NS34 Session 31

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Title: Work in Tourism and Hospitality: Precarity, Power, and Possibilities for Change

Organisers: Eleonora Rossi, Maria Thulemark, Tara Duncan and Susanna Heldt Cassel

Affiliation: Örebro University, Dalarna University and Thompson Rivers University

Description

The tourism and hospitality industry employs millions globally and is frequently positioned as a vehicle for inclusive growth, regional development, and social mobility. Yet, tourism and hospitality labour is also characterised by precarity; seasonality; informality; gendered and racialized hierarchies, migrant dependence, and exposure to environmental and economic shocks. As tourism systems confront climate change, digital transformation, overtourism, demographic shifts, and post-pandemic restructuring, questions of who benefits from tourism, and under what conditions, become increasingly urgent. If tourism is to act as an ‘active agent for good’, its labour regimes, employment practices, and value distributions require critical scrutiny.

This session invites contributions on the changing nature of work in tourism and hospitality and its implications for equity, sustainability, and justice. We welcome conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers that interrogate how work is organised, governed, experienced, and contested across tourism contexts. Contributions may examine tensions between growth-oriented tourism models and decent work aspirations; or the lived experiences of workers navigating insecurity, care responsibilities, and shifting regulatory environments. We are particularly interested in research that foregrounds workers’ voices and examines how labour practices shape tourism’s capacity to contribute positively to societies.

We welcome research grounded in diverse theoretical and empirical contexts, including but not limited to:

• Decent work, precarity, and labour market segmentation in tourism and hospitality
• Gendered, racialized, migrant, and youth labour inequalities
• Platformisation, algorithmic management, and digital labour in tourism services
• Emotional, embodied, and affective labour in hospitality settings
• Unionisation, collective organising, and new forms of labour activism