Freedom and unfreedom in au pairing: Probing unfree labour from the perspective of social reproduction

Abstract

How does affectivity align with the practice and experience of unfree labour? Recent studies have examined unfree labour as a political economic problem; however, the scholarship has largely overlooked the involvement of affect and social obligations in labour unfreedom, inadvertently constructing an imaginary of an insentient labouring body. I apply the case of au pairing to consider the affective dimensions of unfree labour embedded in the organisation of reproductive labour. Drawing on interviews with au pairs (N = 26), I ask how the au pairs’ liminal position as a fictive family member and informal labourer relates to their experiences of labour unfreedom. Au pairs’ labour is appropriated and retained via the host parents’ deployment of emotional coercion, which simultaneously frames the labour as family membership. I argue that emotional abuse and coercion configure labour unfreedom, particularly for live-in reproductive labourers, who are bound to their labour by a sense of obligation and whose social-reproductive security depends on their commitment to caring labour. My findings embed labour in an affective-material framework and provide insights into why people remain at work experienced as unfree, even when there are no political or legal constraints involved.

Introduction

A growing body of research is reshaping our understanding of unfree labour. Challenging previous conceptualisations of labour unfreedom as an illegal deviation, as well as Western notions of a linear capitalist development reliant on ‘free’ labour, scholars have found that unfree labour practices are an enduring feature of global capitalist organisation, both historically (Boutang, 1998; Steinberg, 2003; Steinfeld, 2001) and in contemporary labour relations (Barrientos et al., 2013; Skřivánková, 2010). Therefore, unfree labour is a political economic problem shaping developments in global relations of production (LeBaron, 2015; Lerche, 2007). To date, the existing literature has emphasised diverse forms of capitalist and state organisational controls that ensure the continued extraction of labour from workers despite abusive circumstances (e.g. Ahmed & Uddin, 2022; Strauss & McGrath, 2017; Tang & Zhang, 2019).

Yet, the theoretical literature on unfree labour is currently less apt to interpret experiences of unfreedom among workers who lack official binding employment contracts, whose job mobility is not restrained by migration regimes and who are not bound to their work through monetary debt. A shift in the focus from formal industrial work to the domestic sector – one of the settings of social reproduction – may help accentuate occurrences of unfreedom associated with informality and the role of the moral economy of love and social obligation (Näre, 2011; Ray & Qayum, 2009). This perspective elucidates how the literature on unfree labour has not been brought into dialogue with feminist research foregrounding the emotional and affective, and therefore deeply subjective, dimensions of work and labour (Finch, 1989; Glenn, 2010; Hochschild, 1983/2003). Prior studies on unfree labour thus run the risk of constructing an imaginary of an insentient labouring body, seemingly separated from affects. This type of construction poses a conundrum for the theoretical literature, since existing labour power cannot be abstracted or disassociated from the feeling body performing the labour (Banaji, 2003, p. 70). Applying the conceptual tools of feminist labour studies, I disclose the central role of affective attachments and social obligations, intertwined with the material bonds of social reproduction, in compelling people to consent to and remain in labour relationships that they experience as unfree.

Au pairing provides a good opportunity to analyse how the link between emotional coercion, social-reproductive constraints, and the affective experience of unfree labour plays out in existing labour relations. In this article, I draw on in-depth interviews with au pairs living and working in Finland to analyse experiences of unfreedom and freedom in live-in reproductive labour. Au pairs are mostly young women who engage in poorly remunerated reproductive labour that facilitates their hosts’ engagement in the workforce amidst an increasingly demanding economy (Sassen, 2008; Wide & Näre, 2024). Government policies construct au pairs contradictorily as family members who still have specific work hours and designated reproductive tasks and who perform those tasks in exchange for housing, food and pocket money that they receive from their hosts (Anving & Eldén, 2016; Calleman, 2010). In contrast to wage workers, whose social reproduction is to a large extent enabled by their salary, au pairs’ social-reproductive security is directly conditional upon their performing labour as a family member, i.e. it is a structural, built-in feature of au pairing. Au pairs labour with a felt sense of obligation to their hosts, who include them in the family and sustain their social reproduction.

One of the main concerns of this article is to investigate why the au pairs who participated in this study often remained at their place of work, where they experienced maltreatment and emotional abuse during the course of several months, despite being formally ‘free’ to leave their informal workplace at any time. To move beyond the positioning of unfree labour as detached from affect, I adopt a feminist labour lens, asking how au pairs experience unfreedom and freedom in relation to their labour. More specifically, how does the tension between au pairs’ simultaneous positioning as a fictive family member and an informal labourer relate to their experiences of labour unfreedom?

The developed findings demonstrate how au pairs are motivated by familial inclusion and reciprocal caring (De la Luz Ibarra, 2010), which nonetheless enhance the appropriation of their labour and open avenues for emotional coercion. Au pairs are compelled to perform augmented labour and to remain in their placements via host parents’ deployment of emotional abuse and coercion. This component reflects au pairs’ positioning as hosted sisters within the family, compelled to perform labour under host parental control. I argue that emotional abuse and coercion configure labour unfreedom, particularly for live-in reproductive labourers, who are bound to their work by affective obligations and whose social reproduction also depends on their commitment to caring labour as fictive family members. The article thus examines how social obligations and material bonds are implicated in the ‘degrees of (un)freedom’ (Fernandez, 2014, p. 51) prevalent in au pairing.

