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Stereotypes andAmbivalence: Theconstruction of domesticworkers in Vancouver,British ColumbiaGERALDINE PRATTVersion of record first published: 14 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: GERALDINE PRATT (1997): Stereotypes and Ambivalence:The construction of domestic workers in Vancouver, British Columbia, Gender,Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 4:2, 159-178

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G ende r, P lace and C ulture , V o l. 4 , N o. 2 , pp. 1 5 9 ± 1 7 7 , 1 9 9 7

S tereoty pes and Am b ivalence: the construction of dom estic

w orkers in V ancouver, B ritish C olum b ia

GERALDINE PRATT, U nivers ity of B ritish C olum b ia, C anada

ABSTRACT T his article exam ines s tereotyp es of F ilipina and B ritish nannies presented b y nanny

agents in V anco uver , C anada in a series o f interview s conducted in 1 9 9 4 , and then cons iders the in¯ uence

o f these s tereotyp es in structuring the w ork conditions of each group of dom estic w o rker. W orking w ith

B hab ha ’ s conc ep t of am b ivalence and K aplan’ s ideas ab out the `im poss ib ility ’ of the conc ept, `m o ther’ ,

the agent interview s are then reread for s igns of incons istency and am b ivalence. T he B ritish nanny is

p ortray ed as b oth sup erior in term s o f training and tem peram ent, b ut co ld and controlling. T he F ilipina

nanny is b oth uncivilis ed and poorly m otivated, and w ell- educate d. T hese am b ivalenc es are read in term s

o f anx ieties ab out maternal sub stitution, colonial pasts, racial d ifference , and w orking m others . S om e

im plica tions of the incons istenc y in agents ’ p ortraya ls of F ilipina nannies fo r p olitical prac tice are b rie¯ y

outlined .

Even before my baby was born I was worry ing about day care. As I sifted through theavailable options in Canada (formal day care, licensed at-home care, and private nanny),I was uncomfortably aware of my contradictory feelings about all options, but mostparticularly nannies. I was conscious of being hailed by cultural conventions that Iwished to renounce, anxieties were emerging from some deep unbidden places, and noneof this merged easily with my personal politics and professional self. T he H and that R ocks

the C radle Ð a demonic nanny melodramaÐ was playing at the local movie theatre: out onthe front street with the next-door nanny I engaged in indignant discussions aboutpopular representations of nannies; inside my house I absorbed the message of the ® lmand worried about how I could actually detect whether a nanny was abusing my infant.With graduate students I debated the politics of hiring a nanny from Asia; in conversa-tions with another mother, I pursued the possibility of sharing a Swiss nanny. Whataccounted for my comfort with the Swiss nanny option? Was I comforted by the fact thatthe responsibility as employer and child abuse detector would be shared? Did it help thatthe nanny was known by a mutual friend? Or did it matter that I knew that she wouldbe European and probably middle class and white? In the end, I delayed an examinationof my confusions and anxieties by accepting one of the 25 available spaces for infant daycare in the entire city of Vancouver.

I return to examine contradictory feelings about and representations of nannies, albeitat arm ’s length, by considering some interviews that I carried out in the summer of 1994,with 10 nanny agents in Vancouver. This is part of a larger project that includes theexperiences of employers and nannies. Here the focus is on the complex stereotyping

C orrespondence: Geraldine Pratt, Departm ent of Geograph y University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall,Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z2, Canada.

0966-36 9X/97/020159- 19 $7.00 Ó 1997C arfax Publishing Ltd 159

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160 G . P ratt

FIG . 1. Classi® ed listings for `Nannies’ in the 1993 Vancouver Yellow Pages.

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D om estic W orkers in V ancouver 161

regime deployed by important gatekeepers, namely nanny agents [1]. Even a cursoryreading of listings of the nanny agencies in the Yellow Pages of the telephone directoryindicates that they construct and represent nannies through gendered and racialisedcategories (Fig. 1). This paper is an exploration of the ways that nanny agents and, byextension, the Canadian Federal Government’ s Live-in Caregiver programme, workthrough constructions of difference. I attempt two readings of the construction of racialdifference. The ® rst emphasises the systematicity of the racial stereotyping and thefunctionality of the patterns of inequality that emerge from it for the CanadianGovernment and Canadian households. Dissatisfactions with this reading lead to asecond. Perhaps given my own psychic investments, I am interested in Bhabha’sargument about ambivalence, and sympathetic to Nicholas Thomas’s (1994) concernsabout oversimplifying colonial enunciations. Thomas asks: `why deny complexity andagency to those accused of denying them to others?’ (p. 61). In an effort to understandand take responsibility for my own complexities of belief and feeling, as well as open aspace for thinking about constructive social change, I am attempting to understand howthese work in the transcripts of the nanny agents with whom I spoke. This leads me toconsider how racial stereotyping may work in relation to anxieties about mothering.

The Live-in Caregiver Program m e and System s of Racial Difference

Nanny agents facilitate a federal visa programme, entitled the Live-in Caregiverprogramme, that enables mostly female domestic workers to come to Canada on atemporary basis. As the name of the programme makes explicit, workers are allowed intoCanada under this programme on the condition that they have a contract for employ-ment as a live-in caregiver. After 2 full years of employment, live-in caregivers areentitled to apply for an open visa and eventually landed immigrant status. Over the lastfew years the regulations controlling the programme have been in ¯ ux in ways that haveaffected the numbers of women admitted as live-in caregivers; but as an indication of thesigni ® cance of the programme, in 1992 7835 people came into Canada through theforeign domestic programme: 68% were from the Philippines, and 6% from Britain(another 3% from Jamaica [2]Ð it is signi® cant to my concerns about the racialisation ofnannies that these are the three nationalities for which a national newspaper chose toreport ® gures: G lob e and M ail, 15 March 1994). Changes in regulations in April 1992severely restricted the number of entries [3]. This produced a scarcity of live-in nannies,which the Canadian Government responded to 1 year later by relaxing regulations to1991 standards.

The Live-in Caregiver programme is one type of solution to the ongoing childcareproblem in Canada and it makes live-in servants accessible to middle-class Canadians.For roughly 900 dollars a month (and room and board) in 1994 a middle-class householdcould buy childcare, house-cleaning, and meal preparation. As one of the nanny agentsexpressed it to me: `We don’ t do many people doing lunch. We generally do Mr and MrsSafeway [a chain supermarket] or a ® reman’ .

The nanny agents play an important role as brokers in the process of matchingnannies and employers. In a survey of domestic workers in Vancouver in 1992, half saidthat they had come to Canada with the help of an agent (Mikita, 1994). I spoke to 9 ofthe 15 agencies listed in the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory in 1994 (by theirown assessment, I spoke with representatives of all of the largest ones). From theirestimates of their volume of business, it seems that, collectively, they had matchedroughly 1200 nannies and employers within the last year [4].

