‘My home is my castle’. The Norwegian home in times of paid migrant domestic labour

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the cultural meanings attached to the home in contemporary Norway, by way of studying the recent and rather contested increase in paid migrant domestic labour. Based on qualitative interviews with Norwegian au pair host parents, the article explores the ways in which this new monetised and globalised organisation of housework and care work influences both the cultural ideal of the Norwegian home and everyday life within it. Does the increasing occurrence of paid domestic labour bear witness to and contribute to the production of new perceptions of the Norwegian home, or does it instead protect the Norwegian home from societal changes in regards to gender and labour?

Care and Domestic Work

“…There is, first of all, a pattern typical of northern and post-soviet European countries where institutionalized care is preferred over home-based care. In this setting, the private employment of care and domestic workers is seen as a challenge to ideals of equality, exacerbating class differences between women (Kristensen, 2017;Radziwinowiczówna et al, 2018). By contrast, in southern European countries care is provided inside the home by family members, notably women.…”

Homes as workplaces at the intersection of migration, care and gender regimes

“…There is, first of all, a pattern typical of northern and post-soviet European countries where institutionalisation of care is preferred over home-based care. In this setting, the private employment of care and domestic workers is seen as a challenge to ideals of equality, against class-differences between women (Kristensen 2017;Radziwinowiczówna, Rosińska and Kloc-Nowak 2018). By contrast, in Southern European countries care is provided inside the home by family members, notably women.…”

Comparative Perspectives on Gender Equality in Japan and Norway

“…This new way of organising domestic tasks means that the actual doing of what Bridged Anderson (2000) once labelled the three Cs (cleaning, cooking and caring) in the home since the 1970s has become a way for individuals and couples to become gender equal and to be seen as being gender equal. This means that the home is now considered the main domain where gender norms and gender equality ideals should be embraced, negotiated, and challenged (Døving, 2001;Klepp, 2006;Kristensen, 2017). According to sociologist Helene Aarseth (2011), Norwegian middle-class dual earner/dual carer couples who embrace the political and cultural ideal of gender equality turn all domestic tasks, including maintenance and construction work, into a self-realisation project where each member of the couple actively collaborates with the other in a 'gender-neutral' way.…”

“…Whereas the au pair arrangement, which in legal terms is regulated as cultural exchange and not work, is today most widely used by women from the Philippines (Utlendingsdirektoratet [UDI], 2020), the home cleaners are more often migrant women from Eastern Europe (Friberg & Tyldum, 2007). Overall, au pairing is a much more marginal phenomenon in Norway than home cleaning, but it has nevertheless shown rapid growth in recent years (Kristensen, 2017).…”