Balancing care and control: Emotional labour and dignity in a solidarity restaurant

From the perspective of a gendered political-economy analysis, this chapter explores migrant and minority ethnic workers’ discourses around emotional labour in older-age care in Paris, London and Madrid. While migrant and minority ethnic care workers’ narratives demonstrate the prevalence of emotional labour in their daily work, institutional practices and supervision mechanisms render that emotional labour invisible. This chapter argues that commitment, love and attachment play a particular role in building up care workers’ occupational identity, dignity and pride. The ‘ethics of care’ that emerges from respondents’ discourses enters, in this regard, in contradiction with the professionalisation attempts that teach detachment and deem emotional commitment unprofessional. The chapter seeks to uncover this paradox whereby the dominant professional norms reflect gendered conceptualisations of what constitutes work and fail to acknowledge the centrality of emotional labour. Building upon this analysis, the chapter calls for an extension of the concept of ‘emotional labour’ to address theoretically the complexity of migrant and minority ethnic care workers’ narratives in which emotions at work both contribute positively to their sense of agency and constitute a daily challenge.

Care ethics has been advanced as a suitable framework for evaluating the ethical significance of assistive robotics. One of the most prominent care ethical contributions to the ethical assessment of assistive robots comes through the work of Aimee Van Wynsberghe, who has developed the Care-Centred Value-Sensitive Design framework (CCVSD) in order to incorporate care values into the design of assistive robots. Building upon the care ethics work of Joan Tronto, CCVSD has been able to highlight a number of ways in which care practices can undergo significant ethical transformations upon the introduction of assistive robots. In this paper, we too build upon the work of Tronto in an effort to enrich the CCVSD framework. Combining insights from Tronto’s work with the sociological concept of emotional labor, we argue that CCVSD remains underdeveloped with respect to the impact robots may have on the emotional labor required by paid care workers. Emotional labor consists of the managing of emotions and of emotional bonding, both of which signify a demanding yet potentially fulfilling dimension of paid care work. Because of the conditions in which care labor is performed nowadays, emotional labor is also susceptible to exploitation. While CCVSD can acknowledge some manifestations of unrecognized emotional labor in care delivery, it remains limited in capturing the structural conditions that fuel this vulnerability to exploitation. We propose that the idea of privileged irresponsibility, coined by Tronto, helps to understand how the exploitation of emotional labor can be prone to happen in roboticized care practices.

After All Is Said and Done: On Fluid Solidarity and Survival

Identifying the complex relationships among emotional labor and its correlates

This study examines how a group of eight teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Greece discuss their efforts to address their students’ language anxiety (LA). We found that in most cases, these teachers’ efforts are motivated by an ethic of care (Noddings, 1988, 2005, 2013) in which they seek to construct positive relationships with students in order to help mitigate their students’ LA. Though desirable, such efforts often result in ‘emotional labour’ as teachers suppress their own negative emotions while attending to those of their students. Adopting a dialogical perspective to teacher engagement with anxious learners, we analyse the affective or emotional labour that language teachers often undertake in responding to their students’ displays of LA. Drawing on positioning theory, we explore these concepts through analysing these language teachers’ interview accounts, produced in response to questions related to their students’ LA.

This paper is a report of a concept analysis of emotional labour. Caring is considered as the essence of nursing. Underpinning caring, the internal regulation of emotions or the emotional labour of nurses is invisible. The concept of emotional labour is relatively underdeveloped in nursing. A literature search using keywords 'emotional labour', 'emotional work' and 'emotions' was performed in CINAHL, PsycINFO and REPERE from 1990 to January 2008. We analysed 72 papers whose main focus of inquiry was on emotional labour. We followed Rodgers' evolutionary method of concept analysis. Emotional labour is a process whereby nurses adopt a 'work persona' to express their autonomous, surface or deep emotions during patient encounters. Antecedents to this adoption of a work persona are events occurring during patient-nurse encounters, and which consist of three elements: organization (i.e. social norms, social support), nurse (i.e. role identification, professional commitment, work experience and interpersonal skills) and job (i.e. autonomy, task routine, degree of emotional demand, interaction frequency and work complexity). The attributes of emotional labour have two dimensions: nurses' autonomous response and their work persona strategies (i.e. surface or deep acts). The consequences of emotional labour include organizational (i.e. productivity, 'cheerful environment') and nurse aspects (i.e. negative or positive). The concept of emotional labour should be introduced into preregistration programmes. Nurses also need to have time and a supportive environment to reflect, understand and discuss their emotional labour in caring for 'difficult' patients to deflate the dominant discourse about 'problem' patients.