The political economy of unfree labour

The arrangement of wage-labour into a combination of ‘free’ and ‘unfree’ forms is the paradigm case of contemporary capitalism (Hall, 2021, p. 227), making this a critical question for analysing the conditions of the global political economy. The conceptual free versus unfree labour distinction derives from Marxist scholarship on the commodification of labour sold and purchased in a labour market characterised by a formal (albeit nominal) legal equality. Whereas the wage worker is freed from legal constraints to sell their labour, they are simultaneously coerced to do so by the necessity to earn a living. Marx described this economic dependence as the wage worker being ‘compelled to sell himself of his own free will’ (Marx, 1876/1990, pp. 272, 932). Consequently, the employment contract is ingrained in a fiction of freedom: it presents work as something people voluntarily consent to while also drawing on inherent elements of compulsion. As such, it mediates and conceals the subordination of labour under capital. Adding to this, Marxist scholarship holds that all wage labour is subject to some degree of control, coercion and compulsion (Banaji, 2003).

Subsequently, a growing number of studies have begun to examine how unfree labour is integrated within the dynamics of the global capitalist economy. Building on the Marxist insight regarding the unfeasibility of a binary understanding of free and unfree labour, such studies conceptualise unfree labour as aligned on a spectrum, and examine the degrees of unfreedom in labour (Barrientos et al., 2013; Fernandez, 2014; Skřivánková, 2010). This scholarship generally conceives of capitalism as a mode of production both based upon and institutionally embedded within various forms of bonded and dependent labour (Boutang, 1998; Steinberg, 2003). Subsequently, capitalist accumulation works through ‘a multiplicity of forms of exploitation based on wage-labour’ (Banaji, 2003, p. 82).

To date, the existing literature has focused on analysing unfree labour as a political economic problem in an effort to emphasise its compatibility with capitalism, drawing attention to the arrangement of labour relations within business and state organisational contexts. Unfree labour is a systematic characteristic of global supply chains, particularly evident through business and management practices that may intensify labour controls to meet the demands for capital accumulation (Ahmed & Uddin, 2022; Mezzadri, 2017; Tang & Zhang, 2019). Moreover, the state has a central role in creating institutional conditions that interlink with business practices to enhance unfree labour relations, which especially affect migrant workers (LeBaron & Phillips, 2019; Strauss & McGrath, 2017; Yea & Chok, 2018). Present accounts of unfreedom in migrant care and domestic work have emphasised illegal trafficking and human rights abuses (Amnesty International, 2014; Jureidini & Moukarbel, 2004), as well as the role of the state in facilitating and institutionalising unfree labour relations for migrant domestic workers via temporary work programmes that restrict their labour mobility (Frantz, 2013; Parreñas, 2022). In addition, gender hierarchies affect the organisation of women’s unfree labour within industrial relations through the devaluation and exploitation of feminised labour (Gore & LeBaron, 2019).

Contemporary forms of unfree labour frequently consist of wage-labour that people have willingly entered, after which they are unable to leave without repercussions (Skřivánková, 2010). Common forms of coercion include debt bondage, wage theft, the manipulation of contracts, the use of curfews and the threat of physical violence (Ahmed & Uddin, 2022; LeBaron & Phillips, 2019; Yea & Chok, 2018). Scholars have particularly highlighted the centrality of monetary debt in constituting unfree labour (e.g. Barrientos et al., 2013; Lerche, 2007). Moreover, worker housing that is arranged by the employer, often in the form of dormitories adjacent to the workplace, aggravates the relationship of dependency (Andrijasevic, 2021; McGrath, 2013; Mezzadri, 2017).

By focusing on the political economy of unfree labour organisations, the scholarly literature takes as its basic object of analysis labour power as disentangled from the sentient embodied person performing the labour. This perspective misses how workers can be bound to their work through relations of dependence involving social ties and affective obligations beyond politico-legal constraints. Hence, the literature has examined the relations of economic dependence between the wage labourer and the employer, while simultaneously overlooking another interlinked aspect of dependence: how it generates social obligations and affective ties, which can both be ‘valued as affirmations of one’s own humanity, and render one unable to escape relations of domination’ (O’Connell Davidson, 2015, p. 189).

