Publication details
Schedules and gossips: How to define the rules of an au pair employment?
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst Slovak au pairs living and working in London in 2004/2005, this presentation focuses on ways how au pairs generate knowledge about au pair institution and fairness of their working and living conditions. Though the conditions of au pairs’ employment are vaguely defined by international law and immigration rules, host families and au pairs usually are not familiar with their details. Furthermore, the actual working and living conditions of au pairs’ are controlled neither by immigration policy, nor by commercial agencies mediating contacts between the au pairs and host families. Consequently, the au pairs and host families have often different expectations and particular conditions and relationships depend on individuals. Given the asymmetry in power between the au pairs and host families, au pairs are commonly exploited and have little control over their duties, working and living conditions. In this paper I will focus on how au pairs deal with this lack of definitions and rules under the conditions of limited power. I will argue that their important concern is fairness of their treatment by host families: au pairs try to find out what kinds of working and living conditions are fair and whether they are staying with (what they call) ‘a good family‘. When the au pairs judge their treatment by host families, they do not rely on any formal authority (e.g. agencies mediating au pair stays), or abstract model (e.g. legal rules). Instead, when establishing what rules of au pair employment are (or should be), they rely on their social networks and compare their experience with experiences of other individual au pairs. |