Speaker
Description
Until now, the geography of health has shown little interest in tourist areas, apart from approaches linked to medical tourism. This communication focuses on the socio-spatial dimension of the health of tourism workers. This subject has received little attention in the social sciences given the relative invisibility of this population, due to the fact that work and holidays are antinomic (Delaplace, Simon, 2017; Guibert, Réau, 2021). But what does it mean to work in holiday country? What are the socio-spatial characteristics of tourist destinations capable of influencing the health and well-being of tourism workers? To To tackle this issue, this communication will draw on the results of a seven-month qualitative study carried out on the island of Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands of Spain, between February and August 2022. The study is based on 47 semi-structured interviews with workers in the tourist restaurants sector, politicians, trade unions and health professionals, as well as a phase of direct observation (Arborio, Fournier, 2021). The originality of this research lies above all in the fact that it used the determinants of health as a socio-spatial framework for interpreting the health and well-being of workers in a tourism context. An analytical framework based on the list of health determinants (see figure) provided a qualitative and multidimensional interpretation of the health of the population of workers studied. This tool could be used in the future as a tool for socio-territorial health diagnosis in tourist areas.
Key words : Health, Tourism, Work, Wellbeing, Social geography