This article addresses the issue of affective labour in education in the context of standards-based reforms and accountability. In particular, it focuses on neoliberal strategies of rationalization and control that produce a number of social pathologies, such as alienated teaching and learning and reified social relations between teachers and students. The article turns to affective labour as something that enables teachers to counteract these effects. This argument arises from the analysis of interviews with teachers who continue to generate and sustain the sociality of teaching and learning. Affect directs teachers’ commitment to practice that is governed by feeling, passion and the ethics of care. What gives affective labour such an important position is that it is both outside and beyond accountability and performativity measures. It is identified with the general pedagogical activity that cannot be structured by measuring devices such as students’ test scores or standards. The article concludes with the application of Vygotsky’s ideas about the role of affect in education and argues that affective labour has an expansive power of ontological freedom that cannot be controlled.

Rural teachers in resource-constrained environments engage in complex and sustained emotional labour as they navigate intersecting professional, cultural, and institutional expectations with limited systemic support. This study investigates how rural teachers in northeastern China perform emotional labour across classroom, school, and community contexts, with particular attention to the strategies they adopt and the structural forces that shape their affective experiences. Drawing on a qualitative case study design with data collected from semi-structured interviews across three rural school sites, the research reveals a dynamic interplay of surface acting, deep acting, and genuine emotional expression. These strategies are shaped by institutional demands, gendered norms, and community surveillance, and are further mediated by teachers’ gender, professional experience, and subject specialization. The findings underscore how emotional labour in rural teaching is not simply a personal coping mechanism, but a socially regulated process embedded in broader systems of affective discipline. The study calls for context-sensitive interventions—including emotional resilience training, gender-responsive support policies, and localized mental health resources—to mitigate emotional burnout and enhance teacher well-being.

The purpose of this study is to verify how the emotional labor of long-term care workers in long-term care facilities, who are relatively exposed to emotional labor, affects their happiness and whether burnout has a significant mediating effect in the relationship between these variables. To achieve the purpose of this study, 407 long-term care workers working in long-term care facilities in Daegu and Gyeongbuk were sampled and data were collected through a questionnaire survey. Then, statistical verification was conducted through multiple regression analysis and mediation effect analysis. As a result, when the long-term care workers’ age, work experience, marital status, and household monthly income were controlled, emotional labor had a negative effect on happiness. In addition, burnout had a significant mediating effect in the relationship between emotional labor and happiness, and the nature of the mediating effect was confirmed to be a partial mediating effect. After conducting a discussion based on these analysis results, this study derived and presented the following three implications: First, from an academic perspective, it is necessary to expand research by assuming more diverse research models on emotional labor, burnout, and happiness, or targeting other groups of emotional laborers. Second, from a practical perspective, it is necessary to apply educational strategies that simultaneously control emotional labor and burnout to improve the happiness of long-term care workers. Lastly, from a policy perspective, it is necessary to continuously expand budgetary support for human resource management of long-term care workers in long-term care facilities.

Purpose: This research aims to develop an emotional labor scale and examine the consistency of the emotional labor measurement model with empirical data. The study focuses on individuals with long-term work experience and incorporates cross-cultural perspectives to address gaps in current research. Additionally, it seeks to create a standardized model for measuring and evaluating emotional labor that is applicable to contemporary work environments. Methodology: The population is front-service employees of hotels in Chonburi Province, and the sample consists of 280 front-service employees of hotels in Pattaya City, Chonburi Province. The research methodology for developing the emotional labor scale in this phase is quantitative research, using confirmatory factor analysis to examine the consistency of the emotional labor measurement model. Findings: The results of the model fit analysis and quality assessment of the CFA model found that the RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) was 0.217, indicating a lack of fit between the model and data. The CFI (Comparative Fit Index) was 0.591. The TLI (Tucker-Lewis Index) was 0.442. Finally, the IFI (Incremental Fit Index) was 0.595. Based on the presented indices, this model has a poor fit with the data. The RMSEA, CFI, TLI, and IFI values are lower than the recommended criteria, indicating a discrepancy between the model and data. Unique Contribution to Theory, Policy and Practice: These findings suggest that current emotional labor measurement models may not accurately capture the experiences of workers across different cultures and with varying lengths of work experience. Policymakers and organizations should consider developing more nuanced and culturally sensitive approaches to assess and manage emotional labor in the workplace. This could involve creating tailored training programs, revising performance evaluation metrics, and implementing supportive policies that acknowledge the complexity of emotional labor across diverse work environments.

