Globalising the Thai ‘high-touch’ industry: exports of care and body work and gendered mobilities to and from Thailand

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the global trade of Thai tourism and related service industries such as restaurant, spa and hospital – service activities in which the body and bodily emotions of both service consumers and providers are central. I will demonstrate how the Thai state and private sector market Thai services to the world and construct Thailand as a destination for bodily and spiritual fulfilment. Analysing Thailand as an exporter of care and body labour, this article highlights the important role the nation-state and local socioeconomic structures play in shaping global care chains. State policy that promotes tourism and related service industries as a key economic development strategy has shaped current interrelated forms of transnational mobilities between Thailand and more affluent countries – marriage migration, health and medical tourism, and retirement migration. I also explore the interface between Thai state policies on the export of care and lived experiences of Thailand-Europe transnational migrants. Through their occupation choices, marital relocation decisions and care arrangements, Thai migrants in Europe and European migrants in Thailand both resist and reproduce the commodification of care and body work.

KEYWORDS:

• Massage
• body work
• Thai tourism
• care
• high-touch industry

Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges support from an award (NAFR1180155) by the British Academy Newton Fund and Thailand Research Fund held jointly with Paul Statham: ‘Selling Thai-ness’ to Westerners: the social and development impacts of marketing ‘Thai-ness’ on entrepreneurs and people who work in the small-scale service sector.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Thai wellness tourism includes a spiritual element in which travellers are promised to find tranquillity and spiritual wellness in Thai Buddhism, meditation retreats or simply the atmosphere in Thailand.