Emotional labour/body work: the caring labours of migrants in the UK's National Health Service

Journal article

The provision of care is an increasingly pressing issue in the Global North. With an ageing population and policies encouraging women into the labour market, there is a growing need for workers to undertake paid caring. This poses important and urgent questions about the social organisation of labour markets. Care work typically is low paid and undertaken in precarious, informal, or temporary situations. Many posts are filled by economic migrants, raising concerns about a care deficit in sending countries. In this paper we examine the 'caring work' undertaken by migrant workers in a West London hospital. We employ a twofold characterisation of caring work. Like other bottom-end service sector work, this work is characterised by the face-to-face 'emotional labour'. However, it also requires 'body work': close and often intimate physical contact between carers and those they care for. We argue that both of these aspects are important in understanding how caring work is constructed as poorly regarded and low paid. We show how these features play out in particular ways for migrant workers employed in such caring work.

Authors: Dyer, S; McDowell, L; Batnitzky, A

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Geoforum
• Volume: 39
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 2030-2038
• Publication date: 2008-11-01
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.08.005
• ISSN: 0016-7185
• Language: English
• Keywords: Greater London; service sector employment; migration; emotional labour; care; body work
• Subjects: Geography