Abstract:

Tourism is a key economic driver of Thailand, contributing to as much as 20 percent of the GDP and employing over six million people before the Covid-19 pandemic. Work in the tourism and hospitality sector is gendered as it often requires workers to embody feminine traits of being caring, servile and attentive. Women are overrepresented in the tourism sector both as entrepreneurs and workers and they tend to concentrate in small-scale entrepreneurship and frontline, low-end tourism employment. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, women in the tourism sector and their families are badly affected. This project studies the impacts on and adjustment of frontline, low-end tourism workers and small-scale entrepreneurs, who are predominantly female, under the Covid-19 pandemic. The study site is Hua Hin, Prachuap Khirikhan, a prominent tourism destination in Thailand, with a focus on health, wellness, recreational and long-stay tourism. The study outlines short- and long-term impacts on and adjustment of tourism workers and entrepreneurs as well as the efficiency, accessibility and gender sensitivity of the government’s responses to the pandemic. The study will contribute to better understanding of gendered labour and the precarity of tourism work in order to inform tourism and labour policies that consider social protection, fair and equal employment, and women empowerment, per the UN Sustainable Development Goals.    

Speaker's Biography:

Sirijit Sunanta is an associate professor in the PhD Program in Multicultural Studies, the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research interests include gender and migration, globalization and food cultures, and the politics of diversity in Thailand. The geographical focus of her research is transnational mobilities between Europe and Thailand. She has published widely in leading journals in the areas of Asian Studies, Migration Studies, Gender Studies and Tourism Studies. Sirijit’s current research projects focus on care transnationalization and gendered labour in Thai health and well-being tourism. Sirijit is leading the Thailand research team in Europe - Asia Consortium to study streams of migration between Europe and Asia under the AspirE Project funded by the Horizon Europe scheme (2023-2026).