By Blue Rose on Sunday, 29 of August , 2010 at 1:48 pm
Ariana Ariz Carstensen awaits a 29-year-old woman from the Philippines at Bellevue Beach north of Copenhagen, but the appointment gets cancelled.
The 29 year old, who works as an au pair in a Danish family, says she has to babysit for the family and can’t make it.
Carstensen met her at the beach last week, when the woman contacted her to ask for help.
The woman said, she had worked for three weeks without a day off. Her workdays stretch from early morning to late evening, and she has no time off in the middle of the day either.
This is against the regulations for au pairs in Denmark, in which the young women are only allowed to work for five hours a day, six days a week, unless they get economical compensation.
Carstensen is used to hearing these kinds of stories. Every Sunday, she attends mass at the Pentecostal Church on Drejevej at Nørrebro, where she councils aupairs from the Philippines. Carstensen herself came to Denmark fromthe Philippines as a child in 1986, because her mother had married aDanish man. She speaks perfect Danish, English and two Philippinedialects.
One of the very first au pairs she spoke to, told her thatshe worked 24-7 and had never had a day off. She outlined some of herduties, which included polishing windows on the second floor of abuilding and cleaning the gutter.
Carstensen realized that the womanwas being abused, and wrote to the Danish Immigration Service.
She never heard back. She says that many au pairs have children at home, but decide not to tell their host families. Carstensen insists oncalling them “au pair-women” instead of the popular Danish term ”aupair-girls”.
http://avisen.dk/au-pair-worker-fights-the-abuse_129842.aspx
By Blue Rose on Thursday, 22 of July , 2010 at 4:24 pm
As the Integration Ministry tightens the rules for au pair visas, politicians and the media are discussing whether the au pair system is being used to exploit young women from developing world countries like the Philippines, or whether it’s become a shady gateway for foreigners to settle in Denmark.
Whatever the case, it is clear that the ground rules have changed. A new bilateral agreement with the Philippines will allow the Integration Ministry to stop au pairs using stays in Denmark to obtain permanent residence. Under the new visa rules, it will no longer be possible for an au pair to live with a family member in Denmark, or with a family of the same nationality as themselves.
The new rules seem to be aimed at controlling the mushrooming number of au pairs travelling here from the Philippines. In 2009, of the 2,773 au pairs registered in Denmark, 2,165 – or nearly 80 percent – came from the Philippines according to the latest figures from the Integration Ministry. This means that the number of Filipino au pairs increased by 356 percent between 2004 and 2009, while the size of the Filipino community in Denmark grew by 76 percent from 4,721 to 8,317.
The ministry has also begun to run checks on the marital status of candidates for au pair visas. In a spot check carried out on 49 cases involving Filipinos, they discovered that over half had given false information and were therefore ineligible. To receive an au pair visa one has to be under the age of 30 and unmarried. Visas are also restricted to those who do not have young children in their country of origin. Merete Pårensgaard, the head of department at the Integration Ministry, said that the new rules would be enforced to ensure that au pairs were coming to Denmark as part of a cultural exchange rather than for economic reasons.
‘They are not especially directed at Filipinos or reducing the number of au pairs,’ she said. While there haven’t been any protests about tightening up the rules for au pair applicants, politicians and lobby groups fiercely disagree about the practice itself. The government’s view on the matter seems to be laissez-faire. For instance Søren Pind, the development minister, wrote on his Facebook profile that the au pair system could be compared positively to sending foreign aid to developing countries.
However, this statement provoked the ire of the head of the development aid charity MS Action Aid Denmark. ’Au pairs have absolutely nothing to do with development aid,’ Trine Pertou Mach told national daily Politiken. ‘Development aid is about transferring some of our wealth to the world’s poorest people. Are we going to invite to Denmark all the Africans who need to be saved from poverty?’
Her words were backed up by Niel Tofte, the general secretary of Care Denmark, who also thought that the minister was off the mark. ‘It is like comparing apples and pears, and one cannot do that,’ he told Politiken. ‘Au pair girls from the Philippines will not solve world poverty.’
Anne Gautier, who has been involved with au pairs for a number of years and is a member of a network to protect the rights of au pairs, said that she too strongly disagreed with Pind’s remark. She describes the hardworking girls from East Asia as this century’s ‘skivvies’ – domestic servants who receive the worst pay and work under the worst conditions. ‘I spent 30 years in Spain and saw the same situation there. Now it is happening here in Denmark too. It’s become chic for families to have an au pair who can look after children and do the house work for just 3,000 kroner a month,’ she said.
Gautier teaches Danish to foreigners at a Hellerup language school and estimates that she has been in touch with around 1,000 Filipinos during the last four years. Instead of working as au pairs, she believes that they could contribute a lot more to Danish society if they were offered regular jobs. ‘Many of them would make excellent healthcare workers,’ she said. ‘They often speak much better English than Danes and have a strong work ethic. Unlike other minority groups, they adapt easily to Danish society.’
But she also pointed out that the problems with au pairs are not confined to the host countries. ‘The pressure on these girls comes from all sides,’ she said. ‘In the Philippines families also make unreasonable demandscv on these young women. They’ve become used to receiving support from them from abroad and there is a lot of corruption.
http://www.cphpost.dk/
