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Studies focusing on interactive service work that involves face-to-face interactions between employees and customers/clients have shown that employees tend to show symptoms of job dissatisfaction, stress, and emotional exhaustion because they are expected to display or suppress certain emotions in the performance of their jobs. To meet the health challenges and reduce sickness absenteeism among employees in this sector, two organizational interventions were implemented among service workers employed by the municipality and in a shopping mall in a medium-sized Norwegian city. In a field experiment, the authors evaluated the effect of this type of intervention on employee health. The experiment combined survey measures (pre- and post-intervention) with observations and unstructured interviews. The survey data showed positive changes on only two of the measured variables among the shopping mall employees, and no effect on the municipal employees. This article focuses on the qualitative data, which show how constraints related to time and to interactional and organizational practices impeded full involvement of the employees during implementation of the interventions. The authors discuss the results from the perspective of the general challenges of implementing interventions in the service sector.

Résumé Dans cet article, nous nous pencherons sur la question de savoir comment les changements dans le monde du travail ont influencé la nature du travail relationnel des employés dans le secteur des services. Nous allons explorer, selon une perspective de genre, de quelle façon les employés de deux secteurs, la vente au détail et les services bancaires, vivent leur journée de travail. Notre intérêt se concentre principalement sur les femmes qui accomplissent un travail émotionnel et sur les aspects reliés au travail sans cadre défini et sur l’ambivalence.

We present findings from an anthropological field study on the role of language and language policy in migration from Poland to Norway, and the larger implications for emerging language and immigration policy in Europe. Initial fieldwork in Norway found that Polish workers without knowledge of the Norwegian language struggled to secure employment in the formal economy. The 2008 financial crisis intensified competition in the labour market and underscored fluency in Norwegian as a means of discriminating among workers. Comparative case studies of language schools revealed that these organizations are active participants in channeling Polish migrants' movements into a segmented labour market, often in ways that involve cooperation between private companies and the State. We frame the Norwegian case within the larger context of Europe and the trend there toward favoring integration over multiculturalism. The emergence of restrictive language policies in Europe may be interpreted as a legally and culturally acceptable means for discouraging access to rights associated with permanent residency or citizenship by work migrants from CEE countries, while at the same time permitting them access to the labour market for temporary work. The long-term consequences of such policies for European society are uncertain.

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