Mobility, migration and hospitality employment: Voices of Central and Eastern European women

This article reports the findings of an arts-based participatory action research project on the experiences of Central and Eastern European female migrants working in the hospitality sector in the United Kingdom. It critically explores the participants’ negotiations of their multiple, intersecting mobilities and immobilities,and reveals how their employment in hospitality both encourages and restricts these mobilities. The article is situated within the unfolding hopeful tourism scholarship perspective, and argues that its inclusive and participatory approach provides considerable insight into these migrant workers’ complex and often under-appreciated trajectories. The article concludes that the arts-based participatory methodology deployed in this research uniquely allows these highly mobile and at the same time immobilized hospitality workers to self-represent themselves and to maintain ownership of their stories.