Au Pairs, Nannies and Babysitters : Paid Care as a Temporary Life Course Experience in Slovakia and in the UK
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Feminist Review |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141778919848636 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0141778919848636 |
| Keywords | paid childcare; au pairs; nannies; temporariness; migration regime; welfare regime |
| Attached files | |
| Description | This article argues that intersectional analyses of care work also need to include a temporal aspect. Drawing on ethnographic research on Slovak au pairs working in the UK and on interviews with both providers and employers of paid childcare in Slovakia, I examine how the temporariness of care work is created within both migrant and non-migrant settings. In particular, I demonstrate that both employers and providers conceptualise paid childcare as a temporary period in their lives and show the consequences of this conceptualisation in their valuing of care work. In both examined cases, I focus on the role of care/welfare and migration regimes in the production of temporariness in care work and argue that both providers and employers of paid care construct their involvement in domestic work as a specific life course experience. While for au pairs, working stays in the UK represent a specific transition period from adolescence to adulthood, employers in Slovakia decide to employ particular types of domestic workers in relation to the particular developmental phases of their families and households. |
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