The complications of ‘hiring a hubby’: gender relations and the commoditisation of home maintenance in New Zealand

This paper examines the commoditization of traditionally male domestic tasks through interviews with handymen who own franchises in the company ‘Hire a Hubby’ in New Zealand and homeowners who have paid for home repair tasks to be done. Discussions of the commoditization of traditionally female tasks in the home have revealed the emotional conflicts of paying others to care as well as the exploitative and degrading conditions that often arise when work takes place behind closed doors. By examining the working conditions and relationships involved when traditionally male tasks are paid for, this paper raises important questions about the valuing of reproductive labour and the production of gendered identities. The paper argues that while working conditions and rates of pay for ‘hubbies’ are better than those for people undertaking commoditized forms of traditionally female domestic labour, the negotiation of this work is still complex and implicated in gendered relations and identities. Working on the home was described by interviewees as an expression of care for family and a performance of the ‘right’ way to be a ‘Kiwi bloke’ and a father. Paying others to do this labour can imply a failure in a duty of care and in the performance of masculinity

The employment of migrant nannies in the UK: negotiating social class in an open market for commoditised in-home care

Migrant women are important sources of labour in the commoditised in-home childcare sector in many regions of the UK. Jobs in this sector, which include nannies as well as au pairs, babysitters, housekeepers and mothers' helps, are often low paid and low status with pay and conditions being determined by employers' circumstances and whims. This article draws on primary data and secondary sources to illustrate the ways in which employers compare migrant nannies with British nannies and other childcare workers in terms of the social class and formal education levels of different groups, with the aim of explaining why migrants are perceived as high-quality candidates for what are often low-paid, low-status jobs. I argue that employers negotiate inter-class relations in this gendered form of employment by understanding their relationship with the migrant nannies they have employed in the context of broader global inequalities—these inequalities are then reproduced and reaffirmed in private homes and across UK culture and society

Boserup revisited Economic restructuring and gender roles in Caribbean agriculture

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Re-Branding Alternative Tourism in the Caribbean: The Case for ‘Slow Tourism’

Slow tourism represents a progressive genre of alternative tourism for remote locales in the Caribbean beyond mass-tourism complexes. We propose this new form of slow tourism as a viable promotional identity for alternative tourist offerings, which are in need of re-branding, through the decentralized medium of information technologies. A further contribution to this new construct\u27s identity is our recognition of the potential for the Caribbean diaspora to participate as stakeholders in slow tourism ventures in under-developed spaces of the Caribbean that lack the requisite resources and bundle of social and economic advantages that mass-tourism relies upon. Thus, the unevenness of tourism-driven development in the Caribbean can be countered progressively, and more inclusively, than in times past. In addition to developing the theoretical construct of slow tourism, we offer several prototype examples to demonstrate quality offerings already in praxis

‘It is hard to stay in England’:itineraries, routes, and dead ends : an (im)mobility study of nurses who became carers

This article presents findings from an Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) study on the roles of education in the trajectories of health care professionals who migrated to England and became carers. The study looks at the downward mobility and deskilling of these women, and their struggles to reverse their bungled career paths. The author maps the routes of women, who after receiving a nurse education in countries such as China, Malawi, Romania, Philippines, and India, attempt returns on their educational investments in England. The themes revealed that although these nurses developed ingenious strategies to advance their careers, many of them could not overcome the structural barriers that impeded their pathways to becoming health care professionals in a new country

Remote working - altering the spatial contours of work and home in the new economy

The temporal pattern of work has changed in its daily, weekly and monthly rhythms, but so has the ‘spatiality’ of work: for some paid work is undertaken at home, or in cyberspace. Telecommuting can be used to ‘improve’ the lifestyles of long distance weekly commuters and their families