ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case for the importance of the detailed investigation of everyday contexts and power relations to better understand the complexities of mobile phone use in work life, based on long-term ethnographic research on global nannies in Paris. It argues that, far from an instrument of empowerment, the mobile phone can work to reinforce already existing power relations and mundane social structures, leading to more unequal and enslaving relationships in work life. The chapter argues that mobile phone use as mediated by the existing power relations can work to reinforce and even exacerbate, rather than transcend, existing inequalities and social divisions between privileged social groups and their serving class. It shows that the mobile phone has become an integral part of everyday work life, an important dimension of human existence or bodily extension that possibly contributes toward social capital.
