Cleaning guest rooms as care work? Politicization of hotel housekeeping in the Las Kellys movement

ABSTRACT

The literature on labour conflict in the field of paid care work deals primarily with highly feminized occupations that fit in with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) characterization of the care workforce, such as nurses, domestic workers and childcare providers. We focus instead on room attendants: a highly feminized occupational group that lies beyond the scope of the care economy defined by the ILO. Our analysis draws upon Briskin’s ‘politicization of caring’ through which care workers demand professional recognition, decent working conditions and fair wages, as well as call for the acknowledgement of caring as a collective responsibility. Following this thread, we look into the politicization of hotel housekeeping by Las Kellys, a Spanish movement of room attendants that frames hotel housekeeping as care work with the aim of subverting low social standing and improving precarious working conditions. Such a framing relies on two axes of meaning-making: (1) room attendant as provider of customer well-being, and (2) (hotel) cleaning as undervalued feminized basic care. This article expands the scope of the ‘politicization of caring’ beyond the limits of the care economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Care work
• cleaning
• hotel housekeeping
• politicization of care
• social movements

Acknowledgments

We are thankful to Las Kellys for participating in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by a doctoral grant from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya [2019/2020].

Notes on contributors

Verna Alcalde González

Verna Alcalde González is a PhD candidate at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His research interests include sociology of work, trade unionism, and social movements.

Ana Gálvez Mozo

Ana Gálvez Mozo is a professor of Organizational and Work Psychology. Her research interests include work precarity, telework, and non-standard forms of employment.

Alan Valenzuela Bustos

Alan Valenzuela Bustos is a PhD student at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research interests include work and organisations, organisational space, and work identities.