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It has been claimed that the HR "profession" suffers from a chronic shortage of social legitimacy. In this article, we advance the idea that HR is also to some extent subject to public stigmatization for being immoral. In other words, we maintain that certain aspects of contemporary HR work can be conceptualized as morally dirty work. We provide empirical support for this contention by analyzing a set of 28 films portraying HR practitioners at work. The research results comprise both task‐related and method‐related filmic representations of HR work as immoral, thus furnishing a comprehensive and nuanced picture of the moral issues that can affect the HR profession. Furthermore, the results show that some of the HR characters analyzed—typically those who hold a role as (co‐)protagonists in the story—realize the immorality affecting their work and decide to distance themselves from it by either exiting the role, trying to reform it, or openly raising resistance against their employer. These research results suggest the need to integrate dirty work scholarship into study of the HR profession, while they provide important indications in terms of future HR research, practice and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term "dirty work" reflects employment that is distanced from mainstream society. Treating those who commit sex offenses can be a form of dirty work: sex offenders are often persona non grata and reviled by society. The treatment – inpatient and outpatient- tends to be involuntary. It can stigmatize and maligns the clinician even though the work may be required by public policy- as in conditions of probation and parole. Consequently, it can set conditions for moral injury, an overlooked occupational hazard for sex offender treatment providers. Moral injury is distinct from compassion fatigue and burnout. It is painful dissonance a person experiences when they act in ways that transgress deeply held morals and beliefs. Moral injury can be developed when sex offender treatment providers hold a punitive stance toward their clients, that is in direct conflict with professional values to have regard for and not harm their clients. Conversely, moral injury can also arise from helping a population that society tends to loathe. In this paper, we explore some pathways to moral injury and review methods to potentially prevent and mitigate moral injury in the context of sex offender treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to guarding national frontiers, some border patrol officers also escort illegal immigrants abroad. This article analyses this work from an interest in officers' (moral) experiences and how these relate to the circumstances in which they work, such as occupational culture, policy and procedures. Therefore, the notions of dirty work and moral injury are used as conceptual frameworks, and 14 Dutch escort officers were interviewed about their experiences. This article adds to dirty work analyses by developing an understanding of how workers' experiences relate to both formal and moral legitimacies and a possible tension between the two. In addition, it extends the literature on moral injury by describing context-dependent forms of impact that escape clinical diagnoses. Theoretically, this article shows that the occupational resources that are elsewhere seen as tools for navigating 'necessary evils' can in fact hide the impact of this kind of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Career-related emotional contagion has been investigated in many sectors, including healthcare and journalism. However, the gambling sector remains unexplored, despite frontline casino employees' frequent exposure to the fluctuating emotions of gamblers, especially those who experience gambling problems. This study fills the research gap by investigating the impact of long-term exposure to gambling on frontline casino employees. The data were collected from 46 interviewees. Analysis revealed three themes: dealers' emotional responses, 'dirty work', and the impact on dealers' private lives. In the first theme, the interviewees' responses indicated that exposure to gambling led to various emotional outcomes, including indifference, sympathy, perplexity, and worry. The second theme, 'dirty work', covers observations concerning organizational malpractice and negative social impacts. The various 'impacts on dealer's private lives' identified in the data ranged from negative to positive. This study reveals the complexity of workplace emotional contagion and the emotional costs for frontline casino employees. The implication for gambling companies is that emotional support with – and training in – emotion management are necessary to maintain and retain a healthy workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the transformation of the profession of Gassals, dead body bathers in Islamic culture, from a prestigious role to a stigmatized job in modern Türkiye. Through a qualitative research design, this study employs a combination of participant observation and in-depth interviews with Gassals in Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. In the study conducted with the purposeful convenience sampling technique, in-depth interviews were conducted with 19 participants (3 male,16 female). Ultimately, the study raises three major modernity-related claims: Modernity marginalizes death and excludes it from daily life, primarily functions to secularize the public sphere and excludes religious issues, and presents the dead body as dirty, as it sees the body as a biological mechanism, as a product of standardization and institutionalization. Their job involves physical contamination due to direct contact with deceased bodies, and this solid physical taint overshadows the overall dignity of the profession. The three main findings of the study are important. First, community members perceive it as a "reminder of death." The second is the modern human tendency to avoid death in the domains of everyday