As an Equal?: Au Pairing in the Twenty First Century, Paperback

Tens of thousands of families rely on au pairs to do everything from childcare and housework to elder care, pet feeding, and waiting at dinner parties. Perhaps because society largely sees them as privileged and well-educated young women, au pairs have been excluded from many of the recent discussions of migrant domestic labor. Both the United States and the United Kingdom put few regulations on au pairing: in the US, the government considers them "cultural exchange participants" and in the UK au pairs aren't considered employees if they even so much as "learn about British culture from the host family." The result is that au pairs now constitute one of the poorest-paid and least protected groups of workers.
Through an examination of lived experiences, As an Equal? draws on detailed research to examine au pairs and the families who host them in contemporary Britain. The authors show families lean on au pairs under pressure to provide better childcare in a work environment that demands longer hours and offers little family support. This in turn increases a reliance of families on an exploited workforce, and so contributes to the wider political climate of economic austerity. As an Equal? will raise profound questions about the real value we place on childcare and domestic labor as well as the complicated position of women within the neoliberal economy.

Rosie Cox is reader in geography and gender studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She is author of The Servant Problem: Domestic Employment in a Global Economy; coeditor of Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination; and coauthor of Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food: Exploring Alternatives and Dirt: The Filthy Reality of Everyday Life. Nicole Busch is a research fellow on the Economic and Social Research Council project "Au pairing after the au pair scheme: new migration rules and childcare in private homes in the UK."