Browsing by Author "Wide, Elisabeth"

This master’s thesis examines migrant care and domestic work in private households in Finland as affective labour. This particular spectrum of reproduction is approached from the perspectives of migrant workers and employers. Firstly, the thesis analyses how workers express affective and precarious aspects of their labour. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates how the demand for privately employed care and domestic work is produced, and discusses what this bought service consists of. Finally, everyday boundary making between workers and employers in the private household is studied. The research material consists of 16 semi-structured thematic interviews, half of which are conducted with individuals from the Philippines, who have moved to Finland and are working with care and domestic work in private households, and half with individuals living in Finland who employ a migrant care and domestic worker from the Philippines. A qualitative, theory-driven reading of the material is done in the analysis. The analysis departs from a theoretical perspective on emotions as affects that are organised in order to express social power relationships. The analysis is based on research discussions on affect, affective capitalism, precarisation, reproduction and the neoliberal organisation of care. The thesis is situated in an area of sociological care research and research in affective labour. The thesis shows how affects are organised in social reproduction, of which they are an integral part. The analysis demonstrates how the informants working with care and domestic labour express affects such as love, happiness, gratitude and humility in relation to their work. These are interpreted as precarious affects that express the particular neoliberal and postcolonial context that the workers move in, and the migratory experiences and the legally insecure positions of the workers. The informants are affected in a way that constructs them as productive workers, which touches upon the affective dimension of value production. The worker affects the children, the household and the employer, not only liberating time but also producing positive affects in the home, directly increasing the well-being of the employer and thus also their productive capacity. Social reproduction is consequently linked to value production in society. The workers not only reproduce the household and the individuals, but also society as a whole. In addition, the analysis shows, on the level of individual employers, how the demand for private care and domestic work is produced in a contemporary Finnish context through a combination of different structural factors. The private day care allowance and the tax reduction are practices through which the state encourages private employment. Cuts to social and health care services cause unavailable public day care. The precarisation of work life and the gendered division of labour in the household makes combining family with work harder for (female) informants. What is bought is mainly inexpensive time, which is spent together with the children or in order to work for longer hours. Finally the thesis examines how affects are manifested in the relationship between workers and employers, through everyday boundary making practices in the private household. The relationship shows the imprint of social power structures and of mutual but also asymmetric dependence, which is expressed through ambivalences and tensions. The precarious juridical position of the worker implies a conditional character for the relationship. The social order is re-created through everyday practices, such as a worker disappearing when guests enter the house, or a worker who stays longer to care for the children when the employer once again is working over-time. The analysis is situated in a context defined by contemporary capitalism, in which migrating persons are produced as flexible, inexpensive workers and reproductive labour is poorly valued. This context make up the frame for the affective reactions of the workers. The analysis emphasises that the demand for private care and domestic labour depends on high income earners who receive subsidises and allowances for employing. In addition, it requires the production of a flexible feminine migrant labour force, which perform diverse work tasks in exchange for a low salary.