Spent 9 months traveling Europe with FREE Accommodation and Food

You are very lucky you were not caught. Working without a work visa is illegal work. Working under a tourist visa or visa waiver program like Schengen is illegal work and entering a country illegally. Just because you were paid in kind instead of money means absolutely nothing.

A local worker has lost their job or the opportunity of a job because you took it away.

And you "outed" one of your illegal employers. I'm surprised that you don't mind if is visited by the border control agents now that you have named him.

When you first came on you said it was "friends" you were staying with so that you would get the answers you wanted here, instead of saying at the beginning that you were working your way around. I hope that they were all friends at the end.

I'm sure you had a great time. Just remember that it is against the community guidelines here to encourage somebody to do something illegal.

'Technically'. Kind of a big word.

Technically, President Clinton, 'did not . . . . with that woman'.

Who told you that no work visas were needed? Did you check that out with a consulate or a lawyer? Note that the Work Away web site takes no responsibility regarding whether your work trade is legal in any location. They are simply acting as a listing service (like Craig's List) but leave it up to you, the worker, to enquire about and secure the proper working visas in each area; see http://www.workaway.info/terms-conditions.html. This seems like a nice loophole for them to encourage possibly illegal behavior while claiming otherwise. You should not spread this message without being sure of the legal ramifications.

This NYT article encourages would-be volunteers to check visa requirements for their destination. Some countries may be willing to take all the help they can get, but that's not the case in Europe.

This reminds me of an old discussion - "I was on city x, it was August, controllers were mostly on vacation, so I travel a whole week without purchasing a travel ticket for trams and buses, and I didn't see anything wrong since I wasn't caught or fined".

For anyone reading this topic, please note our Community Guideline #7:

Do not help people break laws. Speaking of the existence of law
breaking is OK. Sharing how to circumvent visa restrictions, scam
hotels, or perform other illegal acts is prohibited.

First, Rick Steves Europe, Inc does not provide legal advice with regard to working internationally. To be more specific, we do not provide legal advice. As such, we do not know the detailed requirements involved with international work visas, nor is it reasonable for us to be able to ascertain whether or not the OP's actions were legal. We are allowing this thread to continue to exist as an example to show that visa rules need to be followed. If the rule is that you need a work visa for work exchange programs, the OP was simply misinformed and was lucky to not get caught. Thus, as the webmaster in charge of ensuring that our guidelines are followed, I see the OP's post as possibly "speaking of the existence of law breaking" since acting under the guise of possible misinformation does not constitute "sharing how to circumvent visa restrictions."

Work exchange programs may be a great way to travel through Europe with free food and accommodation and it is great to see that encouraged. However, it is your responsibility to ensure that your actions are legal.

It's interesting to go back and read what was told to these young women when they contacted the embassies:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/rail-pass-selection-advice-for-a-long-trip

@Webmaster: posting a link to the organization that promotes clandestine work by foreign nationals seems to surpass the threshold of commenting that illegal activity exists and brings it to the level of promoting such activity, in my opinion.

The organizations do not promote clandestine work. The plainly state that they are just facilitators providing connections for cultural exchanges. They state that any visas are the responsibility of the individual. Period. The rules are different for many countries, even for individuals in the same country. What a legal nightmare the organizations could be in if they tried to post the requirements for every situation.

If I rent a car it is my responsibility to see that I follow the traffic & driving laws of whatever country I am in. If I buy a plane ticket to Russia it is my responsibility to obtain the proper visa. Same thing here - don't understand why folks think there is some sort of illegal activity here

Most of you responded assuming work exchange programs are illegal. This is not the case. Someone did mention that the rules are different in all countries and this is exactly right. Someone else posted the link that leads you to the conversation we had on here, last year, about contacting the embassies. IF you are interesting in this post, you might want to read what that link says.

To sum it up, we called every embassy due to the fact that most countries had work visas and then volunteer visas, but "exchange" doesn't fit under either of these and we wanted to find out which one to apply for. The majority of countries were stumped by our question and usually responded with, "well you would not be able to apply to any of our visas, but we don't have a visa for that, as long as you leave before the 90 days are up, you are fine" Like I said on that link, Denmark specifically told us to tell immigration we are staying with friends, so keep it simple. It was approached more as a spirit of the law thing, clearly since there are no black and white laws, yet, regarding exchange.