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162 G . P ratt

Because of the small number of agents, and my promises not to disclose theiridentities, I am limited in what I can say in the way of contextualising their comments.But I think it fair to say that all but two of the agents were women (I interviewed twoof the three male agents in the city). All were Canadian, and white, although one workedfor one of the two Asian brokers in Vancouver. As a self-identi® ed `white girl’ she statedthat she had been hired by the agent to mediate the racism of Canadians who, in theperception of the Asian broker, were unwilling to hire a nanny through an Asian agent.

Two levels of social distinction kept emerging in conversation with nanny agents. First,it almost goes without saying that the Live-in Caregiver programme rests on theunderstanding that Canadians will not (and really should not) provide this service.Nevertheless, I was surprised by how often, freely and unselfconsciously, both nannyagents and government of® cials made this point. For example, in conversation with oneagent, I asked whether the restrictions in labour supply brought on by 1992 changes infederal regulations had forced wages up to the point of stimulating a Canadian laboursupply. Agent B responded:

A gent B : You’ re Canadian. Would you work as a nanny? Doing someone else’s laundry?Cooking meals, with kids?

P ratt : Not as a live in. But I haveÐ I mean, my child goes to day care, and I have thoughtthat that job, on some days, sort of appeals to me.

A gent B : On some days, on some days. I have my lovely niece and nephew here for aboutan hour and a half and I’m ready to shoot them. And I have two nannies at homeright now.

In discussion with two other agents, the following emerged:

A gent C : I don’ t know. I don’ t think that there is a Canadian desire to be a nanny. Asparents, we don’ t raise our children to be nannies.

A gent D : Society says that white ladies are not nannies. I mean can you imagine someonefrom Maple Street whose daughter goes to Kits [High School] as being a nanny? Idon’t think so. We don’ t bring our people up to do that.

With the distinction between Canadians and others as an important backdrop, a furtherline of demarcation structures the discourse about nannies. As Agent E explained it:

There are two major populations of nannies available. One is what I would callEuropean, out of European stockÐ but they would be Australian, New Zealand(although not from Europe, they’re European stock and those populations aretrained nannies. They have nanny schools there.) And there are the Britishtrained nanny. And general European from other descriptions. And then thereare Asian, most Filipino ¼ Each has different strengths. They are not thesame. And they have different weaknessesÐ I mean, not as human beings, butas nannies.

This is a fascinating quote because of the efforts that the agent takes to create a duality(European/Asian) out of what is obviously an extremely heterogeneous grouping.

Agents’ Stereotypes of Filipina and European Dom estic W orkers

Difference also demarcates a hierarchy and the stereotypes of European and Asian areemployed in tandem to de® ne this hierarchy and each term in it. As Agent F put it: `Andyou get all grades of help. You get from the little Filipino girl that is just a nanny/house-keeper to the British girls that are NNEB [5]’ . This distinction between European and

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D om estic W orkers in V ancouver 163

Filipina was made by all agents and they were remarkably obliging in clarifying thepro® les, and the strengths and weaknesses of each (even if there was some disagreementon what counted as a strength or weakness).

European nannies are constructed as professionals; Filipinas as servants. One agentexpressed this quite graphically; the same point was made by almost all agents.

A gent G : Depend on what you’re looking for, what you want. My personal view, if youhave a baby and you want someone to lick your home clean: Filipino girl. Go for that.

P ratt : [Paraphrasing a common stereotype] Because they’ ll love the baby?A gent G : That’ s right. If you have kids 3, 4 years of age and up, and you want interaction,

you want them to go to the park, you want them to play arts and crafts, do things,you’re better off with a European.

P ratt : Because the traditions are ¼A gent G : Intellectual level, communication level, openness, a lot of things. Your average

Filipino girl is a quiet, shy personality. She does her job and that’ s the most important.The house has to be clean, spotless when God’s coming home, sorry, the parents arecoming home. Every ¼ the kids, they come second. No! I want the kids to come ® rst.The house could be second.

In general, the stereotypes of Filipinas expressed by agents in Vancouver in 1994 areremarkably similar to those deployed by Americans, as colon isers in the Philippines from1898 to 1946, and as `interested neighbours’ after the Philippines attained independencefrom the USA in 1946. A common stereotype in the early twentieth century was of theFilipino as passive mimic, incapable of independent thought (Rafael, 1993; Doty, 1996).As Doty observes, although stereotypes are instantiated in particular contexts, they drawupon globalised representations, and histories of previous stereotypes are sedimentedwithin contemporary ones.

In contrast to Filipinas, much was made of the British nannies’ credentials, especiallythe 2-year nanny `degrees’ :

A gent D : I mean they’re top of the line nannies. Norland nannies are actually better thanNNEB. When they come out of Norland they have a uniform with a number on it.That’ s their of® cial Norland kind of ¼

P ratt : But there are jobs for them in England?A gent C : And they’ re good jobs for that class of nanny, that educated. So they’ re not

thrilled to come here. And when they do come, they’ re quite particular about whatthey want to do.

A gent D : They’re actually quite nice. Provided you put them in the right job. But themajority of Canadians, whether you’ve got money or whether you haven’ t, are reallydown to earth. And if you’ re replacing mommy in the home, you had better be ableto stir fry the vegetables and water ¯ owers. You know what I mean? That, that sortof is what we’re looking for more and more. Not slaves. They don’ t want slaves.

Aside from drawing attention to the way that agents acknowledge the educationalcredentials of British nannies, the dynamics of class and colonialism (in this case betweenBritain and Canada) are also at work in this conversation, with Canadians, regardless ofincome, portrayed as down-to-earth.

The educational credentials and culture of European nannies stand in marked contrastto representations of Filipinas. Filipinas are represented as uncivilised. Agent H expressedthis stereotype in the follow ing terms:

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A gent H : Now we don’t employ a lot of Filipinos in the nanny situation because of thespecial needs of our clients. Our clients are very discriminating. You don’ t get to bewealthy without being discriminating, on the whole. And so to suit, and our clientsreally want lifestyle. They’re really prepared to pay this money for lifestyle. So theybasically would like somebody who is Canadian raised, Canadian standards.

P ratt : Oh really?A gent H : Oh yes. Yeah. There’s quite a percentage that’ s more comfortable with that.

They may be elderly. They may have hearing problems. They are in distress. That’swhy they have somebody there. And if somebody doesn’ t understand, you know, if youhave some lacquered, antique furniture and somebody sits a cold glass of water on itwithout a coaster, you know, `My God, I was going to leave that to my granddaughter,now it’s going to have a water ring on it’ type of deal. `Seventy years I’ ve had it!’ Andso you have this socio-econom ic type thing. Basically there’ s not too many richimmigrants coming over doing domestic work.

