‘We are more uncouth’: employer’s assessment of hospitality migrant workers in Maule, Chile

Abstract

This article addresses how migrant workers enter the labour force of the hospitality industry in the city of Talca and Curico, two medium-sized cities in the south-central zone of Chile, drawing on the assessment of employers. Through semistructured interviews with managers of large and medium-sized hotels, we found two dimensions that build the evaluation of Venezuelan and Colombian workers in this economic subsector. The first one, linked to ethical and social factors attached to the condition of being migrant. The second one, linked to cultural factors and the “emotional labour” that these workers carry in their south-south migration process, which would be unevenly distributed according to nationality. From this perspective, we aimed to shed light on the contribution of migrant workers and the way skills and personal features can be transformed into individual assets, attributed to migrant workers. We also discuss how these contribute to the idealized cultural production of “good
migrant workers”.