“They really don't want to see us”: How cleaners experience invisible ‘dirty’ work

an article by Verónica Caridad Rabelo (San Francisco State University, USA) and Ramaswami Mahalingam (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA) published in Journal of Vocational Behavior Volume 113 (August 2019)

Abstract

Many people want to feel valued and included but being invisible may undermine one's sense of belonging and meaningful engagement. Some employees may face chronic invisibility due to job stigma (e.g., ‘dirty’ work), overnight shifts, and/or spatial separation from coworkers and customers.

We examine how people make sense of feeling invisible at work: what people experience when they are not seen or are treated as though they cannot be seen. We sought to understand when workers feel invisible, how they make sense of these experiences, and the consequences for their work and well-being.

To examine how people experience invisibility, we conducted an inductive phenomenological analysis. Data included open-ended questions from a survey of 199 university building cleaners and in-depth conversations with a subset of 12 cleaners.

Three major themes emerged:

• how cleaners experienced invisibility,
• what invisibility feels like, and
• why they were rendered invisible.

Cleaners experienced invisibility at work (not being recognized or acknowledged by customers) and invisibility of work (feeling that work is ignored or unappreciated). They varied in how they made sense of invisibility, experiencing anger, resignation, ambivalence, and relief. Cleaners also identified several mechanisms to explain why they were rendered invisible, including class injury, customer absentmindedness, and the spatial and temporal structure of work.

We summarize these findings by conceptualizing invisibility as an intersubjective phenomenon that creates and sustains various critical boundaries at work—between worker/client, dirty/clean, repugnant/respectable, undignified/worthy.

We conclude with a call for greater research on work that is invisible and ‘dirty’, and the people rendered invisible in the process, to make this work more equitable and dignified.

---