Agent H went on to say:

A gent H : And by our standards, most of the Filipino children, the adults who are comingover, were not raised how we would raise our children at all.

P ratt : That’ s an interesting point.A gent H : You know, there’ s none of this, you know, `Would you please sit and eat!?’ No

they can run all over the house eating something. Also, of course, the Filipino nanniesareÐ maids back homeÐ not permitted to discipline at all. Absolutely not.

P ratt : Oh really?A gent H : So the little kids pick up this very quickly. And so it’ s a hell of a life ¼ They’re

kind and caring and loving and that sort of thing. But there is no discipline orstructure, which ¼ You know, in the Philippines you don’ t line up for the bus. Youpush aside some little old lady getting on the bus. When you sit at the table, you don’ tsee that there ’s so much food so you take proportionately. No. You make sure you getyours ® rst. So there’ s none of that, you see, which ® ts in more with a Canadian society.And there’ s a lot of learning that a lot of Filipino people have to do [6].

This agent was not alone in making this type of comment. Loving, patient and gentlewith babies, several agents felt that Filipinas were ill equipped to instil values in olderchildren. Even toilet training was problematic. Agent E complained that a Filipina nannywill let your children pee in the park. They just take their pants down in the park’ [7].

Uncivilised, Filipinas were also portrayed as childlike [8]. In criticising employers whoscream at their nannies, Agent F argued that: `But really, yelling at a girl isn’t going toget you anywhere. It’ s just like yelling at a child. You frustrate them’ . Paternalismmarked this agent’ s relationship to Filipina nannies, as when she mentioned: `I givedonations to different ones of their organisations and things here. They have like littleFilipino organisations where they have dances and parties and bene ® ts and they crowna princess every year and I always sponsor one of the princesses’ .

Different degrees of dependency are acknowledged as well in the widespread under-standing that Filipinas are often trapped in unfavourable employment situations becauseof their desire to immigrate. In contrast, the `European’ nanny is portrayed as indepen-dent tourist. `With Europeans, they’ re not here for the money. They’re here for whateverreason they have: learn English, exposure to culture, travel, whatever’ (Agent H).

Many of the English nannies come in for a lark of one kind or another. They’renot going to immigrate. Some of them end up doing so, but they are comingto see the world. It’ s a marvelous passport ¼ Filipinos have a very different

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D om estic W orkers in V ancouver 165

motivation ¼ they are coming to immigrate, to get citizenship, to bring intheir families. They will put up with a lot in order to have a clean record,which makes for a whole other set of problems. But it means that they’ re likelyto stay on the job. (Agent E).

As a tourist, the European nanny is also sometimes represented as childlike, but assomeone who might be folded into one’ s own family for a period of time. As Agent Fput it:

the English and European nanny. And the Australians and the New Zealan-ders. They’re all fun and they’ re lovely girls. And they’re young and they’refunny. And it’s like having your daughter or your kid sister in the house, youknow. They’re a delight to have. They’re wonderful input into your kids. Ithink that if you look at it that you may only have them a year at a time, thatthey won’ t stay to be landed, I think they’re a pleasure to have in your house.They might not be as good housekeepers as the Filipino girls but I do thinkthat they’ ll teach your children more.

Easily integrated into one’ s family, there was nevertheless some unease about a Europeannanny’ s attachments to her own family or to romantic partners. These relationships wereseen as problematic because they threatened employment stability. European nannieswere screened to exclude married and engaged candidates. Even so, agents told storiesof British nannies who returned home after a short period on the job because of parentalpressure. For example: `Her mother was on the phone to her every night. And themother was begging the daughter to come home. The mother and daughter hadn’ tresolved whatever it was. And the young lady was 26!’ (Agent E). Rather thanrepresenting the nanny as a bad daughter, I read this agent as criticising the mother as`being on the phone with her every night’ and for `begging’ her daughter to come home,in other words, for attempting to retain control over a grown woman. It is the motherwho is childlike (immature). In any case, the quote signals the agents’ discomfort withEuropean nannies’ actual familial relations.

In contrast to this uneasiness about familial or romantic relationships in the case ofEuropean women (on the understanding that this threatened to disrupt employmentrelations), agents acknowledged and appreciated networks of familial relations amongFilipina nannies, precisely because these obligations lock the nannies into the employ-ment position. What seems extraordinary is that while simultaneously praising thefamilialism of the Filipina nannies, all agents exhibited what could be characterised as ablase attitude towards the actual fragmentation of Filipinas’ lives. Agents were well awarethat Filipinas remitted large proportions of their salaries to their families in thePhilippines [9] and a number praised the familialism of Filipinas. For example,

They’re terribly family oriented. They have a great respect for the family. Andin their culture, old people aren’t sent to homes. They are kept at home. Sothe closeness of the family is paramount too. They are raised that they haveresponsibilities to their siblings and parents. It’ s just part of their culture. Thereare some things that we could learn from them. (Agent F).

Agents are also well aware that many Filipinas have left, not only their birth family, buttheir own partners and children in the Philippines. They mentioned that some employersprefer married Filipina nannies `because they won’ t go out at night’ . Agents estimatedthat about 20% of nannies had left children in the Philippines [10]. The agents statedthat some employers are ambivalent about nannies who had children in another part of

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the world but they themselves generally considered the existence of children to be anasset. In the words of Agent F:

A gent F : I think it’ s positive [when a nanny has dependents] because I think the girl isdedicated. She’ s here for a reason. She’s here to support her family. She sends hermoney home. She becomes a very loyal employee and very dedicated. Because shemust work, otherwise her children aren’ t going to eat. So I mean it’ s a major sacri ® ceshe’ s giving and normally they are very kind to your child because it is someone tolove. They need it. They miss their own kids. So it’s someone to love and they needthat. They desperately need it. And with ¼

P ratt : And just having the understanding I guess ¼A gent F : I think that when you’ve been a mother you just have a sort of instinct for what

children are doing and how they feel. And then some people are just born with itnaturally. They have it without having them.

P ratt : When you have a child your outlook changes.A gent F : I think it does. I think that a certain amount of tenderness comes out of you.

And it stays there. So I think that it is de® nitely so.

The maternal role is valued because in the case of Filipinas the actual obligations of thatrole reside halfway around the globe and serve only to tie nannies to employment. Closerto home, the role is less attractive. In the ® les of the West Coast Domestic WorkersAssociation is a case that involved one of the agents that I interviewed. It involves aFilipina nanny who, upon ® nding herself pregnant in Canada, was told by this agent toabort the foetus or return home. This is a case of constructions of racial difference beingwritten into the body; of the fragmentation of identity being brutally inscribed; a cruelexample of what Bhabha (1994) describes as corporeal disintegration [11].

