Emotional Taint

Abstract

Poised within the borderlands between two nations, Border Patrol agents form the largest federal law enforcement organization in the nation, yet the public knows very little about agents themselves. Agents complete a variety of job duties that may be viewed as “dirty work,” or work that society considers physically, socially, or morally objectionable. They also perform emotional duties and emotional labor, which are often stigmatized by the public. This interpretive ethnographic research provides a descriptive portrayal of the Patrol and extends theory in the areas of emotional labor—the emotional performances required to carry out certain jobs—and dirty work. This article asserts that emotion and emotional labor are emotionally tainted, and that engaging emotion provides one strategy for workers to make sense of this type of dirty work. A definition and framework for emotional taint are offered, extending the current discussion of both emotion and taint at work.

Keywords

emotional labor dirty work sense-making taint management

This job is just so misunderstood. We’re not the devils some people think we are and we’re sure as hell not saints either. And, uh . . . I think what’s the worst part is just trying to figure out how to do your job without making anyone happy, but still being able to live with yourself when you get home.

—Agent Carlos, Field Training Supervisor, U.S. Border Patrol Agent

Poised within the borderlands between two nations, the U.S. Border Patrol forms the largest federal law enforcement organization in the nation (U.S. Department of Justice, 2012). Yet, the general public knows very little about the experiences of agents themselves. Because the Patrol’s actions do not occur in a vacuum, we need to explore the contexts of law enforcement that “depend for their possibility . . . upon the pre-existence of certain wide-spread social routines and cultural sensibilities” (Garland, 2000, p. 347). What the public thinks about an occupation is an important part of how workers make sense of their identities (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). Border Patrol agents provide a unique perspective on how workers navigate social stigma, organizational expectations, and individual sense-making.

Research demonstrates that law enforcement occupations may be simultaneously viewed either negatively or positively by the public. Dirty work refers to work that society considers physically, socially, or morally objectionable, and thus “dirty” (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Drew, Mills, & Gassaway, 2007; Hughes, 1962). According to Hughes (1951), who coined the term, work is considered “dirty” when it is physically disgusting or dangerous, when it degrades one’s dignity, and/or when it “goes counter to the more heroic of our moral conceptions” (p. 319). Although law enforcement officers are often considered “heroes,” research has shown that they can also be deemed “dirty workers” because they work with stigmatized populations, perform physical labor on the job, and may engage in moral corruption (Ashforth, Kreiner, Clark, & Fugate, 2007; Dick, 2005; Tracy & Scott, 2006). Law enforcement occupations are particularly challenging to study because of the complexity of their dirty work taint.

Research has also shown that law enforcement officers engage in work that requires employees to manage emotion as part of the job. Emotion is often a silenced aspect of organizations, particularly within masculine occupations such as law enforcement (Fineman, 2005; Tracy, 2004, 2005). Yet emotional labor, or the use of emotion as a requirement for paid labor, is instrumental for the employee–client exchange in many workplaces (Hochschild, 1983), including law enforcement. Scholars have noted that emotion or emotional labor may be also be required by “dirty workers” (e.g., Grandy & Mavin, 2012; Henderson, 2001; Tracy & Scott, 2006), but have only just begun to explore how emotional labor and dirty work may inform one another theoretically (e.g., Grandy & Mavin, 2014; Rivera & Tracy, 2014). In particular, how taint management and emotional labor might inform one another remains unexplored.

This research provides a rich descriptive study of the U.S. Border Patrol to extend, critique, and build theory in the areas of dirty work and emotional labor, linking the two bodies of research through an exploration of sense-making. I begin with an introduction to main concepts, pose questions to guide the research, then discuss research methods and interpretive analysis. Next, I present a summary of the findings, highlighting the emotional labor agents perform, the ways they describe this emotional labor as tainted, and how they make sense of that taint through engaging the very emotions that some may find tainted. Finally, I discuss the theoretical contributions and practical applications of the findings.

An Introduction to the U.S. Border Patrol, Dirty Work, and Emotional Labor

The events of September 11th, 2001, shifted the national dialogue about immigration. Continual controversies over immigration laws and events, such as the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 or the Central American child refugee crisis in 2014, thrust immigration and the Border Patrol into the spotlight. Yet despite the added attention, discourses rarely reflect the complexity of the work of a Border Patrol agent—wherein such a wide range of work is required in the face of public critique, and with the potential for such relevant outcomes for the nation, undocumented immigrants,¹ and agents themselves. As Agent Andres articulated, “When you think of immigration, more often than not, we are the face of immigration.”

