Tourism in Thailand

Abstract

The paper explores and compares the perceptions of workers in the tourism industry in Thailand in foreign-owned and locally-owned firms in order to provide an underrepresented perspective to be used in the debate over whether international trade and tourism primarily exploits workers or provides valuable opportunities. A matched-pairs comparative analysis was used, and it was found that employees in both locally-owned and foreign-owned firms generally expressed high levels of job satisfaction, although employees in foreign-owned firms expressed statistically significant higher levels of job satisfaction than did employees in locally owned firms. In debates over whether exploitation or opportunities are created by international trade, foreign investment, and tourism, the viewpoints and perspectives of the workers are often overlooked. The paper intends to help bring into the debate the perspectives of individuals who are most directly affected by these activities.

The Phenomenon of Labor Exploitation: a Systematic Literature Review

“…They underscore the importance of the symbolic power of legal recognition, even without perfect implementation, and end up focusing on contemporary workers as an identity-based group that is neglected. Switch to Thailand, (Hipsher, 2021) in order to provide a perspective that is still underutilized in discussions about whether workers are largely exploited by international trade and tourism or whether they instead offer valuable possibilities, the author of this study compares and contrasts the perceptions of Thai tourism industry workers held by locally owned businesses. In Finland, there is a study that examines migrants' work experiences outside of the EU or EEA students who are oriented toward the precarious labor market.…”