North-North migration of care workers: “Disposable” au pairs in Australia

This paper examines the north-north migration of care workers within the industrialised world. While care migration has traditionally been conceptualised as a phenomenon of women moving from the global south to the global north, a growing number of youths are now providing care and domestic services in other industrialised countries as au pairs. Their ambiguous legal status, the rhetoric of being ‘part of the family’ and limited language proficiency compound their vulnerability. We argue that the current Australian government’s policy can be interpreted as a deliberate strategy to increase the supply of care labour and lower the care costs. This policy signifies a shift from commodification of care which involves formal transactions of wage and labour provision to what we call ‘pseudo-familialisation of care’ which pushes care provision back to the family where the actual work is shouldered by ‘pseudo-family members’ who are neither family members nor regular workers. The institutional environment for au pairs from the global north in Australia is more fragile than that for migrant care workers from the global south. The lack of institutional assistance from governments and civil society organisations on both sending and receiving ends as well as their limited co-ethnic community support place them in a vulnerable situation.