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

Securing a better living environment for left-behind children: Implications and challenges for policies

10.1177/011719681302200306Asian and Pacific Migration Journal223421-44

Sri Lankan female domestic workers overseas - The impact on their children

Sri Lanka, along with the Philippines and Indonesia, is a major source of migrant domestic workers. There has been little investigation into the impacts of the absence of women on their families and communities left behind. Contract migrant labor in Asia usually means leaving the family behind for two years or even longer. This paper firstly demonstrates how Sri Lankan women are increasingly becoming part of a global care chain. It draws on a survey and qualitative work among families and communities left behind by these migrant workers to explore the impacts on families and children. It examines the ways in which mothers seek to overcome the consequences of their absence on their families and children. A number of policy recommendations are made to ameliorate the negative impacts of the absence of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers.Graeme Hugo and Swarna Ukwattahttp://www.smc.org.ph/apmj/apmj_details.php?id=104

The Hassle of Housework: : Digitalisation and the Commodification of Domestic Labour

© 2019 The Author(s) .The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in Feminist Review by Sage Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778919879725This article revisits materialist second wave feminist debates about domestic labour in the context of digitalisation. Using a differentiated typology of labour it looks at how the tasks involved in housework have undergone dramatic changes through commodification, decommodification and recommodification without fundamentally altering the gender division of labour in social reproduction, drawing on recent research on the use of online platforms to deliver social reproductive labour via the market in a context in which reproductive labour sits at the centre of an intense time squeeze. It reflects on the implications the commodification of domestic labour for feminist strategy. The author points to the inadequacy in this context of traditional feminist strategies: for the socialisation of domestic labour through public services; wages for housework; or labour-saving through technological solutions, concluding that new strategies are needed that address the underlying social relations that perpetuate unequal divisions of labour in contemporary capitalism.Peer reviewe