The au pair’s activities carried out in the home were generally structured as if it was a normal job. There were scheduled activities: cleaning, washing clothes, cooking, shopping and caring for children, which were defined as work in more regular domestic worker arrangements. The work tasks of an au pair are described in the official contract, issued by the Immigration Ser-vice. These are:
carry out chores such as a limited amount of domestic chores and caring for children.90 The au pair must carry out chores between 3 and 5 hours a day, i.e. between 18 and 30 hours a week, and the au pair must be granted at least one day off every week. Examples of domestic chores are: doing the laundry, tidying up and cleaning.91
In connection with the signing of the contract, a weekly schedule must be submitted. The ta-ble should show the work tasks to be carried out and on what days:
90 Immigration Service: AU1 Application for residence permit for au pairs (2008).
91 Ibid.
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Comparing the definition of au pair tasks with a similar au pair system, the Norwegian, shows in the au pair ‘standard work contract’ handed out in connection with the au pair work permit (in which the au pair stay is defined as work), that the tasks are described as ‘light domestic work’, ‘caring for children’, ‘looking after pets’, etc.92
Comparing these au pair definitions with a standard contract issued by the authorities to mi-grant domestic workers and their employers – here in Hong Kong – as a requirement for ap-plying for residence permit, it resembles in many respects the Danish au pair contract. Similar to Denmark, the 2-year residence permit as a domestic worker is tied to a specific em-ployer/family. In Hong Kong, the work tasks are described in the standard contract as follows:
Domestic chores; cooking, looking after elderly family members, baby sitting, child care, other tasks 93 In Hong Kong these domestic chores are defined as paid work.
Thus, it is difficult to disregard the fact that domestic chores may be and indeed are defined as paid work in the au pair contract.
As it is the case in other employment relationships, in which new employees may be hired successively as long as the job exists, the trend in host families was indeed that one au pair
92 Utlendingsdirektoratet, www.udi.no (accessed 19.10.2008)
93 Human Rights Watch (2005:115)
149 replaced the other. The interviews with both au pairs and host families presented a picture of the au pair stays as part of a series of caregivers in the families. Two of the interviewed fami-lies had had eight and six au pairs, respectively, and planned to continue taking in au pairs until their children are older. One host family explained that the children in the family could not remember family life without an au pair in the home. Among the interviewed au pairs the majority was ‘one of a series’ of au pairs in the host family.
As in other employment relationships, in which the employee may decide to change to a dif-ferent job, there was also a highly prevalent trend among au pairs to plan to move on to a new family, whereas others had come from working as au pair elsewhere.
Taken together, these data underscore the fact that for both host families and au pairs, the au pair stay in Denmark is essentially an employment relationship rather than a one-time experi-ence of a cultural nature.
The families organised au pairs as paid domestic labour within their homes, while the au pairs work as domestic labour in order to earn money for themselves and their family. The domes-tic activities were described and defined as scheduled work performed in accordance with an agreed upon remuneration and a set of rules governing what was essentially a contract be-tween the household and the worker, supervised by the state immigration agency.
As shown by Anderson (2000), Constable (1997) Rollins (1985), Cox and Narula (2003), Lutz 2008) the condition of residence in the migrant domestic worker arrangement is crucial for the domestic worker in defining boundaries between home and workplace. The workplace is the home – the host family’s home – but the workplace is also the au pair’s own home, which means that the separation of working life and private life becomes difficult. In addition, the analysis will also consider how pay and working conditions are managed, implemented and perceived by the au pairs and the host families.
The discussion of home as a workplace will concentrate on the au pair’s position as paid worker in the home. Focus will be on: Work tasks, work planning, management, increasing work loads, the possibilities of doing something about one’s situation, definition of childcare as work or not-work, floating and interrupted time and no work-mates.
The workplace as a home will concentrate on the relation between being a live-in domestic worker and being a person who is ‘off duty’. The focus here will be on: physical framework, privacy, the host family’s privacy, the fight about time, food, meals and baths, house rules, and the construct of being part of the family.
The second factor to be discussed, payment and working conditions, will concentrate on more formal and regulated areas of paid live-in domestic work related to the au pair’s employment status and their conditions of residence in Denmark as temporary migrant. The issues to be discussed here are: employment, work and pocket money, pay, hourly rates and tax, transport to Denmark, work beyond and alongside the rules, termination, dismissal, vacuum, holidays and days off and holiday pay and possibility to file complaints
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