M aterial Consequences of Stereotyping

It is important to chart these stereotypes because agents act upon them. Mediatingbetween employers and domestic workers, agents structure expectations and job con-tracts. Domestic workers live the consequences of the stereotypes in terms of access tojobs, work conditions and wages. Domestic workers are produced as subjects throughthese stereotypes, and their agency is severely constrained by the subject positions offeredthrough them.

Doty (1996) has demonstrated the importance of stereotypes for political practice. Inparticular, she argues that stereotypes of Filipinos have structured American geopoliticalstrategy vis aÁ vis the Philippines. She argues, for example, that the USA, a nation thatde® ned itself against Europe as a non-imperialist nation and as an exemplar of ademocratic state, nevertheless justi ® ed its decision in 1898 to deny the Philippines itsprom ised independence on the basis of stereotypes of Filipinos as childlike and un-civilised. `The imperial gaze of the West produced a Philippine identity that was visible,knowable, and ultimately in need of United States authority and control. ª Descriptionsºof the inhabitants of the Philippines served as implicit authorizations for the U.S. colonialproject’ (Doty, 1996, pp. 36± 37). In Vancouver in 1994, we can also see the materialeffects of stereotyping. They are important media for producing domestic workers aslow-waged employees who lack the basic protection afforded other workers by theprovincial government’ s Employment Standards Act [12]. British nannies are repre-sented as tourists. Filipina nannies are represented as prospective immigrants who should

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D om estic W orkers in V ancouver 167

be grateful because they are able to use domestic service as a point of entry into Canada;and even as domestic workers their Canadian wages exceed those they could earn in thePhilippines. Neither group of nannies is constructed as employees, certainly not asemployees who operate with the same sets of expectations as Canadian citizens. Thisassumption slips through Agent B’ s interview when, for example, she describes the wagetrajectory of nannies: `What the employers normally do is they go for the ® rst 3 months.After 3 months, if she’s perform ing to satisfactionÐ I guess y ou w ant to say , sam e as y ou w ould

in a job Ð they get a $37± $38 raise to pay for their B.C. medical’ (my emphasis). This hassome material bene ® ts for Canadian families. If nannies are constructed as other thanemployees and their jobs not quite as jobs, wage levels and working conditionsunacceptable to Canadian citizens are legitimated. It justi ® es a different standard of faircompensation for women who are other than Canadian.

Stereotypes also provide a means of displacing demands for higher wages. Filipinanannies who demand higher wages are framed as greedy women, in ways that call uponstereotypes of incivility and childishness. Agent E, for example, mentioned that Filipinanannies, in contrast to other groups, feel no responsibility for contractual arrangements,and will leave an employment situation, with which they are otherwise content, if offeredmore money by another employer. Claims to minimum wage and payment for overtimework (beyond 40 hours a week)Ð conditions that Canadians assume to be baselineconditions protected by the provincial labour codeÐ are seen to be excessive. Filipinanannies who lobby for these provisions are judged to be short-sighted. Agent C arguedthat as result of claims of this sort: `They’re going to make themselves unemployable. Imean it has to be affordable [to Canadian families]’. Agent H voiced the same opinion:`There’s not the money there. It will just cut down on the amount of immigration fromthe Philippines, because it’ s the foot in the door for so many immigrants ¼ They willbe doomed to a life there [in the Philippines]’ .

Agents also displace any potential criticism of the Live-in Caregiver programme byracialising the problem employers. In agents’ accounts of employers who abused nanniesthrough overwork, the employer was typically identi ® ed as either Jewish or Hong KongChinese. In contrast, other employers were portrayed as `ordinary’ , `normal’ and `darnednice’.

Representations of difference between `Asian’ and `European’ domestic workers alsowork to create material differences among domestic workers. Agents were in agreementthat Filipina domestic workers were expected to and actually do more housework thando European nannies, and they often labelled Filipinas as housekeepers while Europeanswere referred to as nannies. Nanny agents were not explicit about how they communi-cate this distinction to employers. Focus groups with Filipina domestic workers were,however, instructive [13]. Filipina domestic workers told of their experiences with agentsin the Philippines and in Singapore (some of whom have contacts with agents inVancouver) and the instructions that they were given by these agents on how to representthemselves to prospective employers. A number had been told to include two pictures ofthemselves in their application, one showing them taking care of children, anotherdisplaying them as cleaners (e.g. mopping the kitchen ¯ oor or using a vacuum cleaner).None of the English nannies with whom we have spoken were asked to representthemselves in this way. One nanny was told by her agent in the Philippines to indicateon her application her willingness to work from 6 am until late at night. This samewoman found herself in a struggle with her Canadian employer when he expected herto wash the family car; he had learnt from the agent that the domestic worker hadperformed this task for her previous employer in Singapore.

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A number of agents also acknowledged a two-tiered wage structure, with Europeannannies commanding a higher wage [14]. Typically, the net wage for a recently arrivedFilipina domestic worker was $600± $650 a month , while the European nannies seemedto be unavailable for less than $800 a month clear. Agents acknowledged their role insetting the starting wage and linked the higher wages of European nannies, not only totheir superior training, but also to their sense of entitlement and race. For example,Agent I stated:

The nannies from the Philippines when they come over, they would make theminimum [wage]. And generally speaking nannies who come over fromEurope or from Australia, they would make $100 more ¼ And [Filipinas]were just so willing to work for less as well. The other cultures have highersalary expectations.

The two-tiered wage structure extends the nanny childcare option to middle-classfamilies who might not be able to afford a European nanny: in this sense, racialcategories play to class differences in a seemingly smoothly functional way.

Am bivalence

And yet there is something incomplete about this analysis. It is too tidy. As Neale(1979± 80) argues, there is a problem when analyses of stereotypes repeat the sameoperations of the stereotype: closure around and repetition of simple categories. Theythereby `reduce the complexity and heterogeneity inherent in a process and its relationsto a single, homogeneous (and repetitive) function’ (p. 33). Writing about ® lm analysis,Neale thinks that this type of stereotyping of stereotypes is especially common whencritics look across ® lms, searching for the repetition of the same stereotype. Movingacross the texts of nanny agents, I have engaged in this process of repetition andexampling. The interviews with nanny agents were complex; in fact this complexity canbe read from the quotes already presented. The same agent often contradicted herself (orhimself) in different parts of the interview or expressed some ambivalence about thecommon stereotypes. Colonial and post-colonial critics (e.g. Bhabha, 1994; Thomas,1994) have stressed the importance of bringing this ambivalence into focus. It un® xes theidentity of the one who enunciates the stereotype and allows us to explore thecomplexities of the process of stereotyping and the types of psychic investments that wehave in them. This is not to suggest that the stereotypes that I have presented do notcirculate through agents’ discourses. Rather, I am trying to call attention to my readingof them, to make the case that they are more complexly inscribed than I have thus farsuggested.

