Paper short abstract:

By following migrant hospitality workers in a Swiss touristic resort, I explore how their aspirations for a better life were tied to the promises of tourism development, while experiencing failure in the present as they described their jobs as deeply dissatisfying, painful and entrapping.

Paper long abstract:

Modern tourism has been associated with positive imaginaries of the good life and ideals of mutual benefit between travelers and inhabitants of touristic destinations. At the same time, the tourism industry has been regularly described as environmentally and socially destructive, exploitative and based on gender and racial inequality. In this paper, I look at what working in this ambiguous field feels like for migrant hospitality workers living and working in hotels of a Swiss touristic resort. On the one side, I explore how their aspirations for a better and more stable life were tied to tourism development and migration policies. On the other, I look at how their lives were often shaped by the pervasive experience of failure in the present, as they described their jobs as deeply disappointing, painful and entrapping. By zooming in on the everyday experiences of these workers, I propose to understand the coexistence of these two affective states - feeling hopeful for the future and feeling deeply disappointed in the present- beyond the lens of contradictions. Migrant workers developed strategies to accommodate these feelings by for instance separating the times and places where they allowed themselves to feel hope and despair. Others chose to “swallow” the disappointment accompanying bad working conditions in the present in order to lead a bearable life and build a better future. Looking at how these strategies shaped the migrant workers' biographies, I call for a nuanced understanding of the affective dimensions of tourism development between failure and aspiration.