Emotional and spatio-temporal dynamics of informal childcare: mother-employer and migrant care worker dyads in Istanbul

Abstract

In this study, against the background of the global care chain, we focus on emotions and emotional labour in informal childcare work within households employing live-in migrant care workers in Istanbul, Turkey- a significant hub for migrant care work in the Global South. Using qualitative research methods, we conducted semi-structured interviews with mother-employer and care-worker dyads in eight households to explore how emotional and spatio-temporal dynamics of emotional labour in childcare are negotiated in the semi-private sphere of the care-receiving household. These interviews revealed two main findings. First, dyads navigate emotions (guilt, jealousy, stress, anxiety, fear, love, and affection) on unequal terms aligned with feeling rules of childcare, set by mother-employers, and contested kinning processes linking migrant care workers and mother-employers as quasi family. Second, these emotional labour and kinning processes are navigated spatio-temporally by live-in migrant care workers and mother-employers, who depend on each other for livelihood and childcare support. In this way, binary spaces and times of work and non-work, private and public, and feminine and masculine are blurred, highlighting the complex nature of care work. Based on these findings, we argue that amidst a deepening care deficit in and beyond Turkey emotions and emotional labour of informal childcare work are unevenly but jointly managed through reparative practices by live-in migrant care workers and mother-employers.