Be Our Guest (PDF)

Adopting a geographic lens to examine the employment of guest workers in the United States, Be Our Guest offers readers the most comprehensive analysis of guest work in tourism that has been produced to date. In weaving together the constellation of political and economic factors that exist across multiple scales, the case is made for how and why so many tourism-dependent areas of the United States have developed a dependency on temporary foreign workforces. Towards a holistic approach, special emphasis is placed on the economic histories of these areas and shifting patterns of employment, seasonality, gentrification, and related housing shortages.

Throughout are the voices of stakeholders involved in every aspect of guest work: human resources managers battling labor shortages, town planners mitigating workforce housing shortages, and attorneys and advocates helping to directly assist migrant workers and affect policy changes. These perspectives are coupled with detailed analysis of state policies regarding guest worker visa programs and labor market stress to illustrate a vivid picture of the precarious lives of the migrant laborers who arrive in the United States.

Be Our Guest serves to specifically address a lacuna on the critical tourism studies side and the growing concern on the practitioner side over workforce quality and supply. Nevertheless, it is a benefit for everyone with an interest in issues of labor migration, precarity, housing policy, and immigration reform.