Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore daily aspects of the invisible yet essential physical and "emotional labour" performed by migrant hospitality workers in a Swiss touristic village. While this labour brings about a certain financial stability, it simultaneously confines the workers to a precarious present.

Paper long abstract:

The Alps have been shaping tourism imaginaries (Salazar and Graburn 2014) for the past two-hundred years, thanks to Romantic ideals of what life in the mountains entailed: that of a simple, traditional, farming culture. In this presentation, I look at the "backstage" and what enables such imaginaries to endure in a Swiss-German-speaking Alpine village which depends on tourism. Although rarely acknowledged in knowledge productions which have celebrated the mountain farmer as the original, local dweller, the village has historically relied on the labour of foreigners from countless European countries since the end of 19th century to build the tourist infrastructure or work in the hospitality industry. Despite the essential role they have played in the flourishing tourism economy - and contrary to the "win-win situation" that many locals described as a mediation between local demand for cheap, flexible workforce and the workers' eagerness to come to Switzerland for higher wages - most hotel and restaurant employees I met during my fieldwork felt exploited, excluded and made invisible from the village community. Following these workers, I discuss the daily aspects of the physical and "emotional labour" (Hochschild 1983) they perform when welcoming the "mass tourists" in the village, a task that locals are reluctant to perform and are able to avoid. I explore how the hospitality industry is for workers both a way to achieve financial stability and to legally stay in the village, as well as an entrapment and dispossessing force confining their lives to the precarious present.