Ginta Yermava remembers bursting into tears when she spread the cash from her first Swedish pay on her bed in the flat she shares with three other Latvian cleaners. “In one week I earned as much as I did in one month as a teacher in Latvia,” she says.

The company Ms Yermava works for, Rent Hos Dig (“clean at your place”), is able to undercut rival cleaning companies by more than half by bringing Latvian women to Stockholm for six-month stints.