Oral Presentation by Parisa Dashtipour¹
¹ The Open University, United Kingdom
TIME: Tuesday, 14 July, 14:30 – 16:00
Location: Room 2
Session: 6
Abstract
This paper explores the narratives of domestic workers, a group of workers often ignored by work and organizational psychology. A domestic worker is “any person engaged in domestic work within an employment relationship.” (International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 189 on Domestic Work.). Globally, this form of work is structured around definitions of women’s work, family roles, and the hierarchies of race, class, and nationality in ways that are dynamic and constantly evolving. Many domestic workers in central and Western Europe are migrants from the Global South, but there has been an increase in domestic workers from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet States in recent years. Historically, wealthy families in the UK have relied on domestic workers, or ‘servants’, to perform household tasks, such as cleaning, cooking, and childcare. In recent decades, especially among dual earner families, a neoliberal logic to childcare positions care as either a market commodity or the responsibility of the family. Combined with a cultural preference for intimate, ‘motherlike’ care (rather than collective care in institutions or nurseries), this dynamic has driven growing demand (from those who can afford it) for flexible childcare arrangements, such as nannies and au-pairs. Nannying and childcare are a particularly personal and intimate form of domestic work, a job which includes high levels of emotional labour, isolation, exploitation, and the requirement to navigate intimate and often awkward environments marked by power asymmetries. This paper presents data from in-depth interviews with 8 nannies working in some of the most affluent areas in the UK. Preliminary findings draw attention to concealed voices within the nannies’ narratives. These voices speak to the burden of acting as substitute parents: being employed to ensure the care and welfare of children while lacking the autonomy to fulfil that responsibility. The harms nannies experience may arise from this contradiction: they are entrusted with caring for children yet denied the conditions necessary to do so.