Istraživanja položaja radnika i radnica na kruzerima
Researching the Position of Workers on Cruise Ships

Reflections on the Significance of the Feminist Perspective

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyzes the concepts of modern research of the cruise ship industry, with a special focus on the position of migrant workers. From the beginning of the 21st century, the rapid development of this industry on a global scale has drawn the attention of many authors and institutions, and the studies of this phenomenon have resulted in an interesting fragmentation: tourism studies and the social-economic approach. Tourism studies, as an important field of the cruise ship industry research, have rarely engaged on the topic of migrant cruise ship workers, while the social-economic perspective has barely included the field of tourism as an important element in researching their position. The goal of this paper is to simultaneously provide better understanding of the cruise ship industry phenomenon in a wider social, economic and political context, and also point out the oversights that are visible when creating notions in public discourses on the position of workers. In order to better explain the importance of re-conceptualizing their general position, it is necessary to consult tourism studies regarding this problem, explain the relations that exist within the travel and cruise ship industries, and connect that with the relation between work and migrations as the primary factor for contextualizing conditions in which they exist. A special aspect of this paper is dedicated to the problem of the lack of a feminist theory and critique, both in tourism studies and in the social-economic approach. By introducing the feminist perspective, this paper points out the “dangers” of the scientific research discourse in creating concepts about the “migrant subjectivity” and the marginality of cruise ship workers. The first section offers a short review of the approached and basic concepts in defining the cruise ship phenomenon, and refers to the legal and political context of the workers’ position within the industry. The second section deals with the insights of contemporary research and papers, indicating the theoretical and methodological problems of mapping the social-economic position of workers, while the aim of the third section is to indicate the importance of the feminist perspective in the understanding of thisphenomenon, offering suggestions for further reviews and further research on the position of cruise ship workers, especially within the field of feminist geography.

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