Abstract
This article contributes to debates on critical diversity and intersectionality by focusing on hotel labour in a global tourist destination, the city of Venice. Through a qualitative study it explores how social differences are experienced by workers and valued by hotel management. We find that while management tends to allocate workers to different jobs according to the perceived ‘desirability’ of their embodied attributes by customers, the gendered and racialized divisions among workers do not simply conform with traditional patterns of ‘back’ and ‘front‐of‐house’ occupational positions. Rather they reflect variable compositions along the gender, migration and racial stereotypes reproduced by employers’ attempts to fulfill perceived changing expectations of customers. We develop the notion of ‘intersectional management’ to capture these fluid forms of valorization of social difference, which appear influenced by workers’ practices of embodied intersectionality through the selective performance of entrenched stereotypes, and their everyday encounters with an internationalizing clientele.
Highlights
This article critically explores diversity management (Rodriguez, Holvino, Fletcher, & Nkomo, 2016; Zanoni, Janssens, Benschop, & Nkomo, 2010) and workers’ embodied experiences of differentiation (Mirza, 2013) in the hotel industry choosing Venice as a paradigmatic destination in the global hotel market
We respond to Rodriguez et al.'s (2016) call to expand the field of critical diversity in work and organizations to engage notions of intersectionality by applying an intersectional lens to the study of hotel labour in an under-researched geographical area
Instead of limiting our power analysis of diversity as an ‘organizational product’ developed unilaterally by management according to the nature of work/sector (e.g., Healy & Oikelome, 2011), we look at diversity and organizational inequality through the lens of intersectionality as contested fields where a galaxy of different actors, including workers, managers, customers and labour intermediaries play a critical role in mobilizing workers’ social differences (Adamson & Johansson, 2016; McDowell, Batnitzky, & Dyer, 2007)
Summary
This article critically explores diversity management (Rodriguez, Holvino, Fletcher, & Nkomo, 2016; Zanoni, Janssens, Benschop, & Nkomo, 2010) and workers’ embodied experiences of differentiation (Mirza, 2013) in the hotel industry choosing Venice as a paradigmatic destination in the global hotel market. In the literature on work and organization, hotel work has been studied under various perspectives: exploring the intersection of migration and staffing agencies (Alberti, 2014; Lai & Baum, 2005; McDowell, Batnitzky, & Dyer, 2008); in relation to dynamics of privilege and penalty in career outcomes (Mooney, Ryan, & Harris, 2017); cultural diversity (Devine, Baum, Hearns, & Devine, 2007); or with an international and comparative focus on worker conditions (Vanselow, Warhurst, Bernhardt, & Dresser, 2010). Instead of limiting our power analysis of diversity as an ‘organizational product’ developed unilaterally by management according to the nature of work/sector (e.g., Healy & Oikelome, 2011), we look at diversity and organizational inequality through the lens of intersectionality as contested fields where a galaxy of different actors, including workers, managers, customers and labour intermediaries play a critical role in mobilizing workers’ social differences (Adamson & Johansson, 2016; McDowell, Batnitzky, & Dyer, 2007)
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