Labor and Employment Law Commons^™

The Article exposes how the legal categorization of au pairs as "cultural exchange participants" is strategically used to sustain- and disguise-a government-created domestic worker program to provide flexible, in-home childcare for upper-middle-class families at below-market prices. The "cultural exchange" subterfuge has created an underclass of migrant domestic workers conceptually and structurally removed from the application of labor standards and the scrutiny of labor institutions. On the one hand, the "cultural exchange" rubric enables the U.S. government to house the program under the Department of State rather than Labor and to delegate oversight of this government program to private recruitment agencies …