Hospitality workers and the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility

ABSTRACT

Building on the recent interest among labor geographers for workers’ ability to strategize around their mobility, and tourism researchers’ longstanding examination of mobile tourism workers, this paper explores the mobility agency of differently positioned hospitality workers. The findings suggest that workers are not always ‘strategic’ in relation to labor mobility, and that labor mobility and career paths must be recognized as fragmented, happenstance and erratic. Furthermore, this article argues for an approach to the study of mobile tourism workers that takes the relational as well as temporal aspects into account. This endeavor is in particular guided by the notion of stories-so-far and the understanding of people as both being and becoming. The empirical basis of this paper consists of 22 interviews with hospitality workers in four hotel workplaces in Sweden; the luxury city hotel, the suburban chain hotel, the city chain hotel and the seasonal hotel. Ultimately, I suggest that the multifaceted complex of considerations which workers negotiate, could be conceptualized as the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility.

摘要

基于最近劳工地理学者对工人战略规划其迁移的能力感兴趣以及旅游学者长久以来对旅游工人迁移的考察, 本文探讨了不同情境下酒店工人的迁移动力。研究表明, 酒店员工的迁移并不总是战略化的, 并且其迁移的职业路径是分散的、偶然的及不稳定的。此外, 本文提出了一个研究旅游劳工迁移的方法, 即考虑到旅游劳工迁移的关系与时间因素。本研究尤其受到“迄今经历”这个概念的启发, 把人既理解为初始存在又理解为转变存在的过程。本文的经验基础是由对瑞典四个酒店22位酒店员工访谈构成, 这四个酒店涵盖了城市豪华酒店, 郊区连锁酒店, 城市连锁酒店和季节性酒店。最后, 我建议应该把酒店员工迁移考虑的多个方面因素的组合理解为一个劳工迁移 (或不迁移) 的关系空间。

KEYWORDS:

• Labor mobility
• hospitality workers
• mobility agency
• relational space
• ‘stories-so-far’
• Sweden

关键词:

• 劳工迁移
• 酒店员工
• 迁移动力
• 关系空间
• 迄今经历

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Hanna Hirvelä, Department of Tourism Studies and Geography at Mid-Sweden University, for assisting in the data collection, and Dimitri Ioannides, Department of Tourism Studies and Geography, Mid-Sweden University, for being a careful reader of earlier drafts of this manuscript. The author is also grateful to Editor Alan Lew and for the constructive comments provided by three anonymous reviewers. This research has been funded by the EU Regional Fund [grant number 156701].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research has been funded by the EU Regional Fund [grant number 156701].

Notes on contributors

Kristina Zampoukos

Kristina Zampoukos is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the Department of Tourism Studies and Geography, Mid-Sweden University. Her research interest is mainly directed towards the interrelations between mobilities and the socio-spatial formations and divisions of labour.