Racialized emotional labour in Swedish welfare organisations

Case workers in welfare organisations need to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal encounters at work.

To date, a lot of literature has focused on emotional labour as being gendered but surprisingly few studies, especially in Sweden, have examined emotional labour as racialized.

Therefore, this project aims to investigate the experiences and emotional conflicts felt among case workers with ethnic and racial minority background by asking the following research questions:1) How is emotional labour in welfare organizations experienced by minority and mijority case workers and how does it influence their sense of belonging?2) What strategies of emotional regulation do minority case workers use to conform to the existing organizational culture and practices?3) What strategies of emotional regulation do minority case workers use when navigating incidents of racial micro-aggressions at work?4) How is racialized emotional labour influencing work related outcomes?

The project makes use of a mixed method approach. 1) Interviews with case workers and supervisors will be conducted to understand the different aspects of experiencing emotional labour as a case worker belonging to an minority. 2) A survey will be conducted to measure emotional labour, experience of workplace discrimination but also work related factors such as stress, to examine the impact of emotional labour on work related outcomes.