A Very Private Business

Abstract

This article considers whether there is a specific demand for migrant domestic workers in the UK, or for workers with particular characteristics that in theory could be met by citizens. It discusses how immigration status can make it easier not only to recruit domestic workers, but also to retain them. 'Foreignness' may also make the management of the employment relation easier with employers anxious to discover a coincidence of interest with the worker. Employers are not only looking for generic 'foreignness' however, but typically also seek particular nationalities or ethnicities of worker, which can raise difficulties for agencies who are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of 'race'.

And Labor Came to Us: Making Use of an Opportune Workforce—Enhancing Migrant Integration into British Economy

“…The private sector also has a critical role to play in terms of offering the work trial opportunities (Anderson 2007) that will help assess migrants' actual capabilities but also potentials. Such a scheme will not only provide the migrants with the first step into the U.K. employment ladder but will also serve as a cultural eye-opener for the new migrants to begin to develop an appreciation of what the employment and economic procedures and processes are like in the United Kingdom.…”

“…Structural impediments, though vital, do not critically capture the dynamic nature of migrants' experiences (Borgna and Contini 2014;Rasool and Botha 2011;Slack 2014) and how they could collectively contribute to the public and private contextual spheres (Anderson 2007;Kirkpatrick and Hoque 2006). For example, the literature has not sufficiently expounded the idea of immigrant resilience developed by Korteweg (2008), which posits immigrants as economic, social, and cultural assets in many industrialized nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and so on.…”

EU Enlargement and Au Pairing in the United Kingdom: <i>The experiences and migratory strategies of Slovak au pairs</i>

“…As non-citizens, au pairs depend on specific regulatory frameworks with respect to entering a state (Williams & Baláž 2004: 1817; through particular immigration policies, states set rules and create markets in child care (Anderson 2007;Yodanis and Lauer 2005 2 Au pair mobility was designated as a temporary cultural exchange: au pairs were expected to have the opportunity to learn the local language and attend language schools, and their stays in the country were not supposed to be longer than two years. Thus, in the British context, au pairs were young foreigners who stayed with British families in order to learn English and acquire a better knowledge of the country and its culture.…”

“…Immigration provisions and controls practically defined nationals of certain countries to be more or less desirable as au pairs. In their studies, Bridget Anderson (2007;2009) andRosie Cox (2007) revealed racialised elements in such differentiation: au pairs had to be citizens of specified group of largely European countries (for details, see Newcombe 2004). Whilst citizens of the European Economic Area (EEA) did not require visas to become au pairs in the United Kingdom, the nationals of certain other countries -including Slovakia until EU enlargementrequired visas to work as au pairs or required both visas to enter the United Kingdom and particular visas to work as au pairs (for details, see Busch & Cox 2014).…”

Outsourcing Equality: Migrant Care Worker Imaginary in Finnish Media

“…Internationally, research on migrant care workers has largely focused on domestic, private, and informal care by 'low skilled' workers (Anderson, 2007;Lutz, 2008;Näre, 2013), mostly due to the comparatively recent systematic recruitment of migrant workers to Northern European care regimes with a higher level of institutional care arrangements. Nevertheless, during the last decade, there has been rising concern about the sustainability of public care, particularly eldercare, also in this region.…”