Emotion management from the client’s perspective: the case of personal home care

Abstract

Recent scholarship examines multiple types of emotion management but these efforts are limited by the absence of service recipients’ perspectives. Using interviews with personal home care clients in Toronto, this article extends discussions of emotion management. Both management and recipients expect the worker to respectfully meet and anticipate clients’ individual needs but this is relational service, not emotional labour, because it is motivated by relationship building. Most clients also want caring work but it is unclear if and when this is part of the job. This preferred emotion management stems neither from explicit organizational rules nor implicit social rules, but from organizational signals informally communicated to workers by recipients. Some recipients send social signals for care beyond the job, which can take the form of unpaid labour or friendship. The article offers an extended typology of emotion management that can incorporate clients, managers and workers as actors in service work.