Introduction

Conceptualizing Invisible Labor

WINIFRED R. POSTER, MARION CRAIN, AND MIRIAM A. CHERRY

This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to pose two fundamental questions: what counts as work, and why are some forms of work invisible? We focus on labor that occurs within formal employment relationships but is not conceptualized as work and so remains hidden from view — sometimes in the public imagination, sometimes from consumers, and sometimes from the workers themselves. When their work is erased, the workers themselves are sometimes rendered invisible as well. We ask what forces and trends are preventing employers, consumers, and employees from "seeing" the work that is done and blocking regulators and policy makers from addressing its impacts.

Visible labor has traditionally been defined as work that is readily identifiable and overt. It is located in a physical "workplace" and is self-recognized as work by management, employees, and consumers. It is typically paid, occurs in the public sphere, is directly profit generating, and has historically been full-time, long-term, and state regulated.

Starting in the 1980s, however, sociologists began to write about work that falls outside that domain. Arlene Daniels's (1987) article "Invisible Work" solidified and propelled the field, becoming a reference point for the social science literature. Centering on the household and voluntary work performed within it, Daniels's article noted the gendered character of this invisible work, observing that women are often associated with kinds of labor that are widespread throughout society and yet not conceived as work and, moreover, not valued.

Subsequently, Marjorie DeVault's (1994) research on Feeding the Family showed how activities like preparing meals have been considered "act[s] of love" or "expression of a natural role" (Star and Strauss 1999: 10) rather than work activities. Other scholars expanded the analysis to women's work performed inside the home but more clearly associated with income-generating and productive capacities such as piece-rate electronics assembly, auto parts assembly, seamstress work, and snack food production (Boris and Prugl 1996). As DeVault (2014) outlined in her recent Presidential Address to the Eastern Sociological Society meeting on "Invisible Work," many of these early writings (Kanter 1993; Rollins 1987; Smith 1988) were crucial academically, enabling scholars to "see" the work and visualize workers in places previously invisible to conventional sociology.

Our analysis considers how the concept of invisibility applies to a larger range of labor performed inside formal employment relationships. We take our inspiration from Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential theorists on the dynamics of invisible labor within the context of paid employment. Her early work uncovered how emotions become commodities for employers in the service economy, who compel workers to undergo "feeling management" and present genuine care for their clienteles (Hochschild 1983). The emotion work done by flight attendants, she explained, was a form of labor that generated significant profits for the airlines and represented a core part of the brand marketed to consumers.

In other scholarship addressing the concept of hidden labor within the context of paid employment, invisibility has typically been associated with minimum-wage jobs or the underground economy. This implicit pairing is particularly apparent given scholarly attention to recent expansions of low-wage sectors of the labor force such as low-end service work (Ehrenreich 2010), seasonal farmwork (Griffith and Kissam 1995), and inner-city retail and fast-food work (Newman 2000). The notion of invisibility has also been widely discussed in relation to the Global South, where the marginalized workforce is connected to other dynamics like child labor, urban slums, and the poverty of rural households.

Expanding this focus, our analysis considers the meaning and significance of visibility across class and social hierarchies. Our authors examine jobs that span a range of pay scales and workers who hail from diverse social classes, including retail workers, computer workers on crowdsourcing Web sites, sexualized servers, virtual receptionists, college students functioning as brand ambassadors on campus, white-collar workers in organizations, and engineers. We balance our perspective to account for a range of occupational positions that include the middle and professional strata of the workforce. Our authors consider the role of affluent or middle-class workers in retail; the increasing use of unpaid internships that are disproportionately available to college-educated, economically privileged students; and the status of skilled knowledge workers on the Internet.

Broadening the category of invisible labor matters for several reasons. First, work that is not seen is not valued, either symbolically or materially. Second, if workers themselves do not see their efforts as valuable work, they are less likely to organize, appeal for public support, or challenge their working conditions through the legal system. Even if they want to mobilize, the invisibility of their work — and in many cases, of the workers themselves — may make it...