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ABSTRACT
Hotels are spaces of temporary accommodation, but they are also important temporary spaces for an increasingly mobile and segmented workforce with different backgrounds and motives. In this paper we wish to address the temporary and transitional nature of hotel work by employing the term ‘liminality’. More specifically, we analyse the hotel as a liminal space for transient workers that view this work as a temporary endeavour. By drawing upon data from a study of hotel workers in Norway, we discuss how the liminality of hotel work may be understood. Here, we turn to an important debate within tourism studies on the blurring relationships between consumer and producer identities in resorts, often referred to in terms such as ‘working tourist’ or ‘migrant tourist-worker’. For a relatively privileged group of workers, the hotel becomes a space of liminal lifestyle pursuits as well as a space of work. We also contrast this privileged group with a different and less privileged liminal group of ‘expatriate workers’. Transient lifestyles and consumption of recreation among workers can have problematic effects in terms of reducing solidarity, and we wish to develop this further by investigating how worker representation and solidarity develops in liminal spaces of work. While strategies of liminality may have a transformative impact on the individual, their aggregate effects might simultaneously alter the way in which hospitality work is negotiated – from the collective to the individual level. As such, hotels as employers of working tourists pose a great challenge to collective representation, and may undermine effective worker action for less privileged groups of workers. The final section of this paper addresses this challenge, asking what bearings the individualism that dominates liminal work spaces has for trade unionism in the hospitality industry.
摘要
宾馆是一种暂时性的住宿空间。对日益流动的、具有不同背景与动机、分工细密的劳动力来说, 宾馆也是一种重要的暂时性空间。本文我们使用过渡这个术语研究酒店工作的暂行与过渡的特点。更准确地说, 我们把宾馆作为宾馆工人的一种过渡性空间进行研究, 这些处于过渡期的工人把宾馆工作当作一种暂时性的工作。我们利用来自挪威宾馆工人的研究数据, 讨论了如何理解宾馆工作的过渡性。这里我们参加了旅游研究中一个重要的论辩, 就是度假区工人消费者与生产者的模糊关系, 在专业术语中他们经常称作“处于工作状态中的旅游者”或“流动的具有旅游者身份的工人”(Bianchi, 2000)。对这一具有特权的工人群体, 宾馆既是一种流动性的生活方式又是一种工作空间。我们也对这一特权群体与侨居工人 (另外一个不具有这一特权的流动群体) 进行了比较。 Bianchi (2000)强调了宾馆工人这种过渡性生活方式与娱乐消费存在的潜在的问题, 我们通过调查在宾馆这种过渡性工作空间里工人的代表性和团结如何发展, 希望进一步推进这种讨论。尽管宾馆工人的这种过渡性策略对个人可能具有变革性的影响, 但是他们的总体效果可能会同时改变接待业工作从集体到个人层面的谈判方式。因此, 宾馆作为这些处于工作状态的旅游者的雇主对工人集体的代表性提供了一个极大的挑战, 可能会损害工人中不具有特权群体的工作积极性。论文的最后部分通过提出主导宾馆流动空间的个人主义对接待业工会的影响, 讨论了这一挑战。
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Editor Alan Lew, guest editors Dimitri Ioannides and Kristina Zampoukos, and three anonymous referees for constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. The article is based on a research project entitled 'Industrial relations under global stress' (grant number 194332), funded by the Research Council of Norway's research program Welfare, Work and Migration.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Notes on contributors
Anders Underthun
Anders Underthun is a senior researcher at the Work Research Institute in Oslo. He holds a PhD in human geography from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. His interests include industrial relations in the hospitality and aviation industries, politics of regional economic development, and the impact of Temporary Work Agencies on the politics of work.
David Christoffer Jordhus-Lier
David Christoffer Jordhus-Lier is professor in human geography at the University of Oslo. He holds a PhD in human geography from the University of Manchester, and his specialisation is within labour geography and urban social movements. He has published a series of articles focusing on geographies of labour, neoliberalism and social movements.