work migration and human trafficking economies are commonly relegated to the realm that focuses on profits for criminal networks and pimps, in particular recirculating the claim that human trafficking is the “third largest” criminal economy after drugs and weapons. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Nigerian s…
Competing claims of victimhood? Foreign and domestic victims of trafficking in the United States
Tourism in Transnational Places: Dominican Sex Workers and German Sex Tourists Imagine One Another
This paper considers how Dominican sex workers and German sex tourists imagine each other across national borders. They meet in a transnational space, Sosúa, a tourist town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Sex tourism has redirected migration patterns within the Dominican Republic to Sosúa, as well as off the island by building new transnational connections to Germany. I examine why Dominican women migrate to Sosúa's sex trade, how t…
My body is my piece of land’: Indebted deportation among undocumented migrant sex workers from Thailand and Nigeria in Europe
Set at the intersection of debt and deportability, this article analyses how undocumented migrant sex workers in Europe navigate deportability and its effects. While sex trafficking into the EU has received mounting attention as part of global migration dynamics, the role of debt in the lives of migrant women has been overlooked. The migrant women in this study arrive in Europe heavily indebted after traveling through the Sahara Desert and across…
Undocumented People (En)Counter Border Policing
This article examines undocumented people's everyday lived experience in the United States where their legal status is criminalized. It asks how they live with constant threat and surveillance. It highlights their strategies of invisibility as well as their generous contributions to their communities. It argues that these acts of "community caretaking" are acts of "hospitality" that demonstrate their "good citizenship." Every time undocumented pe…
The Art of the Possible: Making films on sex work migration and human trafficking
Fiction films and documentaries increasingly bring the themes of sex work migration and human trafficking to the big screen. The films often focus on women who have experienced a range of abusive conditions within the sex industry, experiences which in the films typically are all labelled 'trafficking' and narrated through the capture of innocents and their rescue. Images of 'sex slaves' have thus entered the film scene as iconic figures of pain …
Trafficking, Scandal, and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Argentina and the United States
This article examines the varied consequences that the label "trafficked" holds for migrants and for the organizations that assist them. In the case of migrants from the Dominican Republic to Argentina, threat of U.S. economic sanctions prompted the two governments to document incidents of trafficking by labeling all forms of migrant labor exploitation as trafficking. Collapsing a range of coerced and noncoerced labor experiences under one label …
Vulnerable Here or There? Examining the vulnerability of victims of human trafficking before and after return
This article deals with how return programmes for rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants construct and create vulnerabilities. Few studies have explored the role of assistance provided through such programmes for the sex worker returnees and victims of trafficking who return through them. Even fewer holistically examine a return programme through data elicited in both destination and origin locations, before and after return. That is what…
God brought you home - deportation as moral governance in the lives of Nigerian sex worker migrants
Set in Nigeria among deported sex worker migrants and the institutions that seek to intervene in their migration, this article explores how deportation serves the dual function as a tool for migration governance as well as a tool for moral governance. Deportation has often been analysed from a Global North perspective and as a technology of migration governance imposed upon migrants and their nation states in the Global South. Yet, among Nigerian…
Magical Thinking
Tourism in Transnational Places: Dominican Sex Workers and German Sex Tourists Imagine One Another
This paper considers how Dominican sex workers and German sex tourists imagine each other across national borders. They meet in a transnational space, Sosúa, a tourist town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Sex tourism has redirected migration patterns within the Dominican Republic to Sosúa, as well as off the island by building new transnational connections to Germany. I examine why Dominican women migrate to Sosúa's sex trade, how t…
What's Love Got to Do with It: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
What’s Love Got to Do with It: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic
In locations around the world, sex tourism is a booming business. What's Love Got to Do with It? is an in-depth examination of the motivations of workers, clients, and others connected to the sex tourism business in Sosúa, a town on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Denise Brennan considers why Dominican and Haitian women move to Sosúa to pursue sex work and describes how sex tourists, primarily Europeans, come to Sosúa to buy sex che…
What's Love Got to Do with It: Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic (Latin America Otherwise)
Women Work, Men Sponge, and Everyone Gossips: Macho Men and Stigmatized/ing Women in a Sex Tourist Town
This article focuses on gossip about Dominican womens sexual labor as an entry point into documenting shifting gender relations and ideologies in Sosúa, a sex tourist destination frequented primarily by German tourists. In Sosúas sexscape, new meanings of masculinity have emerged alongside womens earning capacity. While sex workers must temper their displays of monetary gains so as to not compromise their reputations as mothers sacrificing for th…
Methodological Challenges in Research with Trafficked Persons: Tales from the Field
Competing claims of victimhood? Foreign and domestic victims of trafficking in the United States
Thoughts on Finding and Assisting Individuals in Forced Labor in the USA
This article draws from interviews with formerly trafficked persons who have resettled in the USA. It has not been easy finding trafficked persons in the USA. The author contends that this is due, in part, to a focus of most antitrafficking activities on one industry — the sex industry — to the exclusion of investigations into exploitation of migrant workers in other labor sectors. At the same time, undocumented workers stay quiet about workplace…
Life Interrupted
How can I meaningfully thank so many who have been remarkably generous throughout the years of this project-for their time, insights, wisdom, personal stories, trust, and friendship?These words seem all the more inadequate since I cannot thank by name those who have courageously shared their stories.I am deeply grateful for the trust they put in me and for their commitment to helping others in similar situations of exploitation.There were two piv…
Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States
Having spent nearly a decade following the lives of formerly trafficked men and women, Denise Brennan recounts in close detail their flight from their abusers and their courageous efforts to rebuild their lives. Life Interrupted is a riveting account of life in and after trafficking and a forceful call for meaningful immigration and labor reform.
Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States
Trafficking, Scandal, and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Argentina and the United States
This article examines the varied consequences that the label "trafficked" holds for migrants and for the organizations that assist them. In the case of migrants from the Dominican Republic to Argentina, threat of U.S. economic sanctions prompted the two governments to document incidents of trafficking by labeling all forms of migrant labor exploitation as trafficking. Collapsing a range of coerced and noncoerced labor experiences under one label …
Sex, Deportation and Rescue: Economies of Migration among Nigerian Sex Workers
This contribution explores the economies interlinked by the migration of Nigerian women sex workers. The literature and politics of sex work migration and human trafficking economies are commonly relegated to the realm that focuses on profits for criminal networks and pimps, in particular recirculating the claim that human trafficking is the “third largest” criminal economy after drugs and weapons. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Nigerian s…
The Art of the Possible: Making films on sex work migration and human trafficking
Fiction films and documentaries increasingly bring the themes of sex work migration and human trafficking to the big screen. The films often focus on women who have experienced a range of abusive conditions within the sex industry, experiences which in the films typically are all labelled 'trafficking' and narrated through the capture of innocents and their rescue. Images of 'sex slaves' have thus entered the film scene as iconic figures of pain …
Migrant Resilience and Refuge in the Trump Era
God brought you home - deportation as moral governance in the lives of Nigerian sex worker migrants
Set in Nigeria among deported sex worker migrants and the institutions that seek to intervene in their migration, this article explores how deportation serves the dual function as a tool for migration governance as well as a tool for moral governance. Deportation has often been analysed from a Global North perspective and as a technology of migration governance imposed upon migrants and their nation states in the Global South. Yet, among Nigerian…
Vulnerable Here or There? Examining the vulnerability of victims of human trafficking before and after return
This article deals with how return programmes for rejected asylum seekers and irregular migrants construct and create vulnerabilities. Few studies have explored the role of assistance provided through such programmes for the sex worker returnees and victims of trafficking who return through them. Even fewer holistically examine a return programme through data elicited in both destination and origin locations, before and after return. That is what…
Undocumented People (En)Counter Border Policing
This article examines undocumented people's everyday lived experience in the United States where their legal status is criminalized. It asks how they live with constant threat and surveillance. It highlights their strategies of invisibility as well as their generous contributions to their communities. It argues that these acts of "community caretaking" are acts of "hospitality" that demonstrate their "good citizenship." Every time undocumented pe…
Magical Thinking
My body is my piece of land’: Indebted deportation among undocumented migrant sex workers from Thailand and Nigeria in Europe
Set at the intersection of debt and deportability, this article analyses how undocumented migrant sex workers in Europe navigate deportability and its effects. While sex trafficking into the EU has received mounting attention as part of global migration dynamics, the role of debt in the lives of migrant women has been overlooked. The migrant women in this study arrive in Europe heavily indebted after traveling through the Sahara Desert and across…
Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico-US Border by Sarah Luna
Reviewed by: Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border by Sarah Luna Denise Brennan Sarah Luna. Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. 256 pp. Both sex workers and missionaries have long struggled to have their labor recognized as such. Sarah Luna’s terrifically engaging and accessibly written ethnography Love in The Drug War: Selling …
Palestine as exception, Palestine as norm-Critical perspectives on Gaza from North America
Interview: Currents of Despair: The political ecology of migration and trafficking in the Mekong region
One of the special issue guest editors, Denise Brennan, conducted this interview with David Feingold to learn more about his experience of witnessing the impact of climate change and ecological changes on people’s lives and livelihoods in Southeast Asia
Climate-induced Exploitation: Workers’ rights and protections on a heated planet
This article envisions new approaches to worker protections on a heated planet. As worksites become increasingly hazardous, legal frameworks that regulate workplace standards as well as provide protections for forced labourers do not account—as of yet—for the heightened risks they face due to climate change. The article calls for the re-evaluation of the socio-legal dimensions of forced labour as climate-altered working conditions worsen. It focu…
The Practices of Everyday Authoritarian Life: Anthropological Knowledge Production Under Trump 2.0
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
Sex work and related issues (17 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Criminology (8 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (7 works) · Ethnography (6 works) · Immigration (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (6 works)