Au Pairs' Lives in Global Context

Sisters or Servants?

R. Cox, R. Cox

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137377487
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Far from being the preserve of middle-class women from Northern Europe, au pairing is now booming worldwide. This collection, the first dedicated entirely to examining the lives of au pairs, traces their experiences across five continents showing how this form of domestic labour and childcare is thriving in the twenty-first century.

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Introduction

Rosie Cox

Demand for paid domestic labour has increased rapidly in the global North in recent decades at the same time as ideologies of equality make ‘servant’ employment unpalatable to some families and costs make full-time domestic workers unavailable to most. An au pair can seem a perfect solution to this conundrum: cheaper than a domestic worker and framed within government policies as a form of cultural exchange between equals, au pairs are now looked to by many tens of thousands of families to fulfil their housework, childcare and elder care needs.

This collection examines the experiences of au pairs and the organisation of au pairing in Europe, Australia and the USA. Drawing on contributions from academic researchers and activist groups, it shows that au pair schemes are increasingly important as sources of low-paid domestic and care labour, attracting au pairs from the global South as well as from neighbouring states. While au pairing is constructed in policy and industry discourses as something other than work – a form of cultural exchange that involves a bit of ‘help’ in the home in return for room, board and some ‘pocket money’ – the reality of au pairs’ lives demands interrogation. Too often popular imaginings of au pairs, which depict them as middle-class young women having a fun gap year before beginning their ‘real’ lives, hide the hard physical labour, demeaning treatment, isolation and poverty that they experience. The difference between au pairs and domestic workers, such as nannies and housekeepers, is not always plain to see; au pairing often differs little from other forms of paid domestic employment and there are few safeguards in place to ensure au pairs’ rights.

Au pairing has grown alongside other forms of paid domestic work but has been relatively invisible in both official statistics and academic research. This is largely because the au pair is imagined as both privileged and temporary. This collection shows that the reality often proves to be quite different and au pairs are subject to many of the same challenges and privations – low pay, long working hours, lack of privacy and vulnerability to abuse – as other live-in domestic workers. The global-scale trends which have underpinned the movements of workers around the world to carry out domestic tasks have also supported the growth of au pairing and this book examines the consequences of this growth.

Through its broad geographical sweep the collection reveals the commonalities and differences of au pairs’ experiences around the globe. It is the first collection of its kind, focusing specifically on au pairs and offering an international comparison of both the regulatory construction of au pairing and the everyday lives of au pairs. One thing that emerges through the 13 chapters that make up the collection is that in all national and historical contexts au pairing is shaped by vagueness in definitions. Au pairs are always ambiguously placed. They are not students – but they might be on student visas; they are not workers – but their tasks might be construed as work by immigration rules; they are not servants – but they do domestic labour, often in demeaning conditions; and they are not members of the families they live with – but they are meant to be treated as such and are denied the status of workers because of this. National au pair schemes vary substantially in the way that au pairs are defined but nowhere does their status seem to be clear, lacking contradiction or to be fair. The collection particularly exposes how the discourse of ‘cultural exchange’ can undermine au pairs’ remuneration, extend their working hours and limit their access to rights as workers.

This introduction seeks to untangle some of the contradictions that are revealed through the international comparison made possible by this collection. It begins with a short history of au pairing and a discussion of what au pairs actually are and how they are imagined in different national contexts, but falls short of being able to offer an unambiguous definition because of the ambiguities that surround au pairing. It then locates au pairs within the context of a wider growth in migration for domestic work, tracing how demand for these workers around the globe has grown in recent decades and how the phenomenon of au pairing relates to this growth. This context highlights the fact that domestic labour is treated differently from other forms of work within immigration and labour regulation. One of the most important ways in which au pairing is regulated differently from other forms of labour, is through its construction as ‘cultural exchange’ rather than work, and I highlight how this imagining of au pairing is produced by policy and industry discourse before outlining the organisation of the rest of the book.

What are au pairs?

Au pairing has its roots in European pre-war informal exchanges between households where the daughters of middle-class families in different countries would swap places for a time to improve their language skills and learn about housekeeping before entering the marriage market and setting up their own homes. These informal exchanges had similarities with centuries’ old practices of ‘lifecycle service’ which involved young people living for a period with another family and providing help with household and farming tasks. The idea of mutual exchange between equals and temporary membership of a household and family as a way to learn skills while providing an extra pair of hands, is rooted in these much older practices (Anderson 2009).