life, primarily through institutions such as hospitals. Lastly, the stigma toward gassals may be explained by them losing their status in the modern era under the influence of institutionalization despite enjoying a prestigious status in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the foothills of rural Appalachia, situations arise where emergency medical services (EMS) providers—such as paramedics and emergency medical technicians—must reflect professionalism in their 'face'. However, as EMS providers practice facework in their organizational roles, it is important to consider how they manage professionalism when emotional labour and dirty work are required, such as when supporting patients from underserved rural communities. Guided by 181 hours of participant observation with 23 interviews with EMS providers from two county-wide EMS organizations, this organizational ethnography reveals the value of impression management strategies in the form of emotional labour. Notably, such practices aid in EMS providers' maintenance of professional face as they encounter face threats on the job. In such moments, EMS providers utilize emotional labour in their corrective and preventive facework. Importantly, this research makes a meaningful theoretical and practical contribution to organizational communication by illustrating the value of impression management, emotional labour, and facework that aid in the management of professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behaviour of certain members of a profession can 'taint' other workers. In this qualitative study, we explore how police officers perceive media constructions of their profession. Participating police officers feel ridiculed by the media and are overwhelmed by instances of public disdain. They acknowledge moments of esteem, often as a result of self-sacrifice, yet lament that these are generally temporary and fleeting, and instead, their profession is tarnished by the heinous acts committed by some police officers, constructed as representative of the profession as a whole. We discuss police officers' understanding of the stickiness of 'taint' within their occupation and how it can affect perceptions of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumo Este artigo analisa a gestão do estigma no trabalho sexual, argumentando que esse processo se baseia em anseios por reconhecimento e não somente em expectativas de validação e normalização do trabalho maculado. Ele se embasa nos debates sociológicos contemporâneos sobre dirty works, que visam compreender o impacto das máculas morais nos trabalhadores e as estratégias para gerenciamento de estigmas. A análise é realizada no universo do trabalho sexual no webcamming, um lócus central para compreender demandas por reconhecimento devido à amplitude de sua mácula. O estudo se alicerça em etnografia digital conduzida de 2016 a 2020 e 15 entrevistas em profundidade com trabalhadoras sexuais. Conclui-se que as trabalhadoras buscam desenvolver uma autorrelação positiva e conquistar estima social através do gerenciamento do estigma atribuído a seu labor e a si mesmas, demonstrando narrativamente como o trabalho sexual contribui para seu autodesenvolvimento e possui função social para além da obtenção de renda.

Recruiting cisgender, heterosexual young men for research participation can be a difficult endeavour. This is more challenging with qualitative research studies that require substantial time commitment, or be of a sensitive nature, such as discussions of sex, intimacy, and emotion. These challenges can be amplified with the shift to online data collection procedures due to COVID-19. In this paper I reflect on the process of recruiting cisgender, heterosexual men for a qualitative study on sex and intimacy that relied solely on online advertising during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. I build on a critical men and masculinity (CMM) studies framework by considering a 'sex-as-dirty-work' approach which centres the uncomfortable practice of talking about and researching sex. I highlight the success of this approach that counters recommended best practice in getting men to participate. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this approach, and suggestions for researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspects of public service often involve tasks sometimes considered taboo, including working with grit, grime, blood, guts, grease, and stigmatized populations. Yet scholarship in our field directly incorporating dirty work remains limited yet growing. Importantly, if MPA students are not trained in how to work with and manage public sector employees engaged in such work, there is a chance for misunderstanding and mismanagement. In this paper, we draw on the concept of dirty work and showcase several ways how it can be incorporated into the MPA curriculum through topics such as regulation and compliance, emotional labor, budgeting and procurement, and public health. We rely on stories from deathcare workers throughout the U.S. to supplement the points. A dirty work practitioner from a large Iowa medical examiner department lends expertise in each section, and we conclude with case scenarios and questions for incorporating dirty work into MPA classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent innovations in the field of cleanliness announce remarkable efficiency that influences the way work is organized, the way people interact, and transforms perceptions of social organization. Cleaning standards are increasingly higher as social contexts demand it. These new technologies that enter the world of dirty work promise transparency and safety for beneficiaries, cost efficiency, and the possibility of reducing physical activity for workers. Examining the role that innovations have in the field of cleanliness, providing a comprehensive perspective on the effects and perceptions of users, presents a beautiful fairy tale that brings the outcome of a context related to control, stress, and the fear of tomorrow.