Instead, it has recently been argued that modern forms of unfree labour are mainly contractual and devoid of relationships of personal dependence and social ties (O’Neill, 2022, pp. 170–171). While O’Neill (2022, pp. 165–166) examines how the necessities of obligation based on kinship ties may lead especially to women engaging in unfree labour, kinship is designated as either biological or formed through marriage, thus neglecting other forms of relationships and affective attachments implicated in labour. Feminist labour studies, in particular the literature on care and reproductive labour, demonstrate how emotions, affectivity and social obligations form a part of the social relationships and bonds between workers and their employers in a way that is closely associated with workers’ feelings of compulsion and constraint (e.g. Glenn, 2010; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Ray & Qayum, 2009). Likewise, studies on informal work reveal the ways in which affective proximities organised around notions of family and friendship control and produce consent for particularly feminised forms of unpaid labour (Finch, 1989; Mears, 2015). Given that labour power is never disentangled from workers’ bodies and their persons (Banaji, 2003), the literature on unfree labour needs to account for modes of bonded labour that extend beyond the political, economic and juridical organisation of labour.

The moral economy of love and obligation in social reproduction

Research on unpaid and paid care and domestic work has brought attention to the central role of emotions, affective attachments and social obligations in compelling people (often women) to consent to and remain in reproductive labour organised via relations of dependence and unequal exchange. This association has been identified both in unpaid and commodified forms of reproductive labour. Caring has been defined as a gendered status obligation and a moral duty that women in their social roles of wives, daughters and sisters are obliged to perform (Finch, 1989; Glenn, 2010). The emphasis on morality constructs contexts in which women are ‘duty bound’ to continue performing social reproduction for kin groups (Finch, 1989, p. 9). However, kinship transcends biology or marriage ties, with fictive kinship relationships containing analogous expectations regarding obligations and familial duties (Chatters et al., 1994).

Moreover, the moral economy of love and obligation is also present in commodified care and domestic work (Ray & Qayum, 2009). The close, personal relationships between the employer and the worker operate as a source of power for employers, transforming contractual work into labour performed out of loyalty and duty (De la Luz Ibarra, 2010; Näre, 2011; Ray & Qayum, 2009). Sometimes described as a unique form of ‘psychological exploitation’ (Rollins, 1985, p. 156), this configuration lies at the core of why domestic work is frequently defined as a form of work different from others: work secluded in the domestic sphere and attached to an affective structure of family and home (Ray & Qayum, 2009). Consequently, what is bought in care and domestic work is not labour power but personhood (Anderson, 2000). This practice is expressed by employers’ desire to purchase something that extends beyond the performing of work-related tasks, namely a specific kind of person malleable to employer’s control and a personal relationship in which the worker is bound to the employer by affective obligation (Ray & Qayum, 2009). The notion of personhood also relates to how the gendered activity of caring becomes a commodified and compulsory part of the job, partly put under the control of the employer and the capitalist market (Folbre & Nelson, 2000).

The intertwining of affect, emotions and everyday labour highlights the contradictory and ambivalent dimensions of work, as the relational aspects form part of both what is exploitative at work as well as what makes work feel meaningful and fulfilling (Tronto, 1998). Close personal relations may be desired by workers; such relations can allow for a recognition of workers’ humanity, provide benefits otherwise not included in the employment relationship and offer a more emotionally fulfilling job (e.g. De la Luz Ibarra, 2010; Näre, 2011; Ray & Qayum, 2009).

The aligned body of literature on emotional and affective labour has further anchored the structures of feeling in the accumulation of surplus value and capitalist social relations. Emotional labour emphasises how emotions become a managed and integrated part of the labour process and the selling of labour power, which strips emotional display of personal autonomy and turns it into a performance controlled by employers (Hochschild, 1983/2003). While emotional labour stresses workers’ alienation, the discussion on affective labour has instead brought attention to how capital accumulation more broadly merges with the production of social life (Weeks, 2007).

Taken together, these different strands of research offer a feminist lens on labour that uncovers its affective and emotional dimensions and how relations of dependence converge with capitalist relations of unequal exchange. This lens is useful for explaining how people feel bound to labour by moral duty and social obligations in a way that extends beyond the current political economic focus of studies on unfree labour. Using core elements of feminist labour studies – the moral economy of care and social obligation, affective labour and reproductive labour – I examine how affective structures orient practices and subjective experiences of unfree labour through the case of au pairing, intertwining affectivity with au pairs’ social-reproductive constraints. Contrary to formally employed migrant care and domestic workers (Wide, 2024), au pairs are constructed as informal reproductive labourers and family members (Calleman, 2010). Subsequently, the roles of a hosted sister and a live-in reproductive labourer thus become entangled to the point where affect and labour are inseparable. This entanglement makes au pairing a particularly suitable case through which to consider labour as affective and to unpack the affectivity of freedom and unfreedom in labour.

The case of au pairing

An au pair is usually a young person (typically female) who lives with a host family and carries out housework and childcare in exchange for housing, food and pocket money (Cox & Busch, 2018). Government policies worldwide construct au pairing as cultural exchange and position au pairs as family members who still have specific work hours and designated reproductive tasks (Anving & Eldén, 2016; Isaksen, 2010). The contradictory rules and regulations for au pairs render them vulnerable to exploitative conditions, including systemic abuse and ill treatment (Smith, 2015), which often take its toll on au pairs’ mental health (Espinoza-Castro et al., 2021). Similarly, au pairs’ dependency on the host family is exacerbated by living and working in the family’s home (Giabiconi, 2005). Moreover, au pairing is rarely integrated with labour legislation but instead situated on a continuum with women’s unpaid domestic work (Cox, 2015), constructing au pairs as liminal legal subjects (McKenna & Grasten, 2022).

