Abstract
This article examines how immigration controls and practices work with (and against) migratory processes and migrant subjectivities to help produce types of labour with particular relations to employers, and types of resident with particular relations to citizens. It considers the social and legal construction of the figure of the migrant, and taking the case of au pair and domestic worker visa holders, examines how and why it is that despite these two groups doing the same kinds of tasks, the ways in which these tasks are imagined, and the relationships produced, are often very different. It illustrates how immigration controls, social and historical conditions, and life stages and subjectivities help explain the different experiences of different visa holders, and shape the possibilities for collective action.
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Notes
Au pair visas in the United Kingdom were only issued to women up until 1993.
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Acknowledgements
I am thankful to Lourdes Gordolan, research assistant and interviewer in COMPAS project Filipino Careworkers and to Martin Ruhs, Ben Rogaly and Sarah Spencer for their permission to use data from the COMPAS research project Changing status, Changing lives? The socio-economic impact of EU Enlargement on low-wage migrant workers in the UK (funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)). I am grateful to Jenny Newman, Ben Rogaly, the article reviewers, my co-editor, Rutvica Andrijasevic and the Subjectivity editorial board, for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article.
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Anderson, B. What's in a name? Immigration controls and subjectivities: The case of au pairs and domestic worker visa holders in the UK. Subjectivity 29, 407–424 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/sub.2009.24