Drawing from in-depth interviews of cleaners employed in the cleaning industry in India, the study examines the ongoing process of constructing a positive identity among dirty workers. Cleaners respond to the intense identity struggles emerging from caste stigma, dirty taint, and precarity by constructing ambivalent identities. Cleaners' identity work is constituted by the very identity struggles they encounter, and their efforts to negotiate stigmatized identities further create identity tensions. Apart from accenting the paradoxical duality inhered in identity work, the findings show how caste/class inequalities are reworked in a neoliberal milieu and reproduced in identity construction processes. The findings call attention to caste as an important social category in organizational studies that has implications for work identities, dirty work, and precarious work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of animals as scientific models is argued to be crucial for producing new scientific and medical knowledge and clinical treatments. However, animal research continues to raise socio-ethical concerns. In recent years, there has been a push for openness amongst the life science community, with the aim of increasing the transparency of animal research to wider publics. Yet, how this push for openness is experienced by those responsible for the care and welfare of research animals requires further study. This paper draws upon qualitative interviews with Named Veterinary Surgeons (NVS) in the UK and explores how they practise openness, avoid openness, and, at times, challenge the way their role is represented within openness agendas. Overall, this social scientific analysis reveals that the current openness agenda has the potential to create tensions for professionals, as they seek to manage regulatory and public imaginaries of the veterinary identity alongside the animal research controversy. The paper concludes by arguing for a culture of dialogue, where openness includes allowing those with responsibilities for animal welfare to express ambivalence or concern about their own role. Finally, the paper calls for sustained academic work on relations between the veterinary profession and wider society, particularly areas that involve contested practices in which care and harm may coincide.

This paper explores experiences of pastoral staff, working in social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) special secondary schools, regarding the psychological impact of their work. To date, attention has been given to the educational experiences of pupils attending SEMH schools and teachers working with pupils with SEMH needs in mainstream schools. Whilst these studies provide insight into the experiences of pupils and teachers, they do not explore the experiences of those occupying pastoral roles in SEMH schools. Using narrative research, five participants, recruited from schools in the Northwest of England, took part in interviews, conducted via video conferencing. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis adopted a two-stage approach. The first stage focused on each individual narrative, preserving it as a whole story, the second involved analysis across the five narratives. Both stages used Fraser’s (2004) seven stage approach, enabling long sections of narrative to be broken down into themes, whilst preserving the nuances within and across narratives. The first stage of analysis identified numerous themes specific to each participant, the second stage, the focus for this paper, identified two common themes across the narratives: ‘It’s a struggle,’ ‘and ‘My emotionally dirty work’. This is the first study to explore the psychological impact of working in SEMH secondary schools, from the perspective of pastoral staff. Findings have policy and practice implications; defining professional standards, appropriate training, and tailored supervision. An ‘ethos of care’ within SEMH schools could mitigate against the impact of struggles and work perceived as emotionally dirty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent innovations in the field of cleanliness announce remarkable efficiency that influences the way work is organized, the way people interact, and transforms perceptions of social organization. Cleaning standards are increasingly higher as social contexts demand it. These new technologies that enter the world of dirty work promise transparency and safety for beneficiaries, cost efficiency, and the possibility of reducing physical activity for workers. Examining the role that innovations have in the field of cleanliness, providing a comprehensive perspective on the effects and perceptions of users, presents a beautiful fairy tale that brings the outcome of a context related to control, stress, and the fear of tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to investigate and deepen the characteristics of sexual assistance as an «emerging profession» and the meanings attributed by those who practice it and see a professional identity in it. In particular, we set out to identify the models that are being articulated in Italy and Spain, in the direction of contributing to the overall debate on «professions on the margins». Guiding our analysis will especially be the conceptual categories of dirty work and body work as well as of emotional work. For this purpose we will mainly use, for the Spanish case, qualitative interviews with sexual assistants, field notes and the analysis of the main online platform for matching demand and supply of sexual assistance services in the city of Madrid. For the Italian case, on the other hand, the analysis will be documentary, based on textual and video materials (also in the latter case it is interviews with sexual assistants) collected on YouTube and on the website of the only association dealing with sexual assistance in our