Abstract
This article examines the effects of the vertical disintegration of production on airport terminal workers through the theoretical lens of occupational belonging, highlighting themes of sensory and embodied experience, changing dynamics of employment relationships, and new patterns of inclusion and exclusion. The article contributes to efforts to produce nuanced empirical accounts of the dynamics of post-Fordist work, showing how restructuring had the effect of disrupting employment relations and activity rhythms, while nevertheless preserving ‘the airport’ as a symbolic and relational setting in relation to which occupational belonging could be constructed. The article examines how the work of binding people and jobs, previously undertaken by integrated organisations, was taken up by workers themselves through their personal relationships and will to belong. The article highlights the capacity to undertake this work of belonging as a central dynamic of occupational inclusion and exclusion, a capacity which in this empirical context was experienced as being shaped by age and the ability to make use of personal relationships in navigating precarious employment relations. Based on this empirical analysis, the article argues for belonging as a valuable perspective for studies of materiality, symbolic identification and relationality in post-Fordist work.
Highlights
The concept of belonging has recently been addressed in a body of sociological literature, most noticeably in the sociology of ethnicity, migration, and citizenship
While the study of a small group of workers cannot be generalised to any population, the objective of this study is to describe the dynamics of occupational identity and community uncovered in analysing experiences of restructuring through the perspective of belonging, dynamics which are of potentially broader significance under conditions of vertical disintegration and precarious employment relationships
The article argued that analyses of workers’ experiences in such post-Fordist transitions call for sociological frameworks capable of addressing occupational identity as relational, bound up with dynamic assemblages of belonging involving people, places, and practices (May, 2011; Youkhana, 2015)
Summary
The concept of belonging has recently been addressed in a body of sociological literature, most noticeably in the sociology of ethnicity, migration, and citizenship. This article draws on belonging as an ideal analytical framework for investigating the relationship between labour conditions and subjectivity in the restructuring of work, highlighting the relations of belonging developed through work as uncertain achievements subject to transformation, disruption, and struggle This perspective is applied to an empirical investigation of aviation workers’ experiences of restructuring at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport. The study focusses on the everyday materialities highlighted by the literature on belonging, showing how it was generated among aviation ground service personnel through the materiality of places and things (Youkhana, 2015), and shared and embodied experiences of the sensory environment and activity rhythms (Bennett, 2015) This everyday material foundation of belonging is examined in relation to changes in the labour process produced by outsourcing and vertical disintegration, which disrupted employment relations while preserving the airport space as a sensory and rhythmic infrastructure in relation to which occupational belonging continued to be constructed. The airport at Helsinki-Vantaa serves as the hub for international air travel to and from Finland by multiple airlines, as well as a transfer airport for Finnair’s international
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