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Cultural Exchange Or Cheap Housekeeper? Findings of a National Survey of Au Pairs in Australia

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Cultural Exchange Or Cheap Housekeeper? Findings of a National Survey of Au Pairs in Australia Cultural Exchange or Cheap Housekeeper? Findings of a National Survey of Au Pairs in Australia Laurie Berg and Gabrielle Meagher I November 2018 © Laurie Berg and Gabrielle Meagher 2018. All material in this report is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. Design and layout Hard Working Farmboys Cover image istockphoto Contents Authors .........................................................................................................6 Acknowledgements ...........................................................................................6 Executive summary............................................................................................7 Overview of the study............................................................................................7 Key findings......................................................................................................8 Recommendations ..............................................................................................11 I. Introduction . 13 About the survey................................................................................................14 Method .........................................................................................................14 How to read this report..........................................................................................16 II. What is an au pair in Australia?............................................................................17 Participants’ motivations for au pairing in Australia ...............................................................18 What tasks did participants do in their first placement?...........................................................19 Au pair or something more? The different ‘occupational categories’ of participants ...............................20 III. Who were the au pairs? ...................................................................................21 Gender..........................................................................................................21 Age .............................................................................................................21 Nationality ......................................................................................................22 English-language ability . 23 Education .......................................................................................................24 IV. Who were au pairs’ host families in their first placement? .............................................25 Location of family ...............................................................................................25 Family composition .............................................................................................27 Length of stay with family .......................................................................................28 V. Arranging and regulating au pairing .....................................................................29 How participants arranged their first placement – the role of agencies ...........................................29 How participants arranged subsequent placements .............................................................30 Participants’ visas and understanding of visa conditions..........................................................31 A written contract between participants and families ............................................................33 Police and Working With Children Checks........................................................................33 3 VI. What were au pairs’ working conditions in their first placement? .....................................34 Hours and pay ..................................................................................................34 Hours .......................................................................................................34 Weekly pay..................................................................................................35 Hours and weekly pay by occupational categories ...........................................................35 Notional hourly wage ...........................................................................................37 Establishing a benchmark for in-kind accommodation and board ............................................37 Notional hourly wage compared with legal minimum wages in Australia .....................................37 Notional hourly wage by gender.............................................................................38 Notional hourly wage by occupation ........................................................................38 Notional hourly wage by location............................................................................38 Notional hourly wage by family composition.................................................................39 Did signing a contract or using an agency make a difference? ................................................39 Bonuses.........................................................................................................39 Weekly scheduling ..............................................................................................40 Days off .........................................................................................................41 Leave ...........................................................................................................41 Conditions better or worse than agreed . .41 Terminating the placement and notice...........................................................................42 Prior agreements about notice periods ......................................................................42 Ending the placements and notice actually given ............................................................43 VII. Types and prevalence of different problems ...........................................................44 Incidence and nature of serious problems in any placement in Australia ..........................................44 Sexual harm.................................................................................................45 Psychological harm .........................................................................................45 Exploitative working conditions in participants’ first placement ..................................................46 Defining exploitative working conditions ....................................................................46 Which participants experienced exploitative working conditions? ............................................47 In which families did participants experience exploitative working conditions? ...............................47 Non-inclusion in the family in participants’ first placement . 48 Defining non-inclusion in the family .........................................................................48 Which participants experienced non-inclusion?..............................................................49 Pressure to remain with families .................................................................................49 4 VIII. Seeking assistance in relation to problems ............................................................51 Sources and types of assistance sought by participants ..........................................................51 Resolution of complaints ........................................................................................52 Reasons for not seeking assistance...............................................................................52 Further assistance needed.......................................................................................53 IX. Au pairs’ assessment of their experience and benefits gained.........................................54 Benefits of au pairing............................................................................................54 Attitudes towards au pairing in Australia . 54 Different groups’ attitudes towards au pairing in Australia ........................................................57 X. Conclusion..................................................................................................59 Cultural exchange or a job?......................................................................................59 Recognition of power imbalance ................................................................................60 The protective function of agencies .............................................................................60 Calls for an au pair visa ..........................................................................................61 Where to from here? ............................................................................................61 XI. Recommendations ........................................................................................62 Appendix Tables ..............................................................................................63 5 Authors Laurie Berg is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney. With Bassina Farbenblum, she is co-director of the Migrant Worker Justice Initiative, which engages in detailed in empirical research in Australia and globally to catalyse improved enforcement of rights and just remedies for temporary migrants. Gabrielle Meagher is Professor in the Department of Sociology, Macquarie University. Acknowledgements
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