All in a day’s work: affective labour, disaffection and migrant leisure in a South Asian beauty salon

Abstract

This article highlights the role of beauty salons in London as sites of migrant leisure. It argues that this leisure is created through the affective labour of beauty workers. Produced through the efforts of migrant beauty workers, leisure in the beauty salon leads to sociality and resistance of traditional gender norms among other migrant women. However, leisure can be disrupted when beauty workers withhold their affective labour due to a feeling of disaffection in their jobs. Here, disaffection is defined as a feeling of alienation or disenchantment from their work. It is against this context of disaffection stemming from feminised and racialised labour practices as well as living conditions of migrants in the UK that we need to consider the work of beauty workers and the consequent production or disruption of leisure in the beauty salon.