Working on the edge: Remediation work in the UK retail travel sector

Published date: 1 April 2014

Additional Information: Funding Information: This article addressed how developments in national security have affected the roles of front-line workers in the travel sector. Using remediation ( Bolter and Grusin, 2000 ), as well as drawing on a significant body of work concerning the privatization of security and public private partnership, data have been presented which expose how surveillance-based regulation intensified the jobs of front-line retail travel workers and created a new type of activity: ‘remediation work’. This is a conceptual innovation that facilitates understanding of the additional burdens placed on employees by security regulations such as e-Borders. Remediation work can be applied to numerous situations in which information is re-purposed and re-packaged for regulatory ends. Recent examples include the current UK government’s Prevent strategy ( Home Office, 2011 ), which calls for heightened vigilance in combatting terrorism by universities or city councils; and the Protection of Freedoms Bill which involves communications service providers. This category of work serves as an important vehicle through which the hidden costs of national security regulation can be foregrounded. It is acknowledged that this article is an initial exploration into the growing trend of involving the private sector in national security and that further research is warranted. No previous empirical research on this issue has been undertaken. The current article seeks to conceptualize the observed impact on front-line workers and has done so within the limits of its data set as well as relevant research published to date. Further analysis at other relevant sites where customer data are securitized by front-line workers would be beneficial. Closer examination of the differences between different points of sale and at points in the supply chain may also be illuminating. Time, funding and access limitations meant that this was not possible in the current research. Indeed further research using this concept may reveal additional qualities of remediation work which occur. It would be equally valuable to observe consumer experiences of such matters both in depth and at scale. As the Home Affairs Select Committee ( 2009 ) has warned, e-Borders may infringe on passengers’ rights to travel, yet the mechanics and implications of collecting their data prevail. The travel industry has been recruited and is implicit in the collection of data that has little or no legal fortitude. Despite this, the programme remains and front-line workers remediate passports under considerable strain in this emerging political economy of surveillance-intensive national security. Funding The research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and was a project grant. The award number is F/00269/X. Kirstie Ball is Reader in Surveillance and Organization of the Open University Business School. She is Director of the Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy and a founding Director of Surveillance Studies Network and the journal Surveillance and Society . Her research interests concern employee and consumer surveillance, the surveillance industrial complex and the surveilled subject. Ana Canhoto is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Oxford Brookes University Business School. Her research focuses on customer profiling and customer management. She is the chair of the Academy of Marketing’s Special Interest Group in Customer Relationship Management and Services Marketing. Elizabeth Daniel is Professor of Information Management at the Open University Business School. She joined The Open University Business School in January 2005 having held posts at Cranfield School of Management and City University Business School. Prior to joining academia, she spent a decade in industry, initially working as a medical physicist and latterly as a management consultant. Her research focus concerns business information systems and their impact on individuals and organizations. Sally Dibb is Professor of Marketing at the Open University Business School. Before joining The Open University Business School, she was a member of faculty at Warwick Business School (WBS). Her research has been at the forefront of theoretical and empirical developments in marketing strategy, segmentation, customer relationship management (CRM) and consumer behaviour. Maureen Meadows is Senior Lecturer in Strategy at the Open University Business School. Maureen’s research interests include the use of methods and models in supporting strategy development. In particular, she has published on the practice of visioning in a range of organisational contexts, and developed processes for organisational visioning that enhance the participation and creativity aspects of visioning exercises. Keith Spiller is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Open University Business School. His research interests concern surveillance processes and practices in the UK private sector and their impact on consumers. He holds a PhD from Durham University where he studied emotional geographies of consumption in farmers’ markets.

Keywords: employees, infrastructure, remediation, security, surveillance, travel

Local EPrints ID: 471962

URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471962

DOI: doi:10.1177/0950017013490334

ISSN: 0950-0170

PURE UUID: 31b2a91a-2801-4bfb-a271-c421b822cc60

ORCID for Keith Spiller: orcid.org/0000-0002-5796-8165

Date deposited: 23 Nov 2022 17:31

Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 04:07