Gratitude That Never Was: Migration, Labor and Discontent in Au Pair Experiences

• In Event: Work, Education, and Migration

Abstract

Conceptions of the "ideal immigrant” as not only compliant but also grateful (Nourpanah, 2021) have long shaped US immigration discourse and material realities. Young immigrant women engaged in service and care work frequently report encountering expectations that they should feel grateful for the opportunities provided by their employers. In this study, I examine the narrated lived experiences of Turkish au pairs, young women on temporary work visas providing child care in U.S. households, with particular attention to how their discontent builds up from the point of hiring through the decision to quit, and the role that perceived expectations of gratitude from the host families play in this process. Using publicly available YouTube videos created by Turkish au pairs since 2020, as well as personal conversations with a former au pair conducted between 2023 and 2024, and drawing on literature at the intersection of labor, immigration and affect, I analyze how resentment builds at the nexus of blurred boundaries between work and life, undercompensated labor, and social isolation. These tensions become increasingly unmanageable when au pairs realize that their host families, implicitly or explicitly, expect gratitude as part of the labor relationship. Subtle or explicit refusals to perform gratitude by au pairs destabilize labor arrangements and relationships built on unequal foundations and complicate Global North–South encounters, particularly in the context of post-2015 Turkish youth migration to the United States. In this context, Turkish au pairs seek to understand themselves as participants in cultural exchange (Ellis, 2017), a distinction that is frequently, and perhaps strategically, overlooked by host families. This research advances understandings of the affective dimensions of migration by illuminating how emotional labor expectations intersect with gender, culture, age, economic precarity and center-periphery relations in transnational care work.

Author

• Bengi Sullu, CUNY-Medgar Evers College