Embodied intersectionality at work in hotel housekeeping in Sweden

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.