Scholars have foregrounded the similarities between the work done by au pairs and domestic workers, calling attention to au pairing as low-paid work that is part of the growing demand for commodified care and domestic work (Cox & Busch, 2018; Anving & Eldén, 2016). Similarly to migrant care and domestic work, au pairing is marked by the intersectional power structures of class, gender, race and nationality (Durin, 2014; Rohde-Abuba, 2016), and it is mediated by the political economy (Cox et al., 2023). At the same time, significant differences remain between formally employed domestic workers and au pairs, who labour under an informal contract under the guise of family membership (Calleman, 2010). Hence, au pairs are constructed in a distinct affective and structural position in relation to that of formal wage workers, which accentuates au pairs’ affective familial bonds to labour as opposed to an employment contract.

It is particularly interesting to focus on the informal labour of au pairing in a Finnish setting, which is considered a context in which labour is arranged as formal employment. Au pairing has thus far received scarce attention in Finnish research. Previously, scholars have estimated that informal labour plays an insignificant role in Finland, particularly when it comes to private households (Jolkkonen et al., 2009). This perspective excludes the role of reproductive labour done by au pairs. Research has been done on the role of au pairs within Finnish families (Terho, 2015), au pairs’ migration trajectories (Krivonos, 2015), and the links between the political economy of paid domestic work and inequality in Finland (Mesiäislehto et al., 2022).

Au pairs arrive in Finland from both European Union (EU)/European Economic Area (EEA) and non-EU/EEA countries. While residents from the latter regions must apply for a one-year residence permit for au pairing (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025a), EU/EEA citizens only need to register upon arrival at the Finnish Immigration Service and demonstrate proof of income. For EU/EEA citizens working as au pairs, unlike for those from non-EU/EEA countries, the legal right to reside is not conditioned by a residence permit.

According to the conditions for obtaining the au pair permit, an au pair must be between the ages of 17 and 30, they can perform light housework for a maximum of 25 hours per week and be paid a monthly pocket money (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025a). Au pairs sign a contract with their host family, in which they agree upon work tasks, hours and remuneration. Until the autumn of 2024, the minimum pocket money was 280 euros per month, after which it was increased to 340 euros. An au pair must also be able to attend language courses and is entitled to at least one day off every week. The host family must provide housing for the au pairs, and it is typically arranged as live-in accommodation. In the application, the host family must demonstrate their ability to provide a separate room for the au pair and to pay the pocket money (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025a).

The one-year au pair permit cannot be extended. Changing the host family does not affect the permit (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025a). However, the hosts often pay for the au pair’s insurance, which is another factor that links au pairs’ social-reproductive security to their family membership.

These conditions establish a framework for au pairing which juridically only applies for non-EU/EEA au pairs. No comparable official structure exists that would regulate au pairing for EU/EEA citizens. Most of them sign an informal au pair contract with the host family that generally follows the guidelines stipulated by the Immigration Service, although variations occur; some EU au pairs’ contracts mentioned 30 hours’ weekly labour. Many use the European au pair contract provided by the AuPairWorld platform, which does not specify any minimum hours (AuPairWorld, 2025). Data from my research indicate that some EU au pairs work without a contract and without registering in the system. This reduces the costs of au pairing for the hosts, who do not pay taxes in such cases, and it may cause problems in the future for the au pair if they would like to remain in the country and regularise their position.

It is difficult to accurately determine the number of au pairs in Finland. In the years 2015–2024, some 700 individuals from outside the EU/EEA were granted residency based on au pairing (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025b). However, my data also indicate that most of the au pairs working in Finland arrive from other EU countries. Employers favour au pairs who are EU citizens to avoid having to complete a residency application, but no statistics have been compiled on au pairs from EU countries. There is a corresponding lack of precise statistics on au pairs on a global level (Oishi & Ono, 2020).

While some differences exist between au pairs from EU/EEA and non-EU/EEA countries, for both groups au pairing is informal labour that is unrecognised as work by the Finnish labour legislation. Finnish government policies place au pairing in a legally ambiguous position, which becomes apparent in both the Finnish Immigration Service’s and the Tax Administration’s mutually contradictory au pair regulations as well as in the legal unrecognition of au pairs’ labour as work. The Immigration Service stresses that au pairs are not domestic workers, but instead ought to be perceived as a family member whose daily amount of reproductive labour should be equivalent to other members of the family (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025a). A study of state policies on au pairing in the Nordic countries found that the Immigration Service in Finland goes further than the other three countries in constructing the au pair as a family member (Calleman, 2010). On the other hand, the Tax Administration describes the au pair as someone employed by and working for the household, and that the au pairs’ pocket money is taxable wage income (Tax Administration, 2025). An au pair is, contradictorily, a family member under the obligation to perform wage labour and pay taxes for their income.

