Alan Valenzuela-Bustos

Intersectional politics has been widely associated with progressive Millennial activists. Accordingly, most social movement research focuses on progressive movements that adopt intersectionality as a guiding framework for organisation and mobilisation, mainly feminist, reproductive justice, LGBTQ and other movements spearheaded by university-educated Millennials. In contrast to most studies, we conduct a qualitative digital ethnography of Las Kellys, a Spanish grassroots movement with no explicit intersectional approach, but located at the intersection of the labour and feminist movements, and consisting of middle-aged, working-class (immigrant) women with no university background who fit their activism into their spare time. Our findings suggest that (1) Las Kellys deploys intersectional practices and disputes despite lacking an explicit intersectional approach, and (2) the development of intersectional practices and disputes in Las Kellys is the result of inter-movement diffusion processes from the anti-austerity protest cycle and the current wave of feminist protest. Moreover, we argue that the case of Las Kellys is part of a larger diffusion of intersectionality across contemporary Spanish activism as an outcome of the anti-austerity and feminist protest cycles.

The growth of the hotel industry in Spain in recent decades has meant, among other things, the acceleration of the hotel room attendants’ labour. An overload of physical activity, illnesses, and physical and mental exhaustion are the most visible consequences. Based on a qualitative study carried out with hotel room attendants working in Spanish hotels, the article analyses the effects of work intensification on room attendants’ representation of their bodies. The results show that rather than the typical description of their body as a machine that must withstand high pressure, hotel room attendants define it as a vector body constructed through multiple flows and demands, which has to speed up its pace, being constantly overwhelmed and self-managed in the process. We discuss how the acceleration of work in hotels is the result of a series of organizational and individual practices, impacting the representation and corporal practice of the hotel room attendants.

El artículo busca dar cuenta del aporte que la perspectiva del análisis crítico del discurso (ACD) de Norman Fairclough puede hacer al campo de los estudios organizacionales (EO) en América Latina, destacando su contribución al análisis, desde una perspectiva crítica y dialéctica, de las dimensiones discursivas de los procesos organizacionales. Se presenta para ello un estudio empírico desde la perspectiva del acd que buscó analizar la dimensión discursiva de los procesos de reforma gerencial de la administración pública en Chile. El estudio analizó documentos de quince programas públicos del Estado de Chile. El análisis identificó tres prácticas discursivas —transaccional, mensurabilidad, experticia/transparencia— que dan cuenta del particular orden del discurso —representaciones (discursos), modalidades de coordinación (géneros) e identidades sociales (estilos)—, que está a la base, sostiene y participa de la Nueva Gestión Pública (NGP) del Estado de Chile. Así, se discuten las particularidades e implicancias de dicho orden del discurso y su centralidad en los procesos de reforma gerencial a la administración pública. Se concluye dando cuenta de algunas limitaciones del estudio y subrayando el aporte de la acd como propuesta teórico-metodológica para fortalecer las herramientas conceptuales y el potencial crítico del campo de los EO en América Latina.

This must be a previous version of the The last version of the abstract was: The literature on labour conflict in the field of paid care work deals primarily with highly feminized occupations that fit in with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) characterization of the care workforce, such as nurses, domestic workers and childcare providers. We focus instead on room attendants: a highly feminized occupational group that lies beyond the scope of the care economy defined by the ILO. Our analysis draws upon Briskin’s ‘politicization of caring’ through which care workers demand professional recognition, decent working conditions and fair wages, as well as call for the acknowledgement of caring as a collective responsibility. Following this thread, we look into the politicization of hotel housekeeping by Las Kellys, a Spanish movement of room attendants that frames hotel housekeeping as care work with the aim of subverting low social standing and improving precarious working conditions. Such a framing relies on two axes of meaning-making: (1) room attendant as provider of customer well-being, and (2) (hotel) cleaning as undervalued feminized basic care. This article expands the scope of the ‘politicization of caring’ beyond the limits of the care economy.

The Spanish room attendants’ movement, known as ‘Las Kellys’, has directly challenged hotel owners, unions and local governments. Its actions and results have generated a growing interest in the academic literature on labour and organizations, because it presents as a social phenomenon which seems to sidestep the usual key actions of similar movements. As this case is still very new, there are not yet any systematic academic studies explaining how the Kellys construct their identity as a group and coordinate their actions. Here we present the notion of collective agency as a tool for analysing and understanding these processes. Based on an empirical study conducted in the last three years, we argue that the Kellys constitute a movement which should be understood as a collective agency woven from relationships of solidarity and resistance, which can be summed up in two slogans: ‘We are the women who clean’ and ‘We are the structural base of the hotel’. Both slogans permit the emergence of a profile which gives a specific identity to the work of room attendants in Spain and makes them unique and sui generis among social movements.

Intersectional politics has been widely associated with progressive Millennial activists. Accordingly, most social movement research focuses on progressive movements that adopt intersectionality as a guiding framework for organisation and mobilisation, mainly feminist, reproductive justice, LGBTQ and other movements spearheaded by university-educated Millennials. In contrast to most studies, we conduct a qualitative digital ethnography of Las Kellys, a Spanish grassroots movement with no explicit intersectional approach, but located at the intersection of the labour and feminist movements, and consisting of middle-aged, working-class (immigrant) women with no university background who fit their activism into their spare time. Our findings suggest that (1) Las Kellys deploys intersectional practices and disputes despite lacking an explicit intersectional approach, and (2) the development of intersectional practices and disputes in Las Kellys is the result of inter-movement diffusion processes from the anti-austerity protest cycle and the current wave of feminist protest. Moreover, we argue that the case of Las Kellys is part of a larger diffusion of intersectionality across contemporary Spanish activism as an outcome of the anti-austerity and feminist protest cycles.

Outsourced room attendants have been described as invisible to both guests and management. However, room attendants in Spain have managed to create a movement called Las Kellys , which has raised their visibility and earned them respect in society. The article questions how outsourcing leads to the invisibility of room attendants in Spain and how Las Kellys renders them visible. Based on a study conducted with room attendants who were working at hotels in different parts of Spain in 2020, the results show how outsourcing works as a dispositive that creates invisibility through a socio-spatial and socio-legal segregation, while workers are seen as a number to be managed. Against the dispositive of invisibility, Las Kellys has raised their visibility as social actors to contest these ways of being (in)visible.