country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the idea of the existence of two worlds from Coffman's perspective (2003), workplaces can be good or bad, clean or dirty, first-hand or second-hand. This article examines how dirt is a component of work order and how removing dirt influences the social process of producing cleanliness. In this regard, we conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with cleaners, both from the execution team and from the management team. The method was supplemented by participatory observations and interactions with direct beneficiaries of professional cleaning services provided by a company specializing in this field. In short, work in the cleaning industry can be considered as supporting other types of work. It is an unappreciated job, often carried out by those with few alternatives, viewed as individuals with stigmatizing features. The research aims to distinguish between cleaning work and how cleaning work is socially produced, and understanding how cleaning agents experience and give meaning to their work is an important part of understanding cleanliness as a social aspect of our lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the role of work features on cleaning ladies' dehumanization, bearing the stigma of doing both physically and socially tainted work. The aim of the present work is first to replicate the results obtained concerning work characteristics in a nonindustrial context, and then to study the role of task orientation on objectification and perceived job satisfaction. We conceived vignettes presenting the activities of a cleaning lady, varying her work features (repetitiveness vs. nonrepetitiveness) and job purpose (bringing cleanliness vs. removing dirt). In line with previous works, our results showed that repetitiveness led to dementalizing the worker and to attributing lower job satisfaction. This effect was moderated by the job purpose: when the job was clean-oriented, the participants dehumanized the target more when her activity was described as repetitive rather than varied. These results are discussed in terms of conformity to stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how prison staff in Australia view their work and how their work is viewed by others, by applying a theoretical framework of 'dirty work'. 'Dirty work' is a social construction that refers to tasks that are 'physically, socially or morally tainted' (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Hughes, 1958) and this article will apply this concept to prison staff in Australia for the first time. The discussion is based on qualitative research in seven different Australian prisons, ranging from high to low security. The article illustrates how staff responds to working in a 'dirty' profession by reframing, refocusing, and recalibrating their daily work tasks; how the staff uniform can be utilised as a status shield and protector from taint; and how the stigma of 'dirtiness' tends to foster strong occupational and workgroup cultures which in turn makes cultural change of a profession difficult. The consequences of the dirty work stigma for staff and prisoners are discussed, with a focus on informal interactions, case work and dynamic security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New materialist applications in 'dirty work' studies have rightly emphasised the importance of materiality alongside symbolism. However, these approaches have neglected important themes irreducible to the material world, such as temporality, reflexivity and social structure. This article develops an alternative critical realist perspective on socio-materiality in dirty work which emphasises these themes. It draws on 2016–2017 ethnographic data on the work of clinical photographers of wounds in a UK specialist outpatient wound healing clinic. First, it shows how photographers' reflexivity mediates the relationship between their embodied materiality and their agency in the physical domain. Second, it highlights the temporal dynamics between reflexive agents, their material environment, and the context of their operation. Finally, it emphasises the non-conflationary relationship between the social structures of the medical hierarchy and photographers' agency in dirty work. Together, these contributions highlight the utility of an emergent, realist ontology in understanding the dynamics of dirty work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this qualitative study we examine the role of caste, class, and Dalit janitorial labor in the aftermath of floods in Chennai, India, in 2015. Drawing from a variety of sources including interviews, social media, and news coverage, we studied how Dalit (formerly known as 'untouchable') janitors were treated during the performance of janitorial labor for cleaning the city. Our study focuses on two theoretical premises: (a) caste-based social relations reproduce inequalities by devaluing Dalit labor as 'dirty work'; and (b) Dalit subjectivities, labor, and sufferings including occupational hazards become invisible and ungrievable forcing Dalits to provide a counter narrative to preserve the memory of their trauma and dignity injuries. We find that the discursive construction of janitorial labor as dirty work forced Dalit janitors to work in appalling and unsafe working conditions. Janitors suffered several dignity injuries in terms of social exclusion and a lack of recognition for their efforts and accomplishments. Specifically, we examine various ways through which caste, dirty work, and dignity intersected in the narrative accounts of Dalit janitors. We also explore memory and how processes of remembering and forgetting affected the dignity claims of Dalit janitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emblematic power is entrenched in the uniform and bodily image of the police. The COVID-19 pandemic has afforded a new layer of understandings