Drawing on psychoanalysis, Bhabha (1994) has read the ambivalence of racialstereotypes through theories of the fetish. A fetish allows for the disavowal of differencewhile simultaneously marking it [15]. The racial stereotype marks difference butdisavows real, engaged, and mutually recognised difference (in which the stereotyped’has agency and the capacity to enact his/her own distancing manoeuvres). It is thus avery unstable mediating term that moves between desires for identi ® cation (as enactedthrough the stereotype of the loyal servant) and difference (the hated `other’ ).

Bhabha tends to undertheorise gender but there is some interesting ground forthinking about the stereotype of nanny through a gendered psychoanalytic lens. Nanniesare constructed, not only in terms of anxieties about racial difference, but throughanxieties that shape the maternal relation. Ann Kaplan (1992) locates the present period

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as one in which there is considerable anxiety about motherhood as an institution, andshe traces how this anxiety ® lters through and structures contemporary discourses ofmotherhood. Into the high anxieties of the contemporary period, we can insert a numberof other anxieties suggested by a non-periodised psychoanalytic theory. I introduce fourideas in a speculative way. First, the appearance of the nanny in the home, howevermuch desired by the mother, can be seen as disrupting the mother/child relationship,one that some posit as allowing the mother to re-experience a fused pre-Oedipalexistence (e.g. Kristeva, 1981). Second, with the nanny living in the home, the mothermay fear her own redundancy as both mother and wife (i.e. symbolic death). Third, asa mother substitute, the nanny is a potential receptacle for the con¯ icted constructionsof motherhood that pervade our society. Studying cultural representations (mostly ® lm )from an earlier period, Kaplan argues that representations of mother oscillate betweenidealised versions (which Kaplan links to psychic processes of narcissism) and monstrousones (which she ties to the process of abjection and to fears about the mother’ swithdrawal). This ambivalence towards the mother (Kaplan describes motherÐ just asBhabha describes the racial stereotype Ð as an impossible concept’ ) may be projected onto the mother substitute; anxieties about mother are layered on to anxieties about race.Fourth, the sense of anger and guilt that some mothers may have in leaving their childto return to paid employment may be projected on to the nanny.

These speculations suggest that there is a considerable psychic investment in thestereotyping of nannies. Nannies may be devalued for reasons beyond self-servingeconom ic ones; even though their devalued labour undoubtedly bene® ts the Canadianfamilies who pay their wages, the origins of this devaluation may lie, at least partially,beyond straightforward economic ones. One thing that this type of analysis accomplishesis to bring Canadian women back into the analysis, to disrupt the dualism betweenEuropean/Asian nanny, and remind us that these stereotypes are constructed, not onlyin relation to each other, but in relation to Canadian women. I will try to put these ideasinto motion by working through the agents’ ambivalences, ® rst in relation to the Britishnanny [16]. The general, admittedly speculative, argument is that ambivalences towardBritish nannies stem from fears around blurred boundaries between nanny/mother andmaternal anxieties about displacement, while ambivalences towards Filipina nanniesbuild from a recognition and disavowal of racial difference, and guilt about a mother’ spaid employment. These distinctive anxieties are nevertheless both forged throughdiscourses of nation and colon ialism.

British Nannies and Displacem ent

In my presentation of the ways that the European and Asian nannies were constructedin relation to each other, I have downplayed the ambivalence that most agents felttowards the British nanny, although Agent D’s comments about the delicacy of placinga British nanny in a down-to-earth Canadian home already suggests it. There were tworecurring themes of criticism. British nannies were criticised repeatedly for their pro-fessional pretensions and their refusal to do housework. One agent referred to themdisparagingly as `nose-drop nannies’ . This criticism no doubt emerges from the agents’frustrations that the professionalisation of British nannies makes them both more and lessmarketable, and from their actual experiences mediating con¯ icts that arise due tomismatched expectations on the part of employers and nannies. But, as well, the criticismof professional pretensions signals an uneasiness around class relations and, possibly, pastcolonial relations between Canada and Britain. There is a worry and resentment that

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trained British nannies will be scornful of `down-to-earth’ Canadian families in whichthey are placed. It is thus interesting that in the interviews that I have done with domesticworkers in Vancouver, there is often a sense of and resentment about the class relationwithin the household, but in the case of British (as compared to Filipina) nannies it issometimes framed in terms of class competition rather than class antagonism. This isapparent in an extract from an interview with two former British nannies [17]:

J : ¼ w ith my second [employer], my second year here, she was only a year older thanme and she looked down and over me all the time. And it was funny because I wasonly a year younger than her, and I got from her, `Oh, I have got all this, and you’rejust a nanny’ , you know. But now they are divorced and she’s got no money, and I’vegot a house in West Vancouver. So there.

I nterview er : Do you write her and tell her that?J : I should do. I bumped into her the other day, and she said, `Oh, are you still working

as a nanny?’ And I didn’ t say it, but I thought it: `No, I don’ t have to work anymore.And where are you working?’

The blurred and sometimes competitive class relations can manifest themselves in asituation where the nanny imports middle-class mothering standards and a basicdisapproval of her employer’ s decision to return to paid employment. Again, this isapparent from the interview with the same two British (former) nannies.

J : I personally don’t agree with it.D : Yeah. I think, if you’ re going to have little ones, you should bring them up too. I feel

that way too, J. Actually, you brought this little being into the world, so it’s yourresponsibility to look after your child, and not have somebody look after your kids. Iknow you would like to keep your career, especially now.

J : When you need the extra income ¼D : And you’ve got your career and stuff of course. But whether it be the father or the

mother, it’ s your child and you should stay home and raise your child [18].

Blurred boundaries and a moral superiority shade into a second recurring criticism, thatBritish nannies can be cold, and controlling. Agents commented, for example, that someBritish nannies do not enjoy babies, a remark that was never made about another group.Agent F describes their controlling nature:

A gent F : Maybe she’ s too take-over a personality; maybe you’ ll feel that it won’t be yourchild any more, that she’s going to rule you and the child, because many of them arevery take-over. Especially a lot of your European and British girls. They wantcomplete control of that child. Most Canadian women don’ t want that. You don’ twant your mother image taken from you.

