Publication details
The Embarrassment of Co-presence: Au pairs and Their Rooms
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Home Cultures |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Archaeology, anthropology, ethnology |
| Keywords | au pair; home; paid domestic labour; ambivalence |
| Description | This article explores the ways Slovak au pairs living in London relate to their rooms through decoration and alternative aesthetic strategies. In this article the theme is neither the appropriation nor the refusal of personal spaces, but tahter an ambivalence that becomes evident through the detailed study of material culture. The source of this ambivalence lies both in the transcience of their residence and in the contradictions inherent in the au pair scheme, causing a relationship that I explore as the embarrassment of co-presence. The evidence suggests that au pairs find themselves torn between a desire to settle and appropriate a space and an equal desire not to be present or not to make an impact upon this space. This emerges not only from strategies of (non-) decoration, but also from au pairs exploitation of the parameters of tidiness and mess and alternative foci of self-expression such as the individual body. |