In the post-war years, as the ‘servant crisis’ hit increasing numbers of households, au pairing grew in a number of European countries and ceased to be based on direct exchanges between households who knew each other or had mutual friends (see Liarou Chapter 2). Concerns about the unregulated movement of young women around Europe and their treatment within the households they were hosted by led, in 1969, to the first international agreement on and definition of au pairing, the ‘European Agreement on “au pair” placement’, also known as the ‘Strasbourg Agreement’ (Council of Europe 1969). The text of the agreement describes the practice of au pairing as ‘widespread’ and as ‘an important social problem with legal, moral, cultural and economic implications’ (Council of Europe 1969, no pages); the au pair ‘problem’ is by no means new. The stated object of the Strasbourg Agreement was to provide protection for au pairs by defining their age (many had been as young as 14 or 15 years old), length of stay, maximum working hours, right to free time, right to religious observance and rights to time to study.

While not all European countries signed up to the agreement, its tenets provided the basis for most au pair schemes in Europe and elsewhere. The agreement established the idea of au pairing as a form of international movement, usually carried out by women and involving the exchange of childcare and housework labour for room, board, pocket money and the opportunity to learn about a different culture.

There is now substantial variety in the specific ways in which au pairs are defined in different national contexts; they work only 30 hours a week in Norway, and must be enrolled in language classes paid for by their host families, but in the USA they can work 45 hours a week and can be native English speakers from the UK, for example. In all situations where the au pair role is officially defined it is as a form of cultural exchange rather than work, it involves living with a host family, and is a temporary status available only to migrants.

In some countries (for example, the USA) only families with children living at home may host an au pair, in others, such as the UK and Australia, there are no such restrictions, but there is an expectation that the au pair will carry out housework-related tasks rather than any other form of work. While this expectation is not always adhered to and au pairs may be recruited to provide low-paid work in other settings or even to help their hosts in professional roles (see, for example, Williams and Baláž 2004), au pairs do largely carry out housework and childcare tasks.

Au pairs receive ‘pocket money’ rather than pay (except in the USA where a 1994 judgement from the Department of Labor determined that au pairs were employees and their remuneration was ‘wages’ (IRS 2013)) but the amount they are given, its regulation and the other benefits they are meant to have access to vary considerably between national contexts. In some countries (such as the USA) the stipend is tied to legal minimum wage rates, with au pairs receiving the minimum wage minus a deduction for accommodation (but not paying social security taxes and therefore having no rights to employment benefits). In most other countries au pairs are not entitled to minimum wages and earn less, often substantially less, than national minima. In the UK au pairs receive pocket money that is normally around half the minimum wage, their remuneration is not taxable and host families do not have to pay the National Insurance they would pay for an employee. In Norway, au pairs do not earn minimum wage but pay tax on both their pocket money and an amount which is supposed to represent what their accommodation and food are worth. Their hosts do not pay the taxes that employers normally pay and as a result of this an au pair has only very limited social security rights. In Australia pocket money rates vary substantially and it is agencies rather than government which recommends how much au pairs should be given. It is not clear whether au pairs should be paid minimum wages and whether their pay is taxable (see Berg Chapter 12). In Ireland au pairs earn well below minimum wage, about €100 per week but this amount is not regulated, can vary substantially and can involve au pairs working over 40 hours per week (see Smith Chapter 11).

Sometimes other benefits can be more important than levels of pay and these vary even more than ‘pocket money’ rates. As mentioned earlier, in Norway, host families are required to cover the costs of language classes but in many other situations au pairs pay for these themselves and the costs are considerable. Health insurance varies similarly, representing a burden to au pairs in some countries and a duty of hosts in others. In the USA having access to a car can be an important benefit and in London the equivalent is having the cost of public transport covered by the host family. Most au pair schemes specify that au pairs are provided with their own room and given food but the quantity and quality of these provisions is not defined. The quality of accommodation made available to au pairs can vary immensely from rooms shared with children to whole separate apartments. Food can be an additional expense for au pairs; providing themselves with foods that they like in the quantities they desire as alternatives to those given by the host family which may be unknown, too filling, not filling enough or just served at the wrong time of day can all eat into an au pair’s small allowance (Búriková and Miller 2010). All of these things matter to au pairs on very low incomes.

