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2005 | 37 | 5 | 449-474

Article title

LATENT ECONOMY OF THE 'AU PAIR' CULTURAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMME

Authors

Title variants

Languages of publication

SK

Abstracts

EN
At the beginning of the 1990s the typical participants of the 'au pair' scheme were predominantly middle-class girls from Western Europe. However, this has changed in the last decades and girls from Eastern Europe have prevailed in the au pair stays which continue to be defined as 'cultural exchange'. Thus the meaning of the term 'au pair' has started to change, mainly because of the significantly different life experiences, material and structural backgrounds of au pairs from post-communist countries, such as Slovakia, the Czech Republic or Hungary, and because of the growing demand for a low-cost solution of child care in the West. The piecemeal transformation of the programme of cultural exchange to a part of the 'child care strategy' in Western European countries gives the au pair scheme an economic dimension hidden behind the official definition of the programme. This study, based on data from Internet agencies that mediate au pair stays, finds statistically significant differences in characteristics of an au pair from Eastern and Western Europe. It also states that there is coherence between the characteristics of au pairs and the economic situations of their countries of origin. The key differences in strategies of the 'Eastern' and 'Western' au pair are presented in the final typology.

Keywords

Year

Volume

37

Issue

5

Pages

449-474

Physical description

Document type

ARTICLE

Contributors

author
  • M. Bahna, Sociologický ústav SAV, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

References

Document Type

Publication order reference

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier
05SKAAAA00601528

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.f809b79e-8ab3-3ce5-95d1-c03c64cf28fe
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