La relation à l’employé vue du côté employeur: le travail domestique des migrantes ukrainiennes en Pologne

The resurgence of paid domestic work is characterized in Poland, as in other European countries, by the presence of foreign labourers. The difference between Poland and Western countries is that currently in Poland native domestic workers are more widespread than migrant workers, most often women from the Ukraine, whereas elsewhere the domestic service sector is a highly migrantized one. The employment of domestic helpers by the middle class is a recent phenomenon present throughout Europe. The second difference between Poland and other countries though is the socio-cultural baggage inherited from the socialist period. Indeed, the Polish middle class is, at least in part “de-socialized” and “de-culturalized” from the idea and ways of dealing with paid domestic help. The aim of the paper is to depict two contrastive ways of constructing and transforming the relation with the domestic worker based on two case-studies: of a person with socialization experience at home and one without any previous experience with dealing with a domestic worker. The first case of a person with socialization experience demonstrates the process of intimacy entering an asymmetry-based relationship. The second one, of a person with no socialization experience, demonstrates a transformation of a purely personal (symmetrical and intimate) relationship to one with elements of asymmetry. Both processes are problematic to the employers experiencing them. The data used in this article stem from doctoral research in progress.