The level of remuneration makes a material difference to au pairs and is an indication of the extent to which they are valued and their labour is respected. The regulation of ‘pocket money’ rates and other benefits is one of the most important ways in which au pairs’ contradictory ‘non-worker’ position is constructed. Nowhere is there regulatory consistency around au pair’s status; in the USA where au pairs have legally been deemed employees for tax reasons, they are still considered ‘students’ for immigration purposes and in Australia au pairs are considered to be working if they fall foul of immigration rules, but not considered to be workers for the purposes of employment laws that would offer them protection (Berg Chapter 12 and Løvdal Chapter 9 for a similar situation in Norway). These contradictions both reflect and reproduce the idea that the tasks au pairs do are not real ‘work’.

As au pairing has developed a ‘common sense’ idea of what it is and is not has come into being. This has allowed au pair agencies in countries that do not have au pair schemes, such as the UK, Ireland and Australia, to recruit and supply thousands of au pairs, despite there being limited official recognition of the role. Yet despite the assumption that an au pair is a person with a particular status, tasks and remuneration, this common imagining neither reflects nor produces a commonality in conditions or regulations between countries. There is also a lack of clarity and commonly contradiction within national regulations. In order to understand both the causes and effects of this ambiguity, au pairing needs to be located within the broader context of paid domestic labour and the undervaluing of gendered reproductive work more generally.

Global flows of paid domestic workers and au pairs

There is no data on the number of au pairs worldwide. Few countries collect reliable data on the numbers of people au pairing; as they are not clearly classified as workers au pairs are not counted in census data on employment and they are often not counted as migrants. In some countries, such as the USA, au pairs all need a visa (see Aguilar Pérez Chapter 13) and are recorded through the immigration system, but in many other situations there are at least some groups of au pairs who are not counted, such as EU nationals in Norway and Denmark (See Stenum Chapter 7 and Stuberrud Chapter 8), or there is no official status of ‘au pair’ which could be monitored, as is the case in the UK (See Busch Chapter 4) and Australia (see Berg Chapter 12). The relaxed attitude towards au pair migration is at odds with broader anti-immigrant sentiment and polices that predominate in many au pair receiving countries (Cox 2007), and reflects the conceptualisation of au pairs as something other than labour migrants.

Despite this lack of official data there is substantial anecdotal, academic and industry evidence that au pairing has been growing globally in recent years and this growth is part of a broader expansion of migration for domestic work. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are at least 53 million domestic workers worldwide (not including au pairs) and the number could be as high as 100 million, 83 per cent of whom are women (ILO 2011). Domestic work has long been performed by migrants but these flows are increasingly between countries and continents rather than between more local rural to urban areas.

At a global scale domestic workers are predominantly from Asia, North Africa, and South and Central America. They move between countries in the global South and from South to North. There are some distinct patterns of movement between countries which reflect immigration regulations, historical colonial relationships, income inequalities and language commonalities. There are movements of workers between Latin American countries, from Mexico and the Caribbean to the USA and from Latin America to Spain. Moroccan and Tunisian women move to France; Burmese to Thailand; Sri Lankans to the Middle East, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia and recently women from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet States have become important in providing care in private homes in Central and Western Europe (Preston et al. 2014).

Au pair migrations are part of these patterns; they reflect historic relationships between states as well as more recent economic and cultural relationships. Language learning has traditionally been particularly important in shaping flows of au pairs and the demand for particular languages, as well as language commonalities between countries, are the result of both formal colonisation and trading relationships. The role of English as a global language sends thousands of au pairs to the UK and USA each year so that they can improve their skills, but it also supports flows of English-speaking Filipino au pairs to Norway and Denmark, where host families will commonly be able to speak English too.

The flow of migrant domestic workers has been encouraged by labour export policies in countries such as the Philippines and Sri Lanka. The Philippines sends over 150,000 people a year to work as domestic and care workers overseas. The top destinations are in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait); Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia) and Italy (POEA 2012) and au pairs are now included in the Philippines labour export system (see Stenum Chapter 7). Labour export is encouraged because migrants send foreign currency as remittances to their families. Women are thought to be more reliable than men in remitting money and, therefore, their migration has been specifically encouraged by the Philippines government.

Receiving countries can also encourage the movement of domestic workers and au pairs around the world through immigration policies which ensure a supply of low-waged and poorly protected workers to do work which is undervalued. Many countries offer specific visas or work permits for domestic workers and these visas may be available even when other categories of ‘unskilled’ workers are excluded. The conditions of domestic workers’ v...