The (Un)Managed Heart: Racial Contours of Emotion Work in Gendered Occupations

Abstract

The concept of emotional labor has been very useful for elucidating how the expansion of a service economy perpetuated new forms of work that maintained gender divisions and inequalities. Research has been slower to catch up to the ways that emotional labor has racial implications as well, but recent studies are making important contributions and moving the literature in this direction. In this review, I consider how increasing racial diversity in the US population informs how emotion work is performed in the current economy. I also discuss how other macrostructural changes such as the rise of aesthetic labor, the gig economy, and the overwhelming growth of the service industry can reshape our understanding of the intersections between race and gender in emotional labor.