The UK is an exception! We did find out that this would be illegal in England; it is specifically mentioned in UK documents. Luckily, my father is from England, so I was able to stay with family while there. Thus I AM NOT PROMOTING ANYONE TO DO THIS IS COUNTRIES WHERE THERE ARE CLEAR LAWS AGAINST IT and as some of you have mentioned, it would be up to each traveler to do their own research on the countries.

Honestly, one day I hope they have a visa specifically for this sort of travel. I will promote it for the rest of my life and hope to one day be a host for such a program.

Let the discussion continue.

Jo,

I think that what you and your best friend did is amazing. I would love to spend a summer somewhere doing the same thing.

Consider the following scenario... you visit a friend who lives in France. That friend is also very good friends with their next door neighbor. You plan on staying in France for 2 weeks, but can only spend 3 nights with your friend. Your friends neighbor, whom you don't know, offers to host your for the duration of your stay in France given you walk his dogs and keep the apartment clean or whatever chore you can think of... is there anything wrong with that? Is that illegal? Seems like the same thing to me, unless I'm missing something.

All 3 of the links have insurance information - firstly they all highly recommend it and secondly they all have a link to a company that will cover them on a working holiday.

Some of the Schengen countries operate a split system where they do not put the requirement specifically on the entry, but to work you should a separate permit. Spain is one example here.

Denmark defines work as: 'create a product, change a product or contribute to the output of a company in any way'. Nothing about payment etc. This activity requires a work and residence permit.

I just gotta ask...

1. How is what these women did significantly different from what any group or organization does when they go to another country to volunteer? Are those volunteers also taking jobs away from the people who live there?

2. How do we know that the hosts are using these volunteers as very cheap labor instead of employing locals? Isn't it possible that they can't find local people willing to do the kinds of work these women did?

3. Although the OP stressed the economics of the exchange, isn't what they did a valid form of cultural/language exchange for both them and the hosts?

From what has been posted so far, it seems to me that they did everything they could do to do the right thing, to the benefit of their hosts and themselves.

It appears to be a very gray area for some countries. Based on the description the work is performed for family operations - mom & pop type businesses who might struggle financially with paying an employee's wages but have the facilities to host volunteers of this type. In reading the answers Jo was given by the various embassies they either are not geared to handle this situation or like in the case of Denmark's reply to them:

Denmark, like a lot of the countries were taken off guard by our question and talked to other people in the office for a good answer for us, They told us the same response as most countries, that is is not a problem and no work visa is required, but they did say "If you are stopped by an immigration officer, tell them you are staying with a friend, and give them the name and address of your host family, but keep it simple and don't mention anything about working for them in exchange for stay and you will be fine"

they have a "don't ask, don't tell" view.

It sounds like a wonderful learning opportunity.

I actually find it worrying that some embassies are apparently quite happy to advise people to lie, or at best conceal their intentions to their own border officials. Of course the way the system works, once inside Schengen they are very unlikely to encounter any kind of questioning.

I doubt somehow the same response might have been obtained if instead of Embassies the question had been put to countries' employment ministries or equivalents.

Now there are reciprocal arrangements between countries that permit young people to work in each other's country. There aren't that many open to USA citizens though as the USA does not want in general to play ball and admit unskilled young workers into its country.

I just spent a bit scrolling through about 100 of the listings. A large part of them are for "homestays"- "we have a 19th century house in the xxxx region that we are currently remodeling ourselves. We are looking for helpers for painting, gardening, fence repairs, etc..."

There are of course other that are businesses but mainly small ones - help us with our gites, we run a B&B, organic & non-organic farms, some very interesting places.

Thanks for the support! As a global community, our governments should be fostering programs like this. How better can you understand a culture than living with the locals? Sorry if my title came across as if we were doing this for economic reasons alone. I should not have worded it that way, I just knew it would grab attention. Really this is about cultural exchange. I want people to know about this because all of the people involved benefit (even the economy of the country, for those of you whom want to make the case that we took jobs- think of how much we gave to their economies with all of that money/time spent in each place!)

Travel on, live on, learn on!