Towards a Hostessing Society? Mobile Arrangements of Gender and Labour

Abstract

This article theorizes the forms and interrelations of mobilized work and arrangements of gender in the context of “new work”: an ideology of the flexible labour market of the new economy from the perspective of the workers. The notion of new work is further complicated by the thesis of the feminization of work, whereby, on the one hand, temporary employment is increasingly common also among men and, on the other, attributes and conditions formerly connected to women and understood as feminine virtues or domestic skills are now required from both women and men. Meanwhile, women migrate and are trafficked from poor countries to wealthy ones to perform a range of “old work” for women. Here, the social transformation of work is addressed from the point of the contingent, contradictory, and complex interplay of work and gender, situated in concrete social worlds too often left out of serious discussions of work and mobilities, namely, the spheres of home and leisure. Domestic and tourism work, characterized by the requirements of new work, are unfolded through two constructed personal narratives based on empirical data collected by the authors. They illuminate the theoretical statement made in the article, of hostessing being the grounding principle in contemporary work. Hostessing is a skill and performance experienced and embodied by both women and men, individually and globally, but not necessarily in similar terms and consequences.