Likewise, the au pair contract is not considered a legal work contract under Finnish labour law. A recent report on the underpayment of foreigners as a part of the grey economy in Finland found that a legal charge of underpaying an au pair was dismissed in court on the grounds that au pairing does not constitute an employment relationship (Hautala, 2020, p. 23). It is therefore legally permitted to abuse au pairs at work.

Methodology

The article draws upon a set of in-depth, semi-structured interviews that I conducted with au pairs (N = 26) during the years 2019–2023 as a part of a larger PhD project. The interviewed au pairs were from Eastern Europe (n = 4), Western Europe (n = 8), Southern Europe (n = 5), North America (n = 2), South America (n = 1), Asia (n = 4) and Africa (n = 2). They were between the ages of 19 and 33 and included 25 women and one man. At the time of the interviews, 13 participants were currently au pairs while the other half had been au pairs in the recent past.

The nine au pairs from non-EU/EEA countries had all obtained au pair visas. Most of the EU au pairs had registered upon arrival, although some had not. All except three participants had signed written au pair contracts. The au pairs cared for children, cleaned, cooked and sometimes did gardening or grocery shopping. While some of the au pairs worked the maximum of 25 hours per week permitted for au pairs, others were obliged to work longer hours, often without extra pay. All except one had lived with their host families. Most of the informants received the minimum 280 euros monthly au pair allowance, although many received a bit extra, often 50 euros a month for weekly extensive domestic cleaning or extra childcare. The au pairs had a variety of educational backgrounds: several held bachelor’s degrees, while others had graduated from high school in their countries of origin.

I conducted the interviews in English, and they lasted from one to three hours. They focused on tasks and work conditions, reasons for migrating and finding work as an au pair, the relationship between the au pairs and their hosts, and the au pairs’ experiences with the job. The interviews were transcribed and coded using Atlas.ti. I connected with participants by applying the snowball method, using social media and instant messaging groups. Finding au pairs who were interested in participating was relatively easy. Several interviewees wanted to help shed light on the otherwise neglected topic of au pairing in the Finnish context. The interviews were often emotional and personal, reflecting the affectivity of au pairing but also qualitative interviewing as an embodied and emotional practice (Ezzy, 2010). Many were appreciative that someone wanted to attentively listen to their experiences, which were often painful stories about emotional coercion and unmet expectations about being included as an equal family member. For this reason, many participants felt motivated to discuss their experiences in-depth, sometimes for hours at a time. Being a relatively young woman facilitated my access to au pairs, who themselves were young and, except for one, all identified as women. During the interviews, we were able to share some of the experiences of being young women, while discussing different positionalities related to the border regime and legal access to residency. The participants were asked to sign a consent form and were told that they could withdraw from the study at any point. ¹ I refer to the respondents using pseudonyms, and I have modified some of their characteristics for purposes of anonymity.

During the interviews, an overwhelming majority of au pair participants talked about their experiences of unfreedom and freedom, unprompted by me. To carefully consider and make sense of such articulations, I adopted an epistemological perspective that emphasises their subjective and personal lived experiences in relation to their labour, hence analysing the connections between agency and structure. This is a particularly useful methodological lens for studying the links between emotional coercion and labour unfreedom. I analysed the transcripts using an abductive approach, reading the data multiple times in conversation with theory. Content analysis (Krippendorff, 2019) was applied to the data sections in which participants describe their relationship with their host parents and their work, paying special attention to excerpts in which the respondents described their experiences of freedom and unfreedom. Within this theme, varying levels of emotional coercion were prominent and have shaped the writing of this article.

Labouring as ‘part of the family’

The au pair participants exhibited significant differences in terms of their placements, which supports findings reported in earlier research (Cox & Busch, 2018; Smith, 2015). Ten respondents interpreted their au pair placement as a mainly positive experience, portraying it as a ‘rich cultural exchange’ amongst ‘caring’ host parents. By comparison, 16 respondents reported ambiguous or (severely) negative experiences in their relationship with the co-living hosts. Nine of the 16 had experienced overwork, interlaced with emotional coercion and emotional abuse, and described feeling ‘unfree’, ‘trapped’, ‘enslaved’, ‘unsafe’ and ‘taken advantage of’ in their au pair placements. Yet, they had remained in the placements for several months, and often longer, despite being officially ‘free’ to leave at any point.

In most of the au pair interviews, the participants identified as central the tension between au pairing and family membership, which they connected to a combination of their live-in status and an obligation to perform caring labour. Respondents frequently portrayed au pairing as a special and unique experience that arose from them living with their hosts and being entangled in the family dynamic (Giabiconi, 2005). Many also stated that they wished to be included in the family and treated as family members. Correspondingly, during the interviews the au pairs commonly referred to their employers as their ‘host family’, ‘host mum’ or ‘host dad’, but also as a ‘weird combination of a supervisor and a second parent’. Several described themselves as ambiguously positioned between a ‘nanny’ and ‘an older sister’, and they struggled to draw a clear boundary between work and family (Stubberud, 2015; Tkach, 2016).