The U.S. Border Patrol: In the Spotlight

The Border Patrol was established in 1924 to control who entered the United States (Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1978). Border Patrol agents work long hours outside in the rugged terrain in almost complete isolation (Hernandez, 2010). New agents, regardless of whether they will end up on the northern or southern border, attend the Border Patrol Academy to learn to speak Spanish, drive in the desert, shoot a firearm, and to track “sign” or footprints (U.S. Customs and Border Protection [CBP], 2013). While on “patrol,” agents work with a variety of publics, including undocumented immigrants as well as members of the local community, ranchers, tourists, and protestors. They might apprehend a family of migrant workers, recover the body of someone killed in narcotics smuggling, or help a rancher herd cattle back inside a fence-line. In sum, agents do challenging and often unpredictable work, interacting with a variety of different communities, and engaging in a myriad of job duties.

In 2003, CBP became the single unified federal border agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), reflecting the shifting discussions about immigration and the border post September 11th, 2001. The revised mission put an emphasis on preventing “terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering the U.S. while facilitating legitimate and legal trade and travel into the U.S.” (CBP, 2007, p. 1). The government’s new focus encouraged tremendous growth for the Patrol—from 6,880 agents in 1997 to more than 21,000 in 2013 (Hennessy-Fiske & Carcamo, 2013). Despite the government’s emphasis on terrorism, research indicates that immigration itself remains a primary sociopolitical concern of this decade. For example, a recent poll showed that 76% of respondents regarded it important to pass immigration legislation (Pew Research Center, 2014), and trends indicate that Americans are split about whether the emphasis should be on border security and deportation or a pathway to residence and citizenship (Steinhauser, 2014). Thus, undocumented immigrants remain a stigmatized population in the United States, while perceptions of the Border Patrol diverge.

Media, activist groups, and academics have all provided differing narratives of what it means to be a Border Patrol agent. Popular television shows (e.g., “Border Wars” of National Geographic Channel) depict agents as heroic and important, while news media often criticize the Patrol, suggesting its incompetence (e.g., Hennessy-Fiske, 2014; Steinhauer, 2009), accusing agents of sexual misconduct or immigrant abuse (e.g., Fernandez, 2011), and portraying agents as vigilantes who sometimes act without regard for legal process (e.g., Bennett, 2014). Scholarly research also critiques the patrol. For example, Rosas (2006) argues that the Patrol’s policies “funnel” border-crossers into what he called “killing deserts”; Phillips, Hagan, and Rodriguez (2006) critically examine the treatment of immigrants during arrest; Meuller (2013) discusses the environmental impact of Border Patrol policies; and Sabo et al. (2014) link the militarization of the border to health disparities. Similar critiques have been voiced through public demonstrations by organizations (e.g., the National Council for La Raza) that have called for the restriction of Patrol activity (Amnesty International USA, 2010), while civilian patrol or advocacy groups like the Minutemen insist that the Patrol is not doing enough to prevent illegal immigration (e.g., Doty, 2007; Groening, 2014). In light of all this, it is not surprising that agents’ work is controversial and contested.

Thus, agents’ experiences are wrapped in competing frameworks that view agents’ work as either too much or too little enforcement. Past research on other law enforcement occupations such as police, correctional officers, or fire fighters suggest that agents likely experience both pride and conflict about their role with the public (Dick, 2005; Scott & Myers, 2005; Tracy, 2005). Less known is how law enforcement officers—including Border Patrol agents—make sense of their work and the many competing ways that different publics view it.

Doing the Dirty Work

Those who work in tainted or criticized occupations often encounter disapproval from various sources regarding a variety of job duties, thus making their jobs dirty work (Grandy & Mavin, 2012; Simpson, Slutskaya, Lewis, & Hopfl, 2012). Socially tainted work includes jobs in which employees work with stigmatized people, such as prison guards (Tracy, 2004), or when work is considered servitude, such as nurses or maids (Adib & Guerrier, 2003). As discussed, agents work with the stigmatized populations of immigrants, criminals, and narcotics smugglers and perform service to others when they provide first respondent care. Physically dirty work is done to clean up bodily fluids or trash (Stacey, 2005; Twigg, 2000), or performed under noxious or dangerous conditions (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Martin, 1999). Border Patrol agents work in extreme weather conditions, are often in physical danger and may also deal with bodily fluids when assisting someone who has been injured. Finally, moral taint occurs when jobs lack virtue, employ deception, or use confrontation, such as sex workers (Rambo-Ronai, 1992) or police (Dick, 2005). Critiques of the Patrol illustrate that agents’ work is considered morally deficient because of abuses of power, or that they are doing too much or too little to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants. Indeed, as one agent noted, “Nobody likes it when you squash the American Dream. And that’s what we do.”

