Immigration Article of the Day: The U.S. Au Pair Program: Labor Exploitation and the Myth of Cultural Exchange by Janie Chuang

The U.S. Au Pair Program: Labor Exploitation and the Myth of Cultural Exchange by Janie Chuang

The Article exposes how the legal categorization of au pairs as “cultural exchange participants” is strategically used to sustain – and disguise – a government-created domestic worker program to provide flexible, in-home childcare for upper-middle-class families at below-market prices. The “cultural exchange” subterfuge has created an underclass of migrant domestic workers conceptually and structurally removed from the application of labor standards and the scrutiny of labor institutions.

KJ