Designating kinship statuses amongst unrelated au pairs and hosts ascribes the relationship with a fictive kinship quality (Chatters et al., 1994), thereby associating it with familial bonds of duty, obligations and the moral economy of affective care (Finch, 1989; Glenn, 2010; Ray & Qayum, 2009). In addition, it reiterates the hierarchical power relation between parents and children (Ferguson, 2017), positioning au pairs in a relationship of dependency on their hosts. Accordingly, many respondents portrayed a relational power hierarchy between themselves and their co-living hosts and described feeling ‘under the power of the host parents’ and experiencing a loss of ‘independence and freedom’ due to living with the hosts. Others stressed that their co-living hosts ‘included’ them in the family unit and ‘gave them a lot of freedom’. Nevertheless, statements referring to the host’s ability to give freedom indicate how families are hierarchically organised (Ray & Qayum, 2009), as well as the positioning of au pairs as dependents within this hierarchical organisation.

The paradoxical experiences reported by most interviewees are captured by the conditionality of au pairing: au pairs – contrary to other family members – are required to labour to earn their place within the family. For some respondents, this relation of exchange was accompanied by caring reciprocity and emotional recognition as family members. Vivian, a 28-year-old woman from East Africa, said that she was treated well by the host and ‘lived with them like a family’, not counting the hours since they were for her part of being ‘just one big family’. Similarly, Megan, a 22-year-old au pair from Canada, recounted how au pairing ‘doesn’t feel like a job’, but instead resembles more ‘hanging out with family’. In addition, Megan said that she did not have ‘any fixed hours’ as an au pair, but she emphasised being ‘ok’ with the arrangement. In such cases, the affective bonds affirmed respondents’ humanity as fictive kin beyond mere containers of labour-power, while simultaneously serving to augment the appropriation of this very labour (De la Luz Ibarra, 2010; Ray & Qayum, 2009).

In contrast, several other interviewees depicted an instrumental type of familial inclusion, in which the gains of their labour were emphasised. Like Daniela, a 25-year-old South American woman, noted: ‘you’re part of the family when it’s good for the host family, but you’re not part of the family when you need something’. Participants talked of a continuous augmentation of tasks that the host parents framed as a request for ‘help’ and discussed the difficulty of saying no to such requests. The interviewees linked this difficulty to their live-in status, to the vague and informal au pair contract, and to their dependent status vis-a-vis the host parents. Ruth, another 28-year-old East African woman, noted that ‘if you live there, there is no five hours’, referring to the daily five-hour limit stipulated by the Finnish Immigration Service (2025a).

The au pairs’ live-in status can be interpreted as mimicking the legal dependence of children to adult family members (Rosen, 2023). The above quotes suggest that the au pair is positioned as a hosted sister within the family: duty-bound to perform social-reproductive labour under the control of the host parents. While previous research on au pairs has examined the role of the big sister as a means of augmenting au pairs’ social status (Stubberud, 2015) or as the idealised au pair type (Durin, 2014), such fictive kinship roles may simultaneously be utilised to appropriate au pairs’ labour. This also applies for domestic workers, who at times are constructed as child-like dependents (Ray & Qayum, 2009) or as younger sisters (Lan, 2006). It also resembles how live-in domestic workers work longer hours compared to those who are live-out workers (Arcand, 2020).

Likewise, previous research has examined how the performance of motherhood through care and love takes part in the exploitation of paid care and domestic workers (Akalin, 2015; Macdonald, 1998). Instead, the au pair case demonstrates how the appropriation of care and affective obligations extends beyond an imagined subjectivity of motherhood; the au pair figure of the hosted sister functions as a means of exploitation and appropriation of care. In the next sections, I analyse in more detail the ways in which au pairs’ obligations extend beyond an employment contract, constituting a duty-bound obligation to care (Finch, 1989; Glenn, 2010), which intertwine with au pairs’ social-reproductive constraints and relate to the appropriation of au pairs’ labour.

Emotional coercion and guilt

Whereas the previous section highlighted the fictive kinship component of au pairs’ labour, the theme of emotional abuse and coercion draws on affective obligations more directly. Lucy was a 19-year-old woman from England, who worked for a host family that consisted of heterosexual dual-earner parents and two children. She had initially planned on staying there for one year. However, she left three months into her stay and recounted that she ‘kind of had to escape’. Lucy was often solely responsible for childcare, cleaning the family’s large house and tending to the garden, working 12-hour days. After a while, she fell ill but the host parents expected her to continue working, whereupon Lucy expressed feeling overwhelmed by the workload and her desire to leave:

I said, ‘I’m really not happy, I’m really unwell, I need to leave’. Cause I was sick for two weeks. And she [the host mum] said, ‘you can’t leave them [the children] until Christmas’, and that was three months away. [. . .] The mum especially would emotionally blackmail me: ‘but you came here, you made a commitment, you know these are our kids’, and things like this, because I did really love the kids. She would use that against me and say, ‘think of their future’.

