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Hospitality Work as Social Reproduction: Embodied and Emotional Labour during COVID-19

Charlotte Jones Orcid Logo, Lauren White Orcid Logo, Jen Slater Orcid Logo, Jill Pluquailec Orcid Logo

Sociology

Swansea University Author: Charlotte Jones Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1177/00380385231189190

Abstract

This article focuses on how the imaginary of a ‘safe’ environment was visualised and conveyed within the hospitality sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on diaries and interviews with 21 workers in the UK. Our findings show increased workloads for hospitality staff, compounded by anxieties...

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Published in: Sociology
ISSN: 0038-0385 1469-8684
Published: SAGE Publications
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa63843
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Abstract: This article focuses on how the imaginary of a ‘safe’ environment was visualised and conveyed within the hospitality sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on diaries and interviews with 21 workers in the UK. Our findings show increased workloads for hospitality staff, compounded by anxieties of risk and individualised COVID-19 regulation work. This includes workers’ negotiations of corporeal boundaries and distancing from customers, the visible cleaning of communal areas and recuperation and care work for their own bodies and others in shared living spaces. We draw on conceptualisations of embodied and emotional labour to understand these experiences, reflecting on the importance of the actions performed by workers in maintaining community spaces and creating customer confidence in safely enjoying a ‘hospitable’ environment. This article contributes to social science scholarship of embodied and emotional labour, hospitality and social reproduction.
Keywords: Body work, cleaning, COVID, emotional labour, employment, hospitality, hygiene, pandemic, social reproduction, work
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: Wellcome Trust

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