of 'dirty work' with police officers, and has shown how the police uniform is perceived to be an involuntary vehicle for physical contamination and symbolic taint. This article is based on interviews with 18 police officers from 11 UK police forces over the summer of 2020 and explores how the COVID-19 pandemic caused increased fear and anxiety about virus contraction, particularly when officers were not prioritised for testing and vaccinations at the time. The possibility of transmitting COVID-19 to family members motivated officers to treat their uniforms differently, and they undertook purification rituals to mitigate violations of the physical and symbolic space around the body. Fear and anxiety of 'the unknown' is a motivator for discussions about long-term effects of officer well-being, and the significance of learning to prepare for future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines aspects of ethnic, religious, and moral boundary work among Jewish-Israeli kosher slaughterers based, on 35 in-depth interviews, four ethnographic observations, informal conversations, and other secondary sources such as video footage of the slaughter sites gathered between 2014 and 2019. In Israel, the self-proclaimed sovereign homeland of the Jewish people, being Jewish means being part of the political, ethnic, and religious hegemony. While being stigmatized for doing dirty work, the Jewish slaughterers' workplace setting groups them with menial laborers from a minority ethnic group, both physically and organizationally. The stigma associated with animal killing in Israel encourages the slaughterers to distinguish themselves from other workers by engaging in boundary work. Within the workplace setting, this boundary work occurs around various aspects of intersecting identities: racio-ethnic, national, religious, and professional. Furthermore, this boundary work is fueled by various organizational mechanisms such as the slaughter site's spatial architecture, differential wage structure, and the use of tools and technologies. While these workplace conditions are determined by the employers, they are constantly restructured and reinforced by the slaughterers to assert their moral superiority vis-a-vis other workers. While exploring these organizational mechanisms, I conceptualize the Jewish slaughter knife as a boundary-maintaining object. I claim that the slaughterers constantly leverage these material, symbolic, and discursive resources to morally segregate the two workers' groups and the morally tainted aspects of slaughter, such as violence and cruelty, to the 'Arab' others. Meanwhile, the prevailing Jew–Arab tensions and the popular symbolic representation of the Arabs ensures that these behaviors are treated as an inherent racio-ethnic trait, thereby reinforcing these boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concerns about devaluation and misrecognition are central for understanding the experiences of workers in stigmatised occupations. Yet contemporary approaches have been criticised for over-simplifying workers' responses to mis/recognition. Povinelli's concepts of 'trembling of recognition' and 'social tense' offer a useful starting point for extending existing understandings of mis/recognition by highlighting the contextual importance of temporality. To explore these ideas, we report on an ethnographic study of waste management workers in London, UK. The findings suggest that dirty workers' responses to mis/recognition are a complex mix of discordant cognitive and affective reactions and narrative strategies, shaped by changing normative ideals. The findings suggest that recognition derives not only from workers' encounters, meanings and feelings attached to the past and present but also from the sense that they have a valued part to play in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Trabalho EnCena is the property of Trabalho EnCena and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Police organisations in Canada and other parts of the world, have recently undertaken efforts to address misconduct arising from high-profile reports of internal discrimination and harassment and/or instances of excessive use of force. However, these actions tend to be pursued through traditional approaches without fully understanding the contextual factors that contribute to these harmful behaviours. Through a sequential, qualitative mixed-methods study involving Canadian police officers, this paper highlights how symbolic meanings attached to police work contribute to perceptions that the work is more suitable for some individuals than others. The findings also illustrate how officers respond to identity threats from stigmatised officers or from external sources. Finally, the findings suggest that the prototypical image of a police officer may be changing with recent criticisms of the police presented as possibilities for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study melds Japanese principles of 3K and Dirty Work into a new model of Distasteful Work. Elements of work stigma and the associated taint affects workers’ both intrinsically and extrinsically. While 3K is traditionally associated with bluecollar occupations, the results of interviews with employees in Japanese companies suggest a willingness to transpose these associated stigma to white-collar work activities. Adverse stereotyping caused by distasteful work activities has the potential to cause a decrease in mental health leading to lower work efficiency. Particularly in countries that are suffering from labor shortage, maximizing the potential of existing experienced workforces and top talent is paramount, consequently adapted models are necessary. This research examines occupations within commercial banking and identify types of work activities which have higher potential to cause occupational health issues through associated work stigma.