P ratt : Yeah, I guess. But you also want someone that the child’s really going to love.A gent F : De ® nitely!P ratt : So it’ s a balance.A gent F : You have to have the balance because you’re walking out and you’re going to

work and it’ s hard on the development of the child. You’d give anything to be home.You’re having to leave and it’s terribly important that the mother leaves under happyfeelings, and that the child’ s cared for, and the child should be not unhappy thatyou’re leaving, should be able to kiss mommy goodbye, wave goodbye. And you wantthe child waiting for you when you come home, looking out the window for mommyto come in from the car, and be happy to run into your arms. The child is still yours.You can’ t take that from a mother.

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P ratt : I don’ t think that you can take it anyway. But I can see about the insecurity.A gent : Insecurity comes in because sometimes you’ ll get it where the child doesn’ t want

to go to the mother. And it runs for the nanny every time. Every time anything’s reallywrong with the child. It’ s looking for the nanny and not the mom. And then you geta mom with hurt feelings. It’ s hard on a lot of young mothers. It’ s very, very hard onthem. Believe me. And if you’ve got a kind, loving nanny that has enough consider-ation that still makes you important to that child it makes a difference.

(Articulating these fears about losing one’ s child to a European nanny, two agents(interviewed together) spent a good part of an interview focusing on maternal death,which I am assuming to be a fairly small source for the nanny labour demand. Two ofthe three mothers whose deaths were described in some detail died of cancer, anotherdied during childbirth. Two of the replacement mothers were British, the other, a malenanny (who is a rarity in the nanny business) [9]. It is interesting that the two womenselected as mother substitutes were British. And while none of the three nannies literallykilled the mothers involved, I have wondered about how these stories of maternal deathand nanny substitutes play off and feed into fears about mother substitution. I am simplyinterested in the fact that the agents chose to tell them to me (and in such lurid detail).It seems plausible that fears of substitution would be strongest across a less well-de® nedboundary of difference Ð between Canadian and British women.

The only serious and extended story told to me by an employer (of whom 52 wereinterviewed in summer 1995) about substitution problems involved a Scottish nanny: shewas ® nding the line between being a parent and a nanny hard to draw’. The employertold of coming home to her child’ s birthday party during a work day, only to feel likean intruder. Another source of real con¯ ict and discomfort was the perceived lack ofsupport from her friends:

Yeah, I used to get people coming up to me and saying in sort of an accusatorytone, `You have a great nanny’ , like don’ t you realise what a great nanny youhave? And I think it was because Susan would complain about the job. Sopeople would come back and say, `Look. You have a great nanny’ , and towardsthe end I was saying to people, `Well, she stayed with us for 7 years, so I guesswe’re not that bad’ . But people were, ¼ you know, an interesting episode waswith the mums at school. We had a mother’s coffee, so I made a point ofcoming home for it. And one of the mums comes up to me, sort of whispering,and said: `Oh, we invited Susan’ . And I was, like, `Well, that’ s nice, you know,but I am the mother’ ¼ I didn’ t say that. Another friend of mind who shouldknow better said the same sort of thing.

There was a sense of mixed and confused af® liations, and a loss of control over her ownnetworks of support and affection [20].

Filipina Nannies and M aternal Guilt

With respect to Filipina domestic workers, these types of substitution stories were not toldby the agents or employers whom I interviewed [21]. Instead, a glaring contradiction inthe agent interviews emerged around the issue of education. Alongside portrayals ofFilipinas as uncultured and less well-educated than European nannies was the recogni-tion, registered by all agents, that many Filipinas have a university degree (which agentsposited as equivalent to 2 years of Canadian university), often in ® elds that are relatedto childcare or education (nursing and teaching). For example, Agent G (who is quoted

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earlier as saying that a Canadian family is well advised to hire a Filipina if they want aservant who will lick their homes clean) says the following when criticising the unevenway in which the 6-month training requirement, put in place by the Federal Governmentin 1992, was implemented:

P ratt : That’ s really bizarre that theÐ I mean it just seems really strange that therequirements were worked out country by country. Because I’m sure there’s a realunevenness in terms of what’s required.

A gent G : De® nitely. What’ s 6 months’ training? You know in Czechoslovakia a girl who’ sbeen a camp leader. Quali ® ed! Why [does] a Filipino girl [have] to be a nurse, ifa camp leader can qualify? Because 6-month training. You go there and you makeanything you want out of it. Whatever you decide, whatever the Canadian embassyin that country will decide.

But then in discussing the immigration of nannies to Canada through the Live-inCaregiver programme, Agent G reverts to the lick the home’ motif:

See the Europeans that are coming in here, after 2 years, if they stay and theyapply for landed immigrantÐ they don’t do nanny work. It’ s just a jumpingboard that they use because they have their own plan, their own career, theirown training back there. They are not going to stay nannies. Filipinos will.That’ s the only thing that they know to do. So not too many of them will goand work in hotels or anything that is really beyond. There will be McDonaldsand stuff like that. That’ s basically it. What they’re trained for. Not trained foranything really higher. Some of them will really have a little bit more plans fortheir life than being that way, but the majority: nannies. That’ s what they’regoing to do, housekeeping.

In the case of Agent F, who earlier ranked the little Filipino girl that is just ananny/housekeeper’ as inferior to `British girls that are NNEB’ , she later states: `A lotof Filipina girls have amazing educations. Of course their high school is only to grade10. They have to have 2 years’ college to be equivalent to our high school’ .

The agents’ forgetfulness about Filipinas’ education is of course necessary if theuncivilised stereotype is to function, and it has very serious implications for Filipinawomen. When they try to exercise their rights as employees by requesting pay rises, theyare portrayed as greedy, rather than as rationally exercising their rights as trained, skilledemployees. Sensitivity around immigration is also ® ltered through representations ofFilipinas that misrepresent their educational backgrounds. Agent G’s assessment ofFilipinas’ capacity to enter other occupations in the Canadian labour force is indicativeof this. More serious, at this time there were rumours that the Federal Governmentintended to cut back on the number of visas given through the Live-In Caregiverprogramme. The rumoured rationale was that nannies admitted through the programmeare unable to integrate successfully into the Canadian labour force and therefore threatento overburden the Canadian social welfare system. `A leaked report from ImmigrationCanada, concerning foreign domestic workers, stated that ª live-inº domestic workers donot adjust well in Canada’ (Newsletter of the Philippine Women Centre, 1994, p. 2).While one should not minimise the problems of transition into other segments of thelabour market (exacerbated by the Federal Government’ s regulation that Live-inCaregivers cannot upgrade skills while working as a domestic workerÐ they are thereforeforced into a 2-year period of deskilling), representations of Filipinas as unskilled anduneducated feed into this portrayal of Filipinas as future welfare recipients. Again,

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discourses produce effects, in this case, by potentially restricting opportunities toimmigrate.

