„Migrant Nannies In French and German Households – Insights From a Care Worker's Point Of View”

“This presentation focuses on migrant nannies working in two European countries: France and Germany. The main interest of this comparative analysis is to evaluate social policies of these two nation states through biographical research with migrant care workers who take care of small children in private households on a regular basis. This is a crucial task as nowadays the industrialized countries are highly interested in finding adequate solutions to their increasing care-deficit. European countries like France and Germany are structurally close and face similar problems such as demographic aging and the pluralization of life and work forms. However, their efforts to guarantee the production of human beings themselves in a globalised and capitalized world differ remarkably. At this juncture, migrant care workers are important key actors, because they represent a significant resource. Therefore it will be interesting to analyze how dimensions of class, but also gender, national belonging and race/ethnicity intersect within their relation to local families. The analysis of field studies illustrates not only that nannies use their labor force to fill the local care deficits, but also helps to gain new insights into the care and work ,realities’ of their employers: from a nanny’s perception.”