Abstract
This chapter presents the first step of the application of research findings in the world of praxis. After a first period of research in the field of home working with au-pairs and some first considerations about the usability of research outputs from the domains of conversation analysis and discourse study, the chapter illustrates several steps that have been undertaken to contact and inform different stakeholders. Specifically, recruiting agencies as well as prospective au-pairs are seen to be the most important interlocutors for a dialogue with the researchers. However, several difficulties and issues have arisen, that demonstrate how complex the home working setting is and how much work still needs to be done for improving the information exchange between the research field and the real world.
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Notes
- 1.
I have chosen this age-range since in Germany, where I live, it is common that mothers stay at home from work for the first year of their children, so that there would be no need for an external help. When a child is 5 or 6 years old, s/he might start with school, so that s/he would be away most of the time in a day. This also influences the choice of not hiring an external caregiver.
- 2.
This is the German-French Office for the Youth (my translation), which is a transnational cultural association with the aim of stimulating the contact between the youth and the adults in the domain of teaching of both German and French. More information can be found in their homepage: https://www.dfjw.org/aufgaben
- 3.
The au-pairs’ names I use in this paper are fictive for the sake of preventing their privacy.
- 4.
I have indeed found four au-pair girls’ groups in Facebook and have sent them a message, also publishing it in a post on their pages (i.e. I have contacted them twice). The four groups are: “Au Pair en France”, “Au Pair International”, “Au Pair World” and “Au Pair Europe”. I have contacted them on 7 July with the following message: Hello everybody! My name is Clelia König and I am a PhD student at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). For my dissertation and two articles that I want to write, I am searching for future au pairs and host-families to have a look at some interesting audio-data. In Switzerland, I have collected real conversations between au pairs and their families (all are anonymised) and now I wish to use these data for future au pair and families. Wouldn’t it be nice and interesting to listen to what is talked about daily? Could this be of use to better understand what is coming up? I would like to collect as much feedback as possible on the data ... so thank you for helping me! To be sure I am a serious researcher, you can find my thesis here: http://www2.unine.ch/islc/page-34729.html (search for Clelia König), and the description of the whole research project here: http://www2.unine.ch/islc/page-35039.html I can also send you per e-mail the articles I have already published about au pairs and second language learning, if you wish so. Please, feel free to contact me via e-mail with every question or clarification request you might have! My e-mail address is clelia.koenig@unine.ch. I speak fluently Italian, German, English and French
I hope to read from you soon!
Best regards,
Clelia
Unfortunately, I received only one answer, but the person who wrote me was not identifiable, so that I could not trust her account and I decided not to include her answer in my research.
- 5.
In a similar way, the report of another au-pair girl in Paris, whose name is not included in the paper, indicates the major difficulties to be at the beginning of her stay: on the one hand, because she does not speak the L2 very well, on the other hand, because she is an outsider and the reticence of the children to spend time with her is a big issue to cope with.
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List of contacted recruiting agencies:
–Au pair World.: http://aupairworld.de/english/index_e.html
–Au pair Agentur Merkel.: http://aupair.agentur-merkel.de
–Au pair Vermittlung Anna-Maria Schlegel.: http://www.aupair-ams.de/#
–Au pair Vermittlung und Beratung Giebner.: http://www.aupaironline.info
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König, C. (2020). Outreach and Collaboration with Au-Pair Girls in Home Employment Settings. In: Grujicic-Alatriste, L. (eds) Language Research in Multilingual Settings. Communicating in Professions and Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34671-3_9
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