What is so threatening about recognising Filipinas’ skills for what they are? Would thisinvolve a recognition of agency and entitlement, of a difference which cannot becontained and collapsed or controlled through the processes of hierarchisation andmarginalisation? That Filipinas are ambivalently represented in terms of their educationis intriguing, given that their education system was `Americanised’ as a result of theircolonial history Ð English was the medium of instruction in classrooms until the late1980s. And as the US Of® ce of Intelligence Research put it in 1952, `The widespreadand intense Filipino desire for education is one of the more striking heritages ofAmerican occupation’ (cited in Doty, 1996, p. 94). It thus legitimated American colon is-ing efforts. This American in¯ uence on the Philippines’s school system may be onereason why the nanny agents were able to translate’ educational quali® cations from thePhilippines to Canada with such easeÐ regardless of its general validity, there wasagreement among the several agents who performed this translation exercise [22] that adegree from a university in the Philippines was equivalent to 2 years of Canadianuniversity.

The reasons for trivialising Filipinas’ educational attainments may go no further thanproviding a comfortable rationale to Canadian households for what otherwise might beconceived as a highly contradictory situation: low-priced, well-educated labour. But theymay also lie at the crossroads of anxieties about sameness and difference and moralitiesof mothering. In particular, registering a Filipina nanny’s professional training as highschool teacher or registered nurse may generate a series of uncomfortable questions forCanadian women about why a well-trained Filipino woman is staying at home withyoung children and the Canadian mother is not. These questions are uncomfortable,because they call attention not only to North/South relations of inequality, but to theintensely fraught terrain of motherhood and the morality of working mothers.

Am bivalence and Politics

It would be unfortunate if my argument had the result of demonising nanny agents. Myintent has been to show how they circulate stereotypes that move within the highlycon¯ icted space of my own identity; agents’ roles as gatekeepers mean that theiruncritical deployment of these stereotypes has a much more pervasive effect on the livesof women who come to Canada as live-in caregivers than my dark thoughts within theinterior spaces of my life. The importance of the ® rst stereotyped reading of stereotypesis that it charts the general contours of these stereotypes and begins to sketch out howthese stereotypes construct domestic workers as highly constrained agents.

The second reading does, however, open two complexities in productive ways; inparticular, the latter offers strategic opportunities. First, it identi® es the psychic invest-ments that Canadian mothers (and others) may have in their stereotyping of domesticworkers. If we interpret ambivalences as signalling and temporarily resolving anxieties,various and complex, this suggests that these stereotypes, though unstable, are likely tobe held with some tenacity, and that they serve more than a narrowly economic function.Agents and employers may have some psychic investment in viewing a European nannyas a tourist, as a young woman who will leave one’ s household after a relatively shortperiod of time, and leave both the marriage and motherÐ child relation intact. Trivial-ising Filipinas’ education and previous job experiences may quiet employers’ anxietiesabout their own adequacy as mothers. This reading complicates and augments the more

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typical political economy perspective that dominates within the literature on domesticworkers.

Activists may wonder whether I am advocating mass psychotherapy as a route to socialchange; I am not. But noticing ambivalences opens some space to think about politicalstrategy. First, it is useful simply to document the inconsistencies in nanny agents’ texts,to demonstrate what is being buried. Practically, this process of retrieval is a useful toolfor countering claims about Filipinas’ inability to compete as competent agents in theCanadian labour force. We must remind nanny agents and the Canadian FederalGovernment, as they portray Third World women coming into Canada through theLive-in Caregiver programme as future welfare dependents, that many are in factwell-educated women with a deep sense of familial duty. Of course, the latter claimsimply reactivates stereotypes already in circulation. But we must work with what wehave.

And what we have are ambivalent statements. Without claiming the likelihood thathegemonic discourses will crumble from the ® ssures of inconsistency within them, asecond opportunity follows from the fact that agents implicitly recognise the instability oftheir own racial categories. Agents, by translating educational credentials in the Philip-pines to their Canadian equivalent, are already reading Filipinas as transnationalsubjects, and are deconstructing `Filipina’ as a ® xed racial/national category, distinctfrom Canadian society. Doty (1996) recounts a history of efforts to construct a nationalFilipino identity from a diverse set of cultures. Agent H recognises the permeability ofnational boundaries and the American in¯ uence in the construction of the Filipinoidentity when he states: `You know, from the Philippines, basically they’re halfwayEnglish’ . Agent H’s statement emerges from his clear understanding of the historicalin¯ uence of Americans on the Filipino educational system. In so far as agents implicitlyrecognise the instability of their own marks of difference, perhaps this offers anotheravenue for stepping away from what Bhabha terms an arrested mode of representation.

Acknowledgem ents

This paper was ® rst presented at the annual meeting of the American Association ofGeographers, Chicago, March 1995. I thank Derek Gregory, Dan Hiebert, Jane Jacobs,and Katharyne Mitchell for their helpful suggestions and S SH R C (Social Sciences andHumanities Research Council) for its generous funding of this project. I thank threeanonym ous referees for their efforts to help me clarify my argument. I also thank theagents who gave generously of their time. I do hope that it is clear to them (and otherreaders) that I see them as circulating stereotypes that are not their own, but are heldmuch more widely within Canadian society.

NOTES

[1] In focusing on the stereotypes deployed by nanny agen ts I do not intend to imply that nanny agents orwhite Canadians are the only soc ial actors who have the means to work with stereotypes, or thatresistance should be focused only on ambivalences within colon ial discourses. Rey Chow (1993) rightlycriticises the recentring of colonial discourses that such a position entails. Among the Filipina domesticworkers that I have worked with the most frequently mentioned and personally painful stereotyping wenton within the Filipino community. Ana states the stereotypes succinctly: `Like this is how the Filipinopeople [in Vancouver] look at the domestic worker. They look at the nanny as just a sex ob ject and ahusband stealer’ . In Susan ’s word s: `O utside the house, I haven’ t encountered whites who say, ª Oh, anannyº just because I’m Filipino. It’s just that the dif® culty is w ith Filipinos like us ¼ . ’ (For furtherexam ples, see Pratt, in collaboration with the Philippine Wom en Centre, 1997). Elsewhere, I have arguedthat this stereotyping within the Filipino community probably has material consequences if domestic

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workers are closed out of useful networks that might help them return to the occupations for which theyhave been trained in the Philippines (Pratt, in collabora tion with the Philippine W omen Centre, 1997).I thank Katharyne Mitchell for underlining this point.

