Hospitality & Society - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2012

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.

This article examines how female Swedish seasonal hospitality workers in Norway negotiate migrant living. ‘A posteriori’ it sets out to explore how the bubble lives constructed by many of the female workers are shaped by the Arctic location and lack of local contact zones, and are mainly upheld by their financial motives for taking the job. The difference of climate, natural surroundings and townscape, for instance, confines some of them to their temporarily rented rooms. The experienced transnational workers are less affected by difference and enjoy a more active lifestyle. Moreover, the midnight sun gives the women a sense of timelessness that disturbs their daily rhythm. This makes some of the women passive and sleepy, whereas others gain energy and do unexpected things. It is argued that the women’s construction of bubble lives is not so much about difference of place and timelessness, but rather their lack of ability to transfer earlier embodied senses of presence and time to the new community and location. Often secluded in a planted enclave, they do not learn about the Arctic and Arctic living. They thus remain in the bubble.

This article aims to analyse the overlap between work and home in farm tourism.When farmers diversify their production into tourism using their homes as a commercial arena for hosting visitors, new challenges regarding boundaries between private and public, home and work arise. The article shows how central aspects of hosting involve inherent dilemmas between the farm as a home and as a site of commercial activities. Moreover, it shows how the boundaries between work and home are managed in order to balance business and a sense of home. Such boundary work consists of attempts at adjusting the product, marking rules and creating separate spaces for home and work, something that produces a more conditional hospitality. The analysis is based on studies of twenty family farms from various districts in Norway. Some of the farms combine tourism and farming while others have altered their production to tourism only. The material includes formal interviews with sixteen women and nineteen men operating the businesses.

The commonly cited definition of what constitutes a holiday is that it is a change from the norm, or an escape from everyday life. But is this the case if tourists are going on a self-catering holiday where many of the tasks from everyday life such as cleaning, minding children and cooking must still be undertaken? This research is specifically interested in the role of mothers, from their own perspective, on such holidays. It explores how household responsibilities are divided between partners when on holiday and questions does this differ from the situation when at home? In so doing this article adds to our understanding about the holiday experience from a gendered perspective. This study has found that actual experience while on holiday does differ according to gender. It is clear that while self-catering holidays are an ‘escape’ from the everyday, women and mothers’ genderized roles are often maintained.A mixed-method approach involving two surveys and focus groups was employed. The field work for the study was undertaken in the Greater Dublin Area.

Calls for change within the hospitality sector have argued for the industry to seriously consider the implementation of professionalism. Concerns have been raised about the workplace conditions of many employees, the readiness of graduates to meet or challenge these practices, and commitment to sustainability in promoting and respecting the rights of people in the workplace. In this conceptual article traditional perspectives of professionalism are critically examined. A key argument is that recent changes to professionalism have transformed the term into another discursive tool for discipline, performance and control. Rather than focusing on professionalism this article asserts that the sector should seriously consider implementing meaningful work and dignity. The article concludes that integrating these concepts through practices such as caring relationships, trust and education of managers starts to open up avenues for change in this hostile industry. Overall, the article argues that by adopting a broader understanding of professionalism, one that incorporates communication and collaboration, and challenges the lack of dignity in the workplace, we can start to open up possibilities for interdisciplinary work and more importantly, change.

ALCOHOL, DRINKING, DRUNKENNESS: (DIS)ORDERLY SPACES, MARK JAYNE, GILL VALENTINE AND SARAH L. HOLLOWAY (2012)Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 168 pp.,ISBN: 9780754671602, p/bk, £50

THE THREE LEVELS OF SUSTAINABILITY, ELENA CAVAGNARO AND GEORGE CURIEL (2012) Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing, 328 pp.,ISBN: 978 1 906093 68 6, p/bk, £21.95

DERRIDA AND HOSPITALITY: THEORY AND PRACTICE, JUDITH STILL (2010) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, vii + 294 pp.,ISBN 978-0-74864-027-0, h/bk, £75