Current research: Global Welcome? Migrant workers, service cultures, tourist places

ESRC Small Grant, 2009-10

My current research project proposes a socio-cultural analysis of the welcome provided to and by migrant workers employed in hospitality venues in the English Lake District and the Scottish Highlands. It will explore how the mobilities of an international service sector workforce are influencing perceptions of migration, service and place, and will be set with the context of the emerging English and Scottish public and private sector agenda on the employment of hospitality migrant workers.

Visit the project website: www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/globalwelcome

PhD thesis (2006): Complex mobilities: transforming tourist places and service cultures

This project explored the contradictory and unpredictable effects of the mobilities of people, objects, capital and images on two small peripheral tourist places in England. Eating and drinking venues were the focus of a study that proposed a framework of service cultures in which service hospitalities and customer socialities were actively performed. Places were imagined, sensed and tasted in venues, while individual tastes were figuratively placed. Social, cultural and economic change in place was reflected in the service cultures of venues. A mix of qualitative methods was used in an ethnography that provided a polyvocal interpretation of socially and culturally constructed senses of place. My approach was interdisciplinary combining theoretical perspectives of sociologists, cultural geographers, anthropologists, cultural theorists and tourism and hospitality commentators/theorists, alongside literary and historical work, to develop new ways of analysing tourist places.

Publications

Cuthill, V. (2007) 'Consuming Harrogate: Perfoming Betty's Cafe and Revolution Vodka Bar' Space and Culture 10(1) February 1-13

Cuthill, V. (2007) 'Sensing and Performing Hospitalities and Socialities of Tourist Places: Eating and Drinking Out in Harrogate and Whitehaven' in Germann Molz, J. & Gibson, S. (eds) (2007) Mobilizing Hospitality Aldershot Ashgate

Cuthill, V. (2004) 'Little England's Global Conference Centre' in Sheller, M. & Urry, J. (eds) (2004)Tourism Mobilities: Places to Play, Places in Play London: Routledge