Barriers to the effective exploitation of migrants' social and cultural capital in hospitality and tourism: A dual labour market perspective

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Abstract

This article examines migrants' labour market entry experiences and positions in hospitality and tourism from a dual labour market theory standpoint. We conducted thirty interviews with migrants from Latin America, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The transcripts were first analysed through an open coding framework. That was followed by emotion and sentiment analyses for the interviewees' transcripts using Natural Language Processing approach (NLP) with a programming code written in Python. This article found that migrants' high representation in tourism and hospitality is linked to the immense cultural capital they harbour. However, migrants are often at the sector's lower end and fail to build on their social and cultural capital. The research contributes to the understanding that migrants' positions within tourism and hospitality are misaligned with migrants' credentials. Ethnicity impacts job search success and attainment of higher ranks significantly. The underemployment of migrants in hospitality and tourism leads to human capital loss for both migrants and host economies.

Introduction

The migrant workforce has experienced a significant increase in the past two decades. While migrants fulfil critical roles in the economic life of their adoptive countries (Grogger & Hanson, 2011), they often experience more risks and enjoy less protection from legal frameworks (Choi, Kim, & McGinley, 2017). Migrant workers’ contribution is visible in all walks of life where migrants bring skills, new work ethics, culture and community vibrancy (Holland & Martin, 2015), They also contribute to local entrepreneurial ventures as leaders, innovators, and catalysts, especially in rural contexts (Liu, Wu, Xu, & Chen, 2021). Despite the extensive evidence available that migrants are fundamental for the effective functioning of many areas of society, media, politics and economy, etc. (Hack-Polay, Mahmoud et al., 2021; Mahmoud & Al Atrash, 2021), popular discourses have not always reflected this importance (Abdallah, Fletcher, & Hannam, 2019). Some literature has portrayed migrants as costs, understating their contribution to host countries (Choi et al., 2017; Grogger & Hanson, 2011). Consequently, many migrants struggle for recognition of their credentials and to deploy the social capital they harbour. However, as research increases in this area, particularly in the past three decades, the negative view of migrants has been vigorously questioned (Hack-Polay, 2019) by academics and non-government organisations (NGOs) through empirical studies and popular campaigns.

Previous studies on migrant job search suggest that social capital is critical and directly impacts several factors. According to the literature, social capital influences migrant wages and earnings both directly and indirectly. It sways, in a hidden way, the way a job is obtained and the sector in which such a job is. Reliance on relatives and acquaintances who have traversed the migrant experience seems to boost job search efficacy towards improved wages. Such improvements appear more relevant to the condition of undocumented migrants than legal migrants, underscoring how social networks could present opportunities for migrants (Aguilera & Massey, 2003). This perspective affects both skilled as well as less skilled migrants.

Many migrants fill jobs in sectors that offer significant employment opportunities for entry to the labour market. In the hospitality and tourism industry, migrant workers account for 24.2% of the workforce (People 1st, 2017). However, opportunities available in the industry are often said to be at the lower end of the employment spectrum, characterised by low pay, job insecurity, lack of progression and work-life balance, etc. Therefore, the sector also suffers from a high turnover in the labour market (Opute, Hack-Polay, & Rigby, 2021).

The study aims to examine how social capital may be directly and indirectly associated with migrants’ job search strategies in a sector that is worth investigating. The study focuses on the UK hospitality and tourism sector, a key industry that absorbs migrant labour. Our study uniquely answers the following critical research questions: To what extent do migrants experience difficulties accessing hospitality and tourism jobs despite the general perception that the sector offers quick entry to the labour market for migrants? To what extent does social capital help migrants enter the hospitality and tourism sector? Is the hospitality sector a stepping-stone or a genuine career destination for migrants?

Section snippets

Theoretical framework: dual labour market theory

Dual labour market theory contends that immigrants often experience a high degree of exclusion in the host labour market as they are priced out of the more rewarding jobs (Doeringer & Piore, 2020 [1985]). This entails significant differences in terms of the job level attained by immigrants, particularly first-generation and the locals (de Haas, Castles, & Miller, 2020). In addition, labour market segmentation also entails wide wage and working condition differences between hosts and migrants.

A

Methodology

This study employs a qualitative methodology, using in-depth interviews conducted with 30 migrants originating from the Middle East, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, with respectively 7, 11 and 12 participants. These regions were selected to precisely capture the experiences of these under-researched non-Western and non-Eastern European migrant groups whose presence is growing in hospitality due to the expanding number of Global South tourists in the UK (Statista, 2020). A cross-sectional

Pre-migration professional experience

Most participants had a status change in the UK, usually dropping to lower professional status than what they operated at in the home country, in line with other studies (Rydzik, Pritchard, Morgan, & Sedgley, 2012). Just two participants were in jobs that met their expectations. The majority felt a sense of lower status and loss in exile. Table 2 shows the migrants’ employment before emigrating.

Table 2 indicates that most of the migrants were employed in the migrants’ home country. A third of

Discussion

Our investigation confirms how migrant workers’ occupational position in tourism and hospitality sits in sharp contrast with the professional roles they previously had in the country of origin. Within western labour markets, the migrants predominantly operated in non-skilled and semi-skilled employment in the hospitality sector, while before becoming migrants, they held higher-level professional positions at home (Hack-Polay, 2019; Müller, 1999).

This study attempted to address two questions.

Funding

The authors declare that no funding was received for this research.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that there was no conflict of interest.

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