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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the intersections between informal labour, migratory status, and the tourism monoculture in Barcelona, drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork. The research situates informal tourism labour within broader transformations in urban political economy.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the intersections between informal labour, migratory status, and the tourism monoculture in Barcelona, drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork. While tourism has long been promoted as a cornerstone of Barcelona’s post-crisis economy, its expansion has relied heavily on forms of labour that remain invisible, unregulated, and structurally marginalised.

The research situates informal tourism labour within broader transformations in urban political economy. As Barcelona has consolidated a tourism-driven growth model, informal work has proliferated as both a survival strategy for migrants with limited access to formal employment and as a cost-saving mechanism for actors operating in the tourism value chain.

Methodologically, the research combines participant observation in the public spaces surrounding the Sagrada Família with semi-structured interviews conducted with informal workers, local residents, and institutional actors. This ethnographic approach seeks to capture the lived realities of workers who occupy a liminal position between visibility and erasure: visible to tourists and police in public space, yet largely invisible in official accounts of the tourism economy. Through their narratives, the study explores how workers negotiate risk, sustain livelihoods, and develop informal organisational practices under conditions of social exclusion.

By foregrounding the experiences of informal workers in one of Europe’s most iconic tourist landscapes, this paper argues that any analysis of contemporary tourism must grapple with the labour regimes and migratory realities that make it possible. Ultimately, the research contributes to a grounded perspective on how touristified urban spaces are produced and sustained through unequal and often invisible forms of labour.