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This paper examines the experiences of hotel housekeepers inSweden, focusing on how their embodied identities, shaped byfactors like gender, race, and migration background, influence andare influenced by their work. Placing the body at the centre of ourresearch, we explore how embodied intersectionality is situatedand contextually produced as lived experience in hotel workplaces.The way in which intersectional power dimensions are played outand performed is closely interconnected to bodies and the embod-iment of roles, duties, identities and expectations inherent in theoccupational context of the workplace. Through working partici-pant observation, we explore the daily routines and bodilydemands of housekeeping work, a low-status, feminised occupa-tion predominantly filled by women and migrants. Our paperemphasises how embodied intersectionality operates within theworkplace, revealing power dynamics, challenges, and subtle formsof resistance enacted by the workers. Our analysis illustrates thatthe ways in which hotel housekeeping work is carried out isshaped by expectations on what it means to be a housekeeper asmuch as it is by wider intersectional factors and embodied identi-ties. We conclude by advocating for a greater emphasis on theworking body in workplace studies to understand the nuancedrealities of such marginalised labourers.

This paper explores the collaborative methodology of conducting working participant observation in a team setting to study the experiences of hotel housekeepers in Sweden. It aims to refine and extend the method of working participant observation by highlighting the benefits of a team approach to intensive ethnographic fieldwork. Drawing on critiques of 'traditional' geographical methods that rely heavily on interviews, the researchers immersed themselves in the physical labour of housekeeping alongside housekeepers, engaging their own bodies as research instruments. The research team navigated the complexities of embodied labour, reflecting on how their own identities (gender, age, nationality) influenced interactions and observations. The study emphasises the importance of collective reflection and dialogue between researchers, who debriefed each other daily, transforming individual experiences into shared analytical insights. Taking this approach challenges methodological conservatism by integrating feminist and intersectional perspectives and demonstrates how working participant observation can provide deeper understandings of workplace hierarchies, bodily labour, and power dynamics. By focusing on the bodily presence of both researchers and workers, the study highlights the unique insights gained through participatory, team-based ethnographic research in service work.

This paper examines how restructuring of hotel work affects work identities and attractiveness of work, based on 29 semi-structured interviews with staff at three hotels in Sweden. The external crisis - the COVID-19 pandemic - played a significant role in justifying restructuring, shifting power dynamics in favor of employers and enabling change. The results of this study indicate that restructuring led to vague role descriptions, which affected work identity, job security and attractiveness of work. The study highlights the tension between job security and preservation of work identity, showing that while changes in work roles can provide job security, they also alter the context upon which work identity is built. This duality has created dilemmas for employees, forcing them to accept changes in work identity or jeopardizing job security. The study also emphasizes how restructuring risk affecting career opportunities, work roles, hierarchical levels and turnover intentions.

Hotels are often regarded as (un)wittingly complicit in terms of sex traffickers using their facilities for illegal sex purchases. This article examines chain employees' experiences of individual social responsibility (ISR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the interaction between hotels and three stakeholder groups (online booking channels; governmental and non -governmental organizations; and nearby hotels) in the fight against sex trafficking and illegal sex purchases. Employee perspectives were gathered through semi -structured interviews in Sweden and the Netherlands, two countries with distinctive prostitution legislation. The findings highlight that the hotel employees found tensions between ISR and CSR and the relationship with the external stakeholders challenging. What became apparent was that CSR is often a facade used to report back positive results to external stakeholders rather than CSR and ISR playing a proactive role in fighting sex trafficking and illegal sexual purchases. We conclude by arguing for the necessity to better understand the relationships between ISR and CSR within the hospitality industry and suggesting that there remains a need for better understandings of how CSR can work across industry stakeholders and within academic research in order to ensure actionable outcomes that make a difference.

This chapter moves beyond explaining the relationship between tourism and mobility to describe how changing patterns of (im)mobility, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, altered the tourism system. The chapter gives two examples of how corporeal mobility changed, and how this shift affected ‘us’, ‘others’ and nature. A first example discusses the growing demand for (food) delivery services as a way to experience leisure through food that came about due to the enforced immobility of lockdowns and social distancing, while at the same time mobilising precarious groups of workers. This was a development that made it possible for ‘us’ to explore and experience the world while remaining ‘safely’ at home. The second example highlights how (domestic) tourism with an outdoor focus was growing and both anthropause and ‘post-anthropause’ tourism (referring to the time after lockdowns) utilised nature for touristic purposes. This increase in nature-based leisure activities and mobility in nature led to ever-growing problems of overtourism in sensitive nature areas. Through these two examples, the chapter concludes with thoughts on how ‘another mobilities turn’ can be foreseen in the wake of the pandemic.

This note tells a story of working participant observation. It shares a narrative of how working as a housekeeper, as part of a project about dignity and decent work, opened up the researchers to stories beyond the work tasks. The note weaves a tale around one particular worker, and highlights how as researchers, being embedded, and embodied within their research allowed for insights and reflections that a "common" interview would not have gained. It highlighted the positives and tensions of being "in between" an insider and an outsider as a researcher. The note concludes with a reminder or perhaps a caution that we are all, bodies, minds, our "selves," part of the research process and the necessity to be reflexive, thoughtful, and engaged with our research remains essential as we look to expand how we gain knowledge into (service) work and employment.