Community Formation and Sense of Place - Seasonal Tourism Workers in Rural Sweden

Abstract

Seasonal tourism workers in the Swedish mountains can be conceptualised as members of occupational communities. For members of such a community, the dual relationship between the job and other members are important. However, a place perspective might be fruitful, as place amenities are expected drivers of job acceptance. By studying seasonal workers' relation to place, through the lens of their 'membership' of an occupational community, it is possible to capture both the individual sense of place and the group's shared sense of place. The former is highly important, as social relations among the workers are particularly significant. In this study, the conceptual framework of occupational communities is modified to better suit temporary and mobile workers in amenityrich rural areas. The overall aim of this paper is to investigate how seasonal tourism employees can be analysed as an occupational community. Further, it studies the ways in which a particular tourism-related occupational community perceives and connects to its location, as well as the ways in which seasonal tourism workers perceive the role of place and community in their everyday lives and future plans. Hence, this article concludes that members of an occupational community have a dual attachment to place. This type of community could exist and move around without being affected by the geographical place, but the place has affective possibilities influencing the workers, and in an isolated rural place, the community has more space to grow stronger.

The socio-economic impact of regional tourism: an occupation-based modelling perspective from Sweden

“…Yet regional tourism officials seem to be interested in understanding the long-term sustainability of tourism impacts, particularly when the industry is considered crucial. Small destinations surrounded by a weak industrial structure rely most strongly on tourism because tourism activities became the main reason towns in remote and peripheral Swedish regions still exist (Thulemark 2017):…”

“…Locating the tourism workforce at the heart of sustainability and development discourse is crucial, particularly as the human dimension has been largely neglected in tourism sustainability literature (Baum 2018;Higgins-Desbiolles et al 2019;Thulemark 2017). Although the study at hand was methodologically framed within the domain of tourism economic impact analysis (Comerio & Strozzi 2019), the impact of tourism was studied from a socio-economic perspective.…”

“…Tourism Satellite Accounts provide more detailed insights into tourism's economic contributions in different sectors of the regional economy (Wu et al 2019). Additionally, the occupation-based analysis was highly dependent on SSYK codes lacking certain categories of tourism work, such as seasonal employment (Thulemark 2017). For future research, we suggest placing additional emphasis on institutional perspectives in order to deepen the understanding of context-specific rules, laws and legislations, as well as regional and supra-regional initiatives associated with governing the regional tourism workforce and attempting to improve its socio-economic conditions (Baum 2018;Higgins-Desbiolles et al 2019).…”

Spillover, sponge or something else? Dismantling expectations for rural development resulting from giga-investments in Northern Sweden

“…There is evidence that a range of populations are attracted to shrinking rural municipalities for varying reasons and varying periods of time, thus continuing to shape the advance and retreat of settlements across the North (Carson et al 2019). These include, on the one hand, labour migrants attracted by work-related and economic motives, such as young 'escalator migrants' in search of faster career advancement opportunities (Martel et al 2013;Bjerke & Mellander 2017), and seasonal or temporary labour attracted by higher salaries, signature recreation opportunities, the prospects for exotic or extreme work experiences, and opportunities to balance lifestyle and economic interest on a seasonal basis (Lundmark 2006;Thulemark 2017).…”

Transience

“…Coupland 2003) compared to scholars from other fields, including sociology, anthropology and human geography. Although transience may not be a mainstream topic in social theory, it has in fact been identified and discussed as a salient feature of late modernity for at least 20 years, for instance in relation to transient workers in the tourism industry, from Hawaiʻi to Scandinavia (Adler and Adler 1999, Thulemark 2017, Underthun and Jordhus-Lier 2018, transient 'portable' communities that form around shared interests in bluegrass music in the American Midwest (Gardner 2004) transient or 'light' communities emerging in various modes of public transport from the Victorian railway (De Sapio 2013) to 'tram 12 in the city of Antwerp' (Soenen 2006, cf. Nash 1975, transnational students in Auckland (Collins 2012), and 'global nomads' living lives of 'location independence' (Kannisto 2016).…”