The emotional labor of former street children working as tour guides in Delhi

Bibliographic Data

ID2616449
AuthorsTore Holst (0000-0002-8620-3903, Roskilde University [email protected], corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume2019
Issue85
Pages97-109
Publication date2019-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFocaal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0920-1297 • E-ISSN: 1558-5263
PublisherBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/fcl.2019.850109
OpenAlexW4254102279, W2800571984
LanguageEN
References cited20

In Delhi, former street children guide tourists around the streets they once inhabited and show how the NGOs they live with try to resocialize current street children. The "personal stories" they perform implicitly advocate simple solutions that conveniently fit the limited engagement of the tourists, whose ethical position is thereby validated in relation to the NGO. But this uncomplicated exchange of guides' emotions for tourists' capital is in the guides' interest, because it allows them to set boundaries for the emotional labor of performing their past suffering. The guides are thus incentivized to work within a post-humanitarian logic, selling their stories as commodities, which then incentivize the tourists to act as consumers, who have little choice but to frame their declarations of solidarity with the children as acts of consumption

Advertising · Business · Emotional labor · Geography · Media studies · New delhi · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Solidarity · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Computer Science · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology · Tourism, Volunteerism, and Development

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