The purpose of this study is to examine the positive and negative factors that affect the socio-psychological stress experienced by the sudden surge in workload due to the COVID-19 pandemic, within the framework of the image of civil servants that emphasizes the spirit of service to the public. This is a descriptive survey to identify the emotional labor and social support of public health center officials during the COVID-19 outbreak, and to identify factors that influence these variables on social and psychological stress. The survey was conducted from May 31, 2022 to June 18, 2022. In order to analyze the collected data, general characteristics, emotional labor, social support, and sociopsychological stress levels were analyzed by number and literacy rate, mean and standard deviation. Difference tests according to general characteristics were analyzed by t-test and ANOVA, and post-hoc tests were analyzed by Shceff test. To understand the correlation, Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis were used to determine the degree of influence on psychosocial stress.
 As a result of this study, emotional labor scored an average score of 3.23 out of 5, social support scored an average of 3.77 out of 5, and psychosocial stress was 2.23 out of 4. According to the general characteristics, emotional labor was higher in men than in women, and differences in social support were found in work experience and service area. Social and psychological stress had different effects according to the rank and age. Psychological stress and emotional labor showed a positive correlation and negative correlation with social support, and the relationship between emotional labor and social support was not statistically significant. The factors affecting psychosocial stress were emotional labor, social support, current position, and age, in the order of 36.8% of explanatory power. Based on these research results, it is absolutely necessary to develop a program that can mediate the social and psychological stress of public officials in a situation where a new infectious disease such as Corona 19 may appear or reappear.

This special issue introduces new perspectives on emotional labor in the service context. That is, while service work has been a focus of much of the emotional labor research world, explication of the context in which that service work occurs (including the customers served, the leadership of those who serve, and the larger organizational context) has not received much attention. In addition, the emotional labor of customers has also not been much explored. The papers included in this special issue explore these issues from the viewpoints of both the fields of organizational behavior and services management; they consider emotional labor from both employees’ and customers’ perspectives; and they explore the outcomes of emotional labor in ways that signal the common human experiences of people when in interaction with each other. Together, these papers offer new insights on emotional labor by translating service characteristics and service leadership into attitudes and experiences of service workers and customers, their behaviors and emotions, and ultimately into their health and wellbeing. This introduction provides a series of lenses useful for interpreting the papers in this special issue. We hope that the depth and diversity of new directions for emotional labor research and practice that are suggested by this special issue will inspire many researchers and practitioners navigating this world to provide both understanding of it and further the health and well-being of those involved in it.

The purpose of this paper is to reframe child forensic interviewing in terms of emotional labor. Child forensic interviewing practice illustrates a public service function that demands emotional labor yet fails to empower its workers with skills to preserve their personal wellbeing. Under an ethic of care, public servants are not the means to organizational ends. Failing to articulate emotional labor demands fosters occupational stress and burnout. While many studies examine negative psychological outcomes from public service work, few examine the impact on children’s services workers, and even fewer explore emotional labor as a mechanism through which negative outcomes arise.

Given the robustness of workplace engagement in determining motivation and satisfaction, it became eminent to identify the factors that could catalyse such among non-academic staff of Nigerian universities. This study therefore sought to unravel the interactions of emotional intelligence, emotional labour and employee engagement among non-academic staff of a selected University. Cross-sectional survey research design was adopted and data gathered from randomly selected one hundred and seventy-six non-academic staff in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. Gender distribution revealed that 65.9% of the respondents (116) were males, while 34.1% (60) were females. Four hypotheses were tested using parametric statistics at .05 level of significance. Findings revealed that collectively, emotional labour and emotional intelligence predicted only 5% of the variance in employee engagement; only emotional intelligence independently predicted employee engagement. Finally, collectively, socio-demographic factors (age, educational experience and work experience) predicted 20% variance in employee engagement; the independent contributions of age, educational experience and work experience were significant in the model. The study concluded that emotional labour when alone cannot make a significant impact on work engagement unless when paired with emotional intelligence. Hence, only non-academic staffs of universities who are emotional intelligent can successfully combine emotional labour to produce a high level of engagement. The study recommends that emotional intelligence training be included in the regular training/workshop requirements for university non-academic staff.

This study has attempted to figure out differences between emotional labor and psychosocial stress by occupation-related variables against hairdressing industry workers. For this, a total of 191 hairdressers in Busan were examined using emotional labor scale and psychosocial stress scale. The survey was conducted from July 1 to 30, 2011 using t-test, ANOVA and Scheffe's test. Then, the following results were obtained: First, according to analysis on difference in emotional labor by occupation-related variables, difference was found by monthly income in 'control of emotion' category. In terms of 'emotional dissonance,' difference was observed by job title and monthly income. In 'positive expression of emotions,' difference was detected by monthly income and number of off-days per month. Second, according to analysis on difference in psychosocial stress by occupation-related variables, differences were found by age, job title, education, work experience, monthly income, working hours and number of off-days per month. According to the analysis above, monthly income is related with both emotional labor and psychosocial stress among occupation-related variables.