Abstract
Innovative and experimental in form and style, Burikova and Miller’s fine-grained ethnographic research on Slovak au pairs in London deals sensitively with the experiences of both au pairs and host families. While most au pairs in Scandinavia come from the Philippines, in Great Britain the dominant group are from Slovakia. Zuzana Burikova (researcher at the Institute of Ethnology (SAV) in Slovakia) and Daniel Miller (professor at University College of London) studied 50 Slovak au pairs at work and during their spare time. Their fieldwork included the 86 families worked for as well as 12 host families in the neighbourhood where Miller lived. The study examines changes in the au pair institution consequent to EU enlargement in 2004, and discusses the reasons behind Slovak girls becoming au pairs in London. The social, emotional and economic relations between them and their host families feature prominently in the study.
Au Pair has no academic references within the main body of the text, which is quite unusual for an academic book. Still, it is an academic contribution; it is original in analysis and insight and it is a good read, perhaps helped by the absence of continual external referencing. The literature on the subject of au pairing is relatively sparse and appears largely as a subset of the wider literature on domestic work. Given the growing importance of the phenomenon of au pairing in the UK, Scandinavia and the rest of Europe, the current volume is a timely addition to the literature.
With their non-migrant, non-student, non-worker and non-family member status, au pairs are an interesting case, especially those from Slovakia who, unlike au pairs of other nationalities, could enter the British labour market in 2004 with the full rights of EU citizens. Through intensive one-year ethnographic fieldwork, the authors gained insights into not only the formal aspects of labour, but also the social and personal aspects of au pairing, thus making it easier to understand the lives of these young Slovak women. Behind the facade of self-confidence and transgressive experimentation with the pleasures of big city life, the authors find inexperienced and vulnerable East European girls. They have left their parents’ home for the first time, choosing the relative security of an au pair job, rather than the insecurity and competitiveness of the British labour market. For a young woman, becoming an au pair is both a process of personal growth and a way of escaping unsatisfactory personal relationships and a restricted life style. Far away from parents and partners, they experiment with relationships, sex, drugs, alcohol and shoplifting. According to Miller and Burikova, this transgressive behaviour is related not just to the period of time – the rite de passage – the au pairs are in, but also to the fact that they are short-term migrants with a highly unclear status.
Being short-term migrants disinterested in establishing stable relationships with their employers, Slovak au pairs behave rudely towards host families and sometimes leave them if they are black or Jewish. They are also extremely critical and judgmental of English parenting practices. Noticing that British mothers watch TV programmes about bringing-up children, Slovak au pairs see them as incompetent and lacking the knowledge, self-confidence and willingness to be good caregivers. This image is confirmed by the fact that British mothers prefer to spend ‘quality time’ with their husbands rather than with their children. For Slovak au pairs this care culture is an expression of poor and irresponsible parenting as opposed to the ‘natural’ and ‘common sense’ parenting of their own Slovak parents.
The image of au pairs as cynical, critical and prejudicial is far from the typical shy and servile au pair depicted in previous studies. Miller and Burikova’s Au Pair, however, presents a nuanced picture. Working within material culture studies, a subdiscipline of social anthropology, the authors stress the physicality of the host family’s home and the way au pairs relate to it. The furniture selected for the au pair room, for example, the way au pairs decorate or refuse to decorate their rooms, the type and amount of food they are allowed to eat, all speak of the power relations between au pairs and employers. Often, the anxieties of au pairs are clearest in their uncertainty about such trivial issues as clothes on the floor, the food in the fridge and sitting in the living room.
Most of the families in Burikova and Miller’s study choose IKEA furniture for the au pair room. It is plain, it is often undersized (as the host family’s children have used it) and it is predominantly white melamine. Slovak au pairs are not offended by IKEA furniture; they might even consider it upmarket. They interpret the neutrality of the blank melamine as a sign of basic equality with the host family and an invitation to personalize their rooms through decoration. However, receiving the message ‘Please don’t put anything on the walls’, they discover that IKEA furniture is seen differently in the eyes of their employers. For host families IKEA seems to represent the perfect au pair style. As with the au pairs themselves, it is inexpensive and characterized by cleanliness and functionality, and it can be replaced when outdated or not necessary.
Burikova and Miller discuss the rather complicated nuances of an institution in change in an innovative way. The literature on paid domestic work tends to focus on asymmetric power relations, the nature and structure of the relationship between employers and employees, often emphasizing the intersection of gender, class, immigration status and ethnicity. The detailed ethnography in Au Pair, however, broadens the perspective by revealing how personal intimate relationships, the subtleties of the material culture and the wider geo-political context trigger migration and create power imbalances.