Hence, the host parents drew on the obligation to care and love (Glenn, 2010; Ray & Qayum, 2009), as well as the affective bond between the family’s children and Lucy as a fictive family member (Chatters et al., 1994), to both justify her objectionable workload and to legitimate labour retention. Since the contractual obligations involved in au pairing are tenuous, gendered and family-associated notions of ‘commitment’ and a duty to care are instead constructed as central for retaining the au pair’s labour.

Several other female participants also raised this topic of discussion, depicting ‘passive-aggressive’ commands by the host parents to augment au pairs’ work obligations on top of the initial agreement. Elisa, an Italian woman who au paired for a dual-earner heterosexual family with three children, recounted how her hosts gradually increased her tasks, turning her au pair placement into ‘an endless job’. Elisa recalled how she was ‘never given a chance to say no’ and felt like she ‘had no way out’. Other interviewees portrayed similar experiences of entrapment within the familial sphere, often coinciding with host parental control and coercion. Passive-aggressive commands differ from the previously discussed requests for help in the use of more direct emotional coercion that mirrors the forms of parental control used by parents over their children (Rosen, 2023), furthering the resemblance of au pairs to hosted sisters.

Moreover, many respondents recalled feeling ‘guilty’ if they were not constantly working, feeling unsure about when they were entitled to rest and feeling like they were never doing enough or that they were expected to constantly be available. A number of respondents were not given precise working hours by their hosts, which might at first glance be in line with the construction of au pairs as (fictive) family members who are rarely able to choose when to engage in reproductive labour in the home. However, for several participants it involved the hosts’ expectation of constant reproductive labour for the family. As a case in point, Elisa recounted how she was expected to be ‘a waitress, a housekeeper, a babysitter, to clean everything, to prepare everything, to do everything’.

Emotional blackmail is a component of emotional abuse frequently depicted in the literature on emotional workplace abuse and bullying (Penttinen et al., 2019; Sanderson, 2017). These insights have seldom been discussed in relation to labour unfreedom. One exception is Beale and Hoel (2011, p. 12), who have identified the potential in relating the workplace bullying debate to the existing literature on unfree labour. Correspondingly, the body of literature on unfree labour has not included theorisation on emotional abuse, particularly documented by feminist scholars, in discussions on the wide array of unfreedoms included in labour. Placing these quotes in conversation with a feminist lens on labour (Glenn, 2010) indicates how emotional coercion and abuse align with the various degrees of unfree labour (Fernandez, 2014). In the last section, I further conceptualise the links between affective and material bonds of unfree labour.

Emotional strategies and material bonds

The previous sections have analysed the role of affects in shaping unfree labour practices and experiences. Interlinking affective utterances with the structural dimensions of labour, this section focuses on how the material bonds and the lack of regulations for the au pair system configures unfree labour. Most of the participants criticised their live-in status coupled with such regulatory deficiencies, identifying them as critical proponents in enabling the hosts to, in Lucy’s words, ‘use us as slaves, like cheap labour’, hence rendering au pairs vulnerable to abusive work conditions (Cox & Busch, 2018). Likewise, Sarah, a 19-year-old woman from the US, said au pairing ‘felt like slave work sometimes’, a relational unfreedom that she linked to the ‘loose’ contract that the host parents were able to use to their advantage and the au pair’s dependent live-in status.

You’re not really in a position to say no. You know you live with them. [. . .] There’s a family unit and you’re this worker. You don’t really have power in it in terms of the relationship: you are theirs, their worker. You’re living there and the constant thing is, you’re living here for free and you’re getting paid so don’t complain.

Sarah’s quote evokes how the affective obligations to labour intertwine with material bonds, bringing an added layer of compulsion to the host–au pair relationship. In particular, the quote suggests that Sarah, living there ‘for free’ in addition to ‘getting paid’, appears as being indebted to perform augmented labour for the family. Both EU and non-EU respondents mentioned fear of losing their job as an additional reason for enduring emotional abuse and augmented work tasks. For au pairs, refusing the obligations associated with fictive family membership may cause them to lose access to housing, food and indeed the family unit. Like Alba, a 25-year-old Spanish au pair, specified: ‘it’s not like you lose your job – you lose your job and the place you live in at the same time’.

However, this sense of necessity was particularly the case for non-EU participants, which reflects the race and class-based implications of the border regime (Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, 2014; Hage, 2016). Of the nine participants who had severely negative experiences in their au pair placements, six were from the EU, while three were from non-EU countries, two of whom from the Global South. The two au pairs from the Global South remained in their placements until the end of the term, as did the two au pairs from Eastern Europe. All the Eastern European respondents as well as all those from the Global South talked about au pairing as a pathway for moving to Finland or the EU and of their hopes of building a life with enhanced social-reproductive security for themselves in such contexts, which heightened the necessity of remaining in the au pair placement (Li, 2024; Tkach, 2016).

