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 imag ine each other across national borders. They meet in a transnational space, Sosua, a tourist town on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. Sex to urism has redirected mig-ration patterns within the Dominican Republic to S osua, as well as off the island by building new transnational connections t o Germany. I examine why Dominican women migrate to Sosua's sex trade, how they see German men, and what happens when they actually establish ongoing relationships with them-both in Sosua and in Germany. I also look at how Ge rman men find out about Sosua, its sex trade, and Dominican women. I focus on forms of communication through which they find out about one another, co mmunication that ranges from word of mouth to newspapers, magazines, and th e Internet (in the case of the men only). In Sosua we see the relationship among capitalism's disruptive, restructuring activities; powerful images, f antasies, and desires (produced both locally and globally) that are inextri cably tied up with race and gender; the emergence of young, poor, black, si ngle mothers who are willing to engage in the sex trade; and a strong deman d for these women's services on the part of white, working-class, lower-mid dle, and middle-class, foreign male tourists.