[2] There is a rich history to write about the discursive construction of nannies in Canada. Daenzer (1993)charts a history of domestic serv ice in Canada, outlining how the rights extended to women coming toCanada as domestic workers changed and declined as source countries shifted throughout the centuryfrom Anglo-Northern European to Southern European , follow ed by Caribbean and then Asian ones. Seealso Arat-Koc (1989; 1990) and Bakan & Stasiulis (1994). The discursive construction of Caribbeanwom en is particularly interesting to plot over time. Bakan & Stasiulis (1995) describe how nanny agen tsprom oted Asian over Caribbean immigration from the mid-1970s on, constructing Caribbean wom en as`aggressiv e, incom petent, and cunningly criminal’ (p . 320). It was thus interesting to hear the followingfrom an employer interviewed in Vancouver in 1995:

E m ploy er: Yah, it’s funny because I was speaking to my brother in Calgary a couple of days ago, and hehas a buddy who’ s a stockbroker, married, recently had a child, looking for a nanny, and he told mybrother who said , `W ell, you know , get in a Filipina nanny’, and it was like, `Oh no, no, no, no way’ .The latest rage, apparently, there is to hire a Jamaican nanny. They ’re perceived as being morearticulate, much better English , the sam e in terms of being loving, caretak ing, but they are moreaggressive, the traits that people are look ing for, they are identifying as being in the Jamaican nanny.But I’ve never heard of Jamaican nannies servicing Calgary . I’ve heard of them in Toron to, but no,they ’re getting them in Calgary now.

G P : From Toronto? Through agen ts?E m ploy er: I don ’ t know. All I know is, they only want to ® nd a Jamaican. T hat’ s what you want to try to

get.G P : Now that’s interesting, because it’ s the aggressiveness of the Jamaican nannies that I think has often

been seen as a negative quality.E m ploy er: I know, but there’ s been like a backlash . There’ s a way in which ultimately the lack of

aggressiveness, which is perhaps what we see as the ability to initiate or stimulate, is [now seen as aprob lem with the Filipina nannies].

[3] In 1993, the number of Filipinas coming through the new Live-in Caregiver program me was only 15%of the 1991 total. The numbers of wom en coming in from Britain were also down by 75% .

[4] Not all of the nannies involved in these matches presen tly were living under the ausp ices of the Live-InCaregiv er Program me, but most had entered the country through the program me.

[5] This refers to the Nursery Nurse Exam ination Board certi® cate, attained after a 2-year program me,geared to childcare from birth to age 7. (For details, see Gregson & Lowe, 1994, pp. 159± 164.)

[6] It is disconcerting to put this contemporary commentary beside US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’ s rem arkin 1900 that: `a native [Filipino] fam ily feeds; it does not break fast or dine, it feeds. A wooden bowl ofrice with perhaps a little meat stewed in with it, is put on the ¯ oor; the entire fam ily squats around it;the ® ngers are used to convey the food into the mouth. I have never seen any Filipino eat otherw ise’(quoted in Doty, 1996, p. 39).

[7] This referen ce to the prim itivism of Filipinas is fascinating beside Anderson ’s (1995) discussion of earlytwentieth-century American constructions of Filipinos as polluted and without control over their bodilyori® ces: `Thus a grotesque, defecating Filipino body regularly irrupted into [American] medical reportsand scienti ® c papers ¼ Especially in times of cholera and typhoid, physicians overwhelmed with fecalspecimens were inclined to reduce the Filipino bodyÐ in practiceÐ to little more than a gaping anus andtwo soiled hands’ (p. 647).

[8] This too is a standard stereotype: Doty (1996) demonstrates the uses to which this stereotype has beenput by the American government to justify intervention in the sovereignty of the Philippines at two pointsin time: 1898 and the early 1950s.

[9] M ikita (1994), from her survey of 100 Filipina domestic workers in 1992, estimated the mean monthlyrem ittance to be $245 a month (about 33.4% of gross wages).

[10] M ikita (1994) estimates that 29% of Filipina wom en work ing as nannies in Vancouver have children inthe Philippines.

[11] See Margold (1995) for a discussion of the effective disintegration of the bodies of male Filipino migran tworkers in the Middle East: the international political economy that interpenetrated with individual liveshad splintering effects, selecting muscles, and denying human totalities’ (p . 292).

[12] The situation has improved since this time. In 1995 a new Employment Standards Act was passed thatlegislated that minimum wage be paid to domestic workers, and that dom estic workers be com pensated(time and a half) for hours beyond a 40 hour week. These changes re¯ ected the efforts of activists and

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the fact that a social democratic party , sympathetic to labour, was in power. Interviews with employersand domestic workers since the new Employment Standards Act has come into effect indicate that thereare som e real dif® culties in forc ing employers to comply with this legislat ion.

[13] This inform ation emerged in a research project done in collabora tion with the Philippine Wom en Centre.For details see Pratt (in collaboration with the Philippine W om en Centre, 1997).

[14] Agents agreed that European nannies earn higher wages although there was som e disagreem ent aboutwhether the difference was in starting wages or emerged during the course of employment in Canada.

[15] Freud interprets the fetish as a mechanism for disavow ing sexual difference. He interprets it as a substitutefor the mother’ s absent penis (the recognition of which forces the [boy] child to recognise sexualdifference, his separation from his mother, and the possibility of castration [by his father] if he fails toabandon his mother as a love object).

[16] In making this argum ent, I want to draw attention to the multiplicity of roles claimed by the agen ts inthe interviews. All were paren ts who had employed live-in nannies; in their discussions with me all of them(without prom pting) moved between these roles and spoke of their experiences as paren ts and employers,as well as as agen ts. They therefore construct themselves in som ewhat contradictory ways. It was also clearthat they were som etimes speak ing to me as an academ ic, sometimes as a mother, and som etimes as apotential client.

[17] These comments have to be interpreted with the understanding that the quoted nanny, who came toCanada in the mid-1980s and worked as a nanny for 7 years, is now married to a Canadian and staysat home to care for her infant.

[18] This highly contradictory attitude toward s childcare also has been found among childcare workers(Nelson , 1994).

[19] There is a certain interest in the fact that a male nanny was brough t in to a household where the motherwas actually missing. The nanny was described as being able to do `boy things’ w ith the all male children.The agen t made the point that the grandmother and aunt were in Vancouver as adequate sources ofmaternal affection.

[20] Another employer, who employed a Slovakian nanny, rem arked on the substitutability between herselfand her nanny in a positive way; she was pleased that the nanny cou ld be mistaken as the child ’ s paren tat play school. This, however, involved a matter of appearances only and she seem ed secure in herposition as mother.

[21] Is is interesting to note that when Filipina dom estic workers spoke of the problem of female employers’jealou sy, they racialised the employers as Chinese:E ndrolyn: I always ask the wife if I have some questions to ask. And the wife talks to him. Som e nannies

ask the man, and then the lady gets mad.Y olly : Especially the Chinese. They don’t want their nannies to be close to the man.M arlyn: They are afraid that the nanny will steal their husband.

[22] This was not something that I asked about explicitly in the interviews. It was thus noteworthy that it cameup in a number of interviews.

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