Publication details
An Employer Sui Generis: How Placement Agencies are Changing the Nature of Paid Childcare in the Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | This chapter deals with a newly emerging actor in the paid childcare market in Czech Republic: care placement agencies that employ nannies in order to offer caregiving services to their customers (children’s parents). Drawing upon qualitative interviews with owners of agencies and the analysis of their web profiles, this chapter focuses on a double process of commodification of childcare which takes place along with the “selling” of the particular type of nanny to customers. I argue that in so doing, the agencies offer a working relationship which is different from the more widespread direct relationship between employer and employee, in addition to offering a different kind of care. The agencies are the employers of the nannies and from them the customers buy the care giving service. It is thus not only a matter of intermediation: over the course of the whole service provision the nanny is an employee of the agency, paid by the agency with money received by the customers. This logic of employment guarantees to customers that they are buying a “professional” service. Consequently, parents no longer look directly for a nanny; instead they look for an agency from which they can buy the services of the desired nanny. In this way, the traditionally two-sided employer-employee relationship is replaced by three-sided cooperation between customers, expert employers, and employees. It also transforms the trust which is present in the relationship: it is not the individual nanny who is trusted by customers, but the agency and its expert knowledge which makes the service trustworthy, reliable, and attractive (despite the cost) for particular customers. Paid childcare is transformed from an intimate activity into a relatively rigid sequence of tasks that are defined by the expert knowledge and carried out by professionals. Care placement agencies convert paid childcare into work on the side of the nannies, and into a qualified service to be purchased on the side of customers. |