At the intersection of the warmth of hearth and home and the dangers of the street lies the tenuous position of women engaged in reproductive labour, those involved in the sex trade and those in domestic positions. These are women who are vulnerable, exploited, and whose dirty work allows for the reproduction of traditional social mores and roles. Yet while they are used to sustain tradition, dialectically they reflect the hyperconnections of globalization through the migration of women, the development of placement 'agencies' that often are little but fronts for transnational crime; and the transfer of money from the developed countries to the oppressed world. This book focuses on the interaction of the global and the local through a close investigation of the political economy of desire and reproduction in three states that blur the line between developed and developing: Greece; Turkey; and Cyprus. These are countries at the crossroads, in flux, whose peripheral siting at the centre of global capitalism provides unusual insight into the dark recesses of patriarchy, paternalism and exploitation.

ANNA M. AGATHANGELOU is Lecturer at the University of Houston-Clear Lake and Director of the Global Change Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus.

Sex and Domestic Work in the Peropheries: The Fenced-Off Economies of Desire Invisible and Silent Female Migrant Reproductive Labour: Cyprus, Greece and Turkey Peripheral Economies Working and Playing Hard: Social Reproduction and Racial and Sexual Desire in the Mediterranean Desiring Power in the European Union: Peripheral Development and 'Mimicry' National Desires for Security Conclusion: A Global Political Economy of Sex?