The au pair permit impacted the interviewees’ decision to stay with their host families, notwithstanding the fact that the permit is not tied to a specific family (Finnish Immigration Service, 2025a). As an example, Daniela mentioned feeling deprived of her ‘dignity’ and ‘freedom’ during her au pair placement, but she opted to stay because of her permit, hoping that she would be able to study in Finland in the future. Ruth talked in similar ways about the role of the au pair permit as a structure generating her affective willingness to stay. Referring to her host family, she said that she ‘will forever be indebted to them’ for enabling her passage to the EU, stating her willingness (O’Connell Davidson, 2015) to provide help for the family in return. This notion of indebtedness bears striking similarity to previous quotes on guilt and commitment, albeit more clearly anchored in global class- and race-based structural inequalities reproduced by the residence permit (Wide, 2024). The literature on unfree labour has analysed bonded labour as arranged via monetary debt (Barrientos et al., 2013; LeBaron & Phillips, 2019; Lerche, 2007); however, debt is arguably a more ambiguous concept that interlinks the economy with moral and social obligations (Graeber, 2014). For example, what I call ‘indebted labour’ points to how debt functions as a form of structurally generated social and moral obligation (Graeber, 2014).

Of the remaining EU citizens with severely extortive au pair placements, two left their placements while two others were fired for refusing parts of the duty-bound obligations associated with fictive family membership, hence engaging in boundary work with the host families (Stubberud, 2015). Selma, a woman from France, said that she felt ‘trapped and ‘enslaved’ in her placement, where she was working nine-hour days on a forged contract and without having registered as an au pair. After the host parents left her alone with the family’s children during a work trip lasting several days, she told them that she refused to be left alone during the nights in the future. Selma recalled how she was ‘afraid to say no in the beginning’, as she did not want to lose her job, which then happened anyway when she ultimately voiced her refusal. Most of the au pair participants linked their augmented reproductive responsibilities to their hosts’ full-time careers, thus indicating how the relations of production partly rest on conditions of unfreedom in the relations of reproduction.

The au pair respondents also engaged in other forms of emotional strategies as a part of their placements. Shanaya, an au pair from South Asia, described the conflation of family and employment in au pairing as ‘contradicting’, noting that when the host parents ‘say something in relation to the contract and work, you get hurt because you’re one of the family members’. To navigate this contradiction, Shanaya relayed how she ‘chose the contract, because it’s easier to work on a contract rather than doing this family thing’. Hence, she related to au pairing mainly as a professional job, hence emotionally distancing herself from the fictive family membership. Later on, Shanaya’s host parents ended her placement earlier than what was agreed upon in the contract. This points to the legal informality of the au pair contract and the need for au pairs to maintain emotional proximity to ensure social-reproductive security within host families.

Conclusion

Building on and connecting ideas from the previously unlinked studies on unfree labour and caring reproductive labour, I have analysed the ways in which affective attachments and social obligations bind people to labour and thus compel them to remain at their work, despite abusive circumstances. Present scholarship on unfree labour has focused on degrees of unfreedom associated with forms of juridical, economic and capitalist organisational unfreedom as well as on the role of monetary debt in producing bonded labour. Moving beyond this focus, I have adopted a feminist labour approach to consider the subjective experiences of unfreedom reported by au pairs, who as informal labourers are essentially not bound by any of the aforementioned factors. Hence, the study has analytically engaged with the subjective and affective experiences of labour unfreedom and degrees of unfreedom (Fernandez, 2014) among labourers who are nevertheless legally ‘free’.

Applying a feminist lens to labour has provided a broader understanding of au pairs’ experiences of labour unfreedom as linked to a moral obligation to care and a need to ensure their continued social-reproductive security. The article therefore challenges the view of unfree labour as strictly contractual and impersonal (O’Neill, 2022) by foregrounding how au pairs’ relation of dependence is intertwined with their social role as fictive family members under host parental coercion. The findings point to the relevance of analysing unfree labour in a way that links the political economy to the ways in which social and moral obligations and affective attachments configure unfree labour in contemporary capitalism.

The case of au pairs as fictive family members compelled to work under host parental control may be regarded as offering limited and context-specific knowledge. However, I propose that this case has broader implications for understanding why, in other segments of the labour market, people remain at jobs they experience as unfree. I therefore regard the case of au pairing as offering ideas about the social mechanisms implicated in reproductive labour as intertwined with the relations of production. With the increasing intensification of work, corporate cultures have begun to manage and encourage family-like ties between co-workers to reinforce productivity (Hochschild, 2001; Ngai, 1999). At the same time, emotional workplace abuse continues to be a major obstacle in the contemporary workplace (Beale & Hoel, 2011), often aligned with subjective experiences of unfree labour. To this end, the article has pointed towards how the rhetoric of familism may be deployed for labour retention purposes. Framing labour as family membership, as the case of au pairing demonstrates, may be intertwined with experiences of compulsion and emotional coercion, but it may simultaneously compel people to stay in and find meaningful and caring reciprocity in the very same relations through which their labour is appropriated. This lens provides a stronger conceptual framework for considering the role of affective attachments and emotional coercion in constructing unfreedom in contemporary labour relations. Lastly, it also exemplifies how households’ abilities to consolidate their productive demands, or in other words sustaining capital accumulation, partly rest on conditions of unfreedom embedded in the organisation of reproductive labour.