ILPC 2026

 Increasing numbers of families in Britain and Europe are turning to au pairs to provide a range of domestic services, often in support of the ‘host mother’s’ pursuit of paid employment. According to the Cultural Au Pair Association of Australia (CAPAA) au pair agencies in Australia are unable to meet the rising demand. The increasing use of au pairs on the part of middle-class Australian families is enabled through the Working Holiday Maker visa program. Under this program people between 18 and 30 years of age from designated countries visit Australia for 12 months and support themselves through short-term employment. Not surprisingly, this visa is criticised for providing a ‘back door’ supply of low paid workers to support the Australian economy. Au Pairs entering Australia under this visa tend to come from the UK, Taiwan, Germany, South Korea and France.  Au pair work is seen to be a matter of cultural exchange, as opposed to employment: au pairs receive ‘free’ accommodation and meals along with ‘pocket money.’ The rapidly growing inclusion of au pairs as part of the dynamics and experience of family life and domestic labour in Australia enacts the emergence of a new underclass of live-in, low-paid domestic workers which sits uncomfortably with a national mythology constructed around a ‘class-less’ society.  

This paper presents a discourse analysis of the contradictory construction of the identity of the ‘au pair’ in Australia as both domestic worker and ‘big sister’.  It does so through examination of the online narratives delineating the au pair ‘experience’ as presented by the CAAPA, and leading Australian au pair agencies.  Using a class-lens and drawing on the literature around work identities, the paper explores a number of contradictions in the management of au pair work.  It reveals significant tensions including around the role of the ‘host mother’ as employer/boss, the au pair as worker/family member, and the fraught reconfiguration of the private space of the family home as place of work.    

In doing so, this paper extends the to-date emergent literature examining au pair work, and which tends to focus on labour conditions and motives. More broadly, it contributes to understandings of the ongoing gendered and classed divisions informing the undervalued work of social reproduction. It highlights this work, not least in terms of the figure of the ‘big sister,’ as an important dimension of contemporary global care chains.