Job Touristification: Bases for the Critique of a Social Acceleration Phenomenon Manifested in Bleisure and Workation

Abstract

One of the most exemplifying manifestations of the progressive increase in speeds and social change, characteristic of accelerated societies, occurs in the creation of job trends based on the hybridization between work and leisure time. Projected onto a positive notion of flexibility and self-control, they maintain a close relationship with high levels of self-intensification. This article reconstructs the basic features of formalized practices such as “bleisure” or “workation” to characterize a more specific phenomenon of acceleration within this trend, which I refer to as “job touristification”. This concept highlights the specific attribution of attractive features from tourist practices to work for productive purposes. In contrast to the positive discourses about mobility and tourism associated with this phenomenon, the foundations of a critical model are suggested to recognize its negative alienating implications concerning the good life.