Invisible Labor by Marion Crain, Winifred Poster, Miriam Cherry - Paper

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Retail employers demand that their employees represent their brands at considerable cost to themselves, wearing expensive clothes and fulfilling an image. Sexually themed restaurants require hours of "off-stage" grooming to ensure that the employees provide the desired experience for their customers. "Prestigious" corporations offer recent graduates the "privilege" of unpaid internships. Walmart manipulates a service ethic and subjects workers to surveillance from all directions to minimize labor costs. Restaurants conceal the employees toiling in the kitchens, and distant call centers create "American" identities for low-paid foreign labor. Invisible Labor grew out of a 2013 conference at Washington University, and features the provocative contributions of leading scholars exploring the complex institutional realities of global labor markets.
— CHOICE

"This outstanding edited volume goes beyond previous works on invisible labor by providing a more nuanced conceptualization, examining a wide range of workplace contexts both domestic and transnational, and exploring the legal ramifications of hidden workers. All these elements will be incredibly useful for graduates, undergraduates, and anyone else interested in the subject matter."—Jennifer Pierce, author of Racing for Innocence: Whiteness, Gender, and the Backlash against Affirmative Action

"A terrific collection full of insights that will engage specialists, students, and the general reader alike. Although the authors do not claim to have discovered hidden work, they bring its analysis up to date for the twenty-first century's networked and globalized world of work. They draw attention to the many forms of invisibility—where work is hidden from consumers, managers, and workers themselves—and degrees of obscurity. Drawing on a range of disciplines and vivid ethnographic studies that criss-cross the globe and sectors of employment, the authors document the centrality and ubiquity of invisible labor. The emphasis on race and ethnicity with respect to the service sector in the U.S. is particularly welcome. A focus on formal employment relations strengthens the argument, which is further enhanced by a succinct editorial introduction and conclusion, which provide an overarching analytical framework linking the diverse empirical chapters. Resonating with our everyday experiences of life, this is a lively and thought-provoking volume."—Miriam Glucksmann, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Essex

Invisible Labor

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Invisible Labor

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