Work precarity, referring to the work-related psychological state of insecurity, instability, and powerlessness, is on the rise. Despite being employed, workers are increasingly exposed to work precarity due to the global disparities of access to decent work. Paid domestic cleaning (PDC) workers represent a vulnerable group, exposed to adverse employment conditions and limited labor rights and protections. Yet, the working conditions in PDC have not been studied in the light of precariousness and precarity. Drawing from the work precarity framework (WPF), the present study utilizes semi-structured interviews with 24 PDC workers in Switzerland to investigate if and how they experienced work precarity in the face of adverse working conditions, and to what extent they could access protective resources against such precarity. Experiences of precarity stemmed from insufficient and insecure income, lack of labor protections and rights, lack of social recognition, and unsafe physical and psychological working conditions. Participants reported negative work-related outcomes in terms of health impairment, social stigmatization, and ambivalent attitudes towards their job. Moreover, protective personal, social, and institutional resources were identified as limited or inconsistent. Among the study’s contributions, we highlight precarity-derived challenges vulnerabilized workers face. Implications for research, policy, and practice will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the popularity of spa tourism worldwide and the size of the labour force, there is a paucity of research about these employees. The casual, often low paid, workforce is largely comprised of women, and there are challenges associated with body work – touching another person's naked body in intimate settings – and its association with "dirty work" in a moral sense. The potential for experiencing sexual harassment from clients and the emotional demands this can place on employees has negative implications for the social and economic sustainability of the industry, including employee wellbeing, and may contribute to staff turnover. A qualitative phenomenological study based on interviews with spa therapists in Victoria, Australia explored these women's experiences of sexual harassment, with emotional labour used as a theoretical lens. Findings suggest that some therapists feel obliged to hide their true feelings when experiencing sexual harassment by their clients, which results in emotional dissonance and exacts an emotional toll. Participants discussed strategies to cope with the emotional dimension of their experiences, and to address the perceived taint arising from occupational stigma. Implications of these findings for gendered practices, decent work and sustainable employment within the spa tourism industry are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Extant research on dirty work—occupations involving physical, social, or moral taint, which affect worker identities—has been read primarily through the lens of social identity theory (SIT). There are two notable shortcomings that emerge as a consequence of dirty work being too heavily reliant upon the precepts of SIT, which we seek to remedy in this article: (1) the overemphasis on the symbolic to the detriment of the material has led to false optimism regarding the ability for subjects doing dirty work to exercise agency in constructing their own sense of selves, and (2) the failure to substantively account for the role of identity differences suggests that empirical research on the phenomenon is devoid of proper historical and cultural contextualization. Drawing on a qualitive study on low-caste toilet cleaners in Pakistan, our findings were largely incongruous with the scholarly conceptualization of dirty work that has been propagated to date. We explicate the embedded role of power and context in dirty work, which are not adequately considered using SIT alone. Repudiating the overly romanticized version of the concept, we argue that SIT's account of dirty work ought to be complemented by status construction theory going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine how different factors (multiple stigmatization, perceived social status, and workers' sex) as well as their interactions are associated with the dehumanization of workers. In the preliminary study (N = 991), we selected 16 occupations with different types of stigmatization and perceived status relevant to the Russian socio‐cultural context. In two experimental studies (N1 = 1060, N2 = 1081), we demonstrated that multiple stigmatization increases metaphor‐based and attribute‐based animalistic but not mechanistic dehumanization: low‐status workers were more animalistically dehumanized than high‐status workers; the high status decreased the metaphor‐based animalistic dehumanization of occupations with multiple stigmatization, and the attribute‐based animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization of workers regardless of their stigmatization; and male workers were more mechanistically dehumanized than female ones but there were no differences in animalistic dehumanization. The results obtained are discussed in the context of understanding the specificity of workers' dehumanization and the possible consequences of this dehumanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out to define and classify dirty work in a Turkish context and to introduce the concept of dirty work to the literature. In the first stage of the study, 321 people were reached through an online survey. We selected 36 occupations (pre-hypothesised 25 dirty jobs and 11 non-dirty jobs) and asked participants to classify them as social, physical or moral dirty work or non-dirty work. As a result of the first study, only 17 occupations were classified as dirty by the participants. In the second stage of the study, occupations that were not classified as dirty in the first stage were administered using the same design to 130 participants. The second study confirmed our first study results except for one occupation (Shoe-shining). The results show both a high level of agreement on the type of