If the North were the South: Housing for a living.

Erica* is not your typical young lady: At age 22, she is quite remarkable in the sense that she already seems to know her potential and limitations and works hard within these. She came to London to do GCSE courses and improve her English in order to later get into the film industry as an editor.  So she needed to go to university and get a qualification.

Unlike most first year university students in the UK she didn’t have the benefit of a loan or a scholarship in order to pay for her education nor her living expenses so she needed some kind of economic arrangement…of the honest kind.   She certainly had to work and study but with a labour market offering precarious part-time minimum wage jobs (i.e pub, catering or babysitting jobs) she couldn’t afford accommodation at a reasonable distance from university so she became a live-in au pair for a family.

Being a nanny (or a manny) is becoming an increasingly popular option not only among university students such as Erica but also among graduates moving to London many of whom hold degrees and qualifications that will not help them find a job in their field of studies.   Job ads in expatriate websites offer a glimpse to the level of desperation many young adults have found themselves into in order to sustain themselves…more so if you are not local and without any friends or relatives  to help you for a while.

In this sense being a live in house worker could be a convenient arrangement for both employee and employer, if kept within the boundaries of legal working conditions. But as affordable accommodation is becoming increasingly inaccessible, informal forms of work and accommodation are becoming more common. Within the world of informal house work the line between being just a free live-in worker and a house serf can become very thin as the balance of bargaining power often tips towards employers who offer free accommodation and/or food. This might seem like a sweet deal considering that accommodation and food consumes most of an average low wage workers income but in case you quit you might find yourself in trouble first, trying to find a new job and then confronting accommodation costs.  If you are not careful enough, this might bind you to your employer for a long time while not fulfilling the goals that brought you to London.

In some cases employers might initially ask you to do child minding chores but as time goes by they might also ask for house cleaning chores unless as an employee you want to risk falling apart with your employer. So employees might find themselves in quite a dilemma as their private lives become quite restricted dependent on the host family’s schedule. But without much of a choice young people like Erica might have to sacrifice part of their youth in order to pursue their goals.

Everybody knows life isn’t easy but honestly as a Third World Observer. witnessing such a degree of informality and exploitation in rich, socially advanced countries is worrisome and makes me wonder whether the North is going South while the South is going North making Guatemalan pop singer Ricardo Arjona’s song “Si el Norte fuera el Sur” a reality or… are we getting to a meeting point?

Unless the labour market increases the number of quality jobs offered and the housing market offers more affordable decent housing, informality might prevail thus contributing to blur the distinction between the Global North and the South. Just a thought…

Carlos Solis-Tejada, holds an MSc in Urbanisation & Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and is currently the Administrator of the My Home Project in London.

*Names have been changed in order to protect privacy