In sum, Border Patrol agents experience physical, social, and moral taint that may overlap in various ways and can be experienced simultaneously. Dirty work is necessarily linked to society’s judgments of job duties precisely because of societal expectations and stigma placed upon the work. As such, dirty workers and their occupations are not inherently “dirty,” for the taint or “dirtiness” is socially constructed (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). This social construction can be particularly complex where the work may be viewed as “positive” by some and “negative” by others.

Past research on dirty work focuses on how employees cope with the negative effects of taint (e.g., Kreiner, Ashforth, & Sluss, 2006; Tracy & Scott, 2006) and individual and organizational tactics that protect workers from possible identity threats, but do not yet address how employees navigate face-to-face encounters with people who are openly critical of their dirty work (e.g., Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999). New research further explains how workers “manage” taint, suggesting that many employees experience taint management as a process. Grandy and Mavin (2014) propose that ambiguity plays a key role in exotic dancers managing taint, as they engage in a process of ambivalence between the emotions of pride and guilt or shame associated with their work. Similarly, Rivera (2010) discusses emotional dialectic tensions as a way to make sense of dirty work, and Rivera and Tracy (2014) highlight that the embodiment of dirty work provides unique sense-making tools for emotional labor occupations. Greater exploration of emotion as an often silenced component of dirty work can provide additional insight into the nuances of taint management.

Emotional Labor and Social Expectations of Emotional Performances

Emotional labor includes outward performances of emotion, such as smiling, yelling, or showing no emotion—as well as felt emotions, such as happiness or regret. It is characterized by the use of “feeling rules” or the social and organizational norms about how emotions are evaluated, labeled, managed, and expressed while on the job (Hochschild, 1983). Emotional labor, like dirty work, is socially constructed. For example, a law officer, standing rigidly at attention with a stoic facial expression while a woman lay injured and bleeding, may be deemed as uncaring or cruel rather than disciplined and calm. Work requiring emotional displays is often considered “low status,” due to association with service occupations where emotion is part of serving others of a higher status. Emotion is also associated with “women’s work,” as stereotypes label women “natural” caregivers, and these displays are traditionally undervalued in the workplace (Erickson & Ritter, 2001; Henderson, 2001; Hochschild, 1983). Men in particular often find performances of emotional labor to be challenging to their identities in part because of the “low status” and “feminine” nature of emotional performances (e.g., Solari, 2006; Tracy, 2005; Tracy, Myers, & Scott, 2006). Law enforcement, which remains an occupation dominated by men, may struggle to negotiate positive work identities due to the emotional labor required of their jobs.

However, past research on emotional labor has focused on the potential discomfort faced by workers when they negotiate a combination of felt versus performed emotions. An emphasis on “emotive dissonance” or a clash between inner feelings and the outer displays of emotion (Hochschild, 1983) has often overlooked broader social discourses that may help explain emotional labor discomfort (Tracy, 2005; Tracy & Trethewey, 2005), particularly with regard to emotional labor’s low status. Indeed, a key to how work becomes and then remains “dirty” may be in the way that society—and social discourses—view the emotions involved in the work. The complex relationship between dirty work taint and emotional labor has yet to be explored. Although past research has noted that many dirty work occupations also require emotional labor, we have only just begun to explore the ways that these two bodies of literature may overlap and inform one another. A sense-making framework can help understand how agents’ talk about their work informs how they experience dirty work taint and emotional labor, and elucidate the processes of managing this taint.

Making Sense of Identities, Dirty Work, and Emotion

Those working in stigmatized occupations—be they dirty work or emotional labor—encounter social judgments from a variety of sources and engage in managing a positive self-identity (Ashforth et al., 2007; Grandy, 2008; Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). Weick’s (1979, 1995, 2001) conceptualization of organizational sense-making provides one avenue for exploring workers’ identity negotiation in light of the tensions associated with their work because of its emphasis on identity, ambiguity, and the processes of communication. Employees engage in sense-making, retrospectively, whereby they connect their organizational experiences with the contexts around them, pulling from broader societal understandings of the self, work, and the organization (Golden, 2009; Tracy et al., 2006).

Based on Weick’s original work, recent sense-making conceptualizations emphasize the role of social constructions of meaning, discourse and interaction in the process of sense-making and consider sense-making a dynamic and interactional process that draws on individual experiences, organizational norms, worker expectations, and broader social expectations to create and reproduce preferred interpretations of identity and