physical taint and a consensus that the type of moral taint is one of the main factors that make a profession dirty. The study is important in terms of introducing the concept of dirty work to the Turkish literature and in terms of conducting the classification of occupations in Turkey according to the types of dirty work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex and sexuality research can be understood as a form of 'dirty work', as despite its public need, it continues to be marginalised and demeaned within the academy and beyond. Through association, sex and sexuality researchers come to be labelled 'dirty workers' and are vulnerable to experiencing a range of stigmatised responses and negative repercussions. This article contributes to knowledge about the challenges involved in doing dirty work, through reflexively examining my experiences as a doctoral researcher investigating pornography's gendered influence. It explores the various institutional, professional and personal hurdles that I encountered during my dirty work journey and illustrates how these experiences may have been affected by my identity as a young, female researcher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While researchers have to date mainly focused on the coping strategies employed by dirty workers to normalise taint, the organisational and managerial roots of dirty work have been little explored. The article contributes to filling this gap by means of a single case study conducted in a big Italian banking company. In the research context investigated, branch-level bank employees felt themselves tainted from the moral (as 'vendors') and social (as 'servants of customers') points of view. These perceptions were directly associated with organisational strategies and managerial practices intended to fulfil demanding sales targets or to create more space and freedom for customers. Although the literature assumes that occupational taint is generated by external societal attributions, by introducing the concept of 'organisationally-reinforced taint' this study shows that internal organisational strategies and managerial practices can contribute to dirtying an occupation, even a relatively prestigious one like bank work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives Although society has cultivated a deeper appreciation for essential health services, societal discourses reinforce a stigma of working in aged care. Drawing on dirty work and Stigma Theory, this study aims to investigate stigma in the context of recruiting health professionals. Research Design and Methods We employed a mixed-methods design to examine the nature and implications of the stigma of working in aged care. A path analysis was used to test whether health professionals' (n = 159) negative perceptions of aged-care work would negatively predict their willingness to work in aged care. A linguistic analysis was conducted to understand how health professionals' (n = 168) use of language positions themselves toward or away from engaging in aged-care work. Results Quantitative findings revealed that perceptions of physical taint directly predicted lower willingness to perform aged-care work. Perceptions of social taint, moral taint, and poor occupational conditions negatively predicted willingness to work in institutional aged care, indirectly via social devaluation. Findings from the linguistic analysis demonstrated that health professionals (re)produce stigma through aligning themselves with devaluing discourses about aged-care workers, work, and institutions. Discussion and Implications This study provides insight about the role that stigma plays in the aged-care recruitment crisis, with implications for aged-care institutions. Societal discourse may obstruct the employment of health professionals in aged care because it can (re)produce the stigma of working in aged care. Recommendations for ways to reduce the impact of this stigma include public messaging and training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines theories on emotional labor in public service and dirty work to argue that organizations should adopt an ethic of care to support their workers. The economics of public services undermine the consumer-sovereignty narrative in government, particularly where public servants are agents of social control and enforcement. Public servants cannot and should not behave according to a customer-service ethos in many important areas of public service. Emotional labor is the process by which workers manage the identity-damaging aspects of public service. This article critiques individual-level human resource management (HRM) approaches and recommends dismantling customer service expectations that are inappropriately applied in public-service contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear of contamination is central to our thinking about 'dirty work', that is, tasks and occupations that carry a stigma owing to being perceived as having degrading, disgusting, or immoral qualities. However, most existing literature focuses on the symbolic dimension of taint – particularly, dirty workers' cognitive, ideological tactics to counter taint. Although contamination has more material consequences, the processes through which it is experienced and contained in dirty work have not yet been well explicated. Drawing on an ethnographic study of work in two Danish prisons, this article offers an opportunity to see behind the walls and gain insight into the extreme emotional dirty work of prison officers as they face burdensome emotional encounters with manipulative and intimidating inmates. As society's agent in the containment of inmates' emotional dirt, officers, as emotional labourers, risk contamination if they give in to inmates' pressure and manipulation and do them illicit favours. I use embodied phenomenology as an original and fertile approach to deepen the understanding of how contamination occurs in emotional dirty work and the bodily responses that workers engage in to resist it. Drawing on these findings, I extend our understanding of emotional dirty work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]