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Working intimacies: Migrant beer sellers, surveillance, and intimate labor in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand

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  • Denise L. Spitzer

Abstract

Thousands of rural‐to‐urban migrant women find employment in urban areas of mainland Southeast Asia as beer sellers, beer promoters, and karaoke girls whose duties include selling alcoholic drinks, often on commission, and entertaining clients. Using the label of beer sellers to refer to all of these workers, this paper draws from a sequential mixed‐methods participatory study conducted with migrant beer sellers in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand to examine beer selling as intimate labor. Deploying emotional, affective, and embodied labor as interactive components of intimate labor, migrant beer sellers as members of the urban precariat are subject to myriad forms of surveillance that operate in concert to inform the parameters of beer selling as an intimate industry, the somato‐social presentation of workers' bodies, and their intercorporeal interactions with clients. Together, they work to reinforce gendered and racialized social hierarchies and the normative social order.

Suggested Citation

  • Denise L. Spitzer, 2022. "Working intimacies: Migrant beer sellers, surveillance, and intimate labor in Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 906-921, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:29:y:2022:i:3:p:906-921
    DOI: 10.1111/gwao.12646
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. repec:ilo:ilowps:432726 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Rachel Lara Cohen & Carol Wolkowitz, 2018. "The Feminization of Body Work," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 42-62, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Denise L. Spitzer & Theodora Lam & Kellynn Wee & Brenda S. A. Yeoh, 2022. "Close encounters: Migrant bodies, workplace, and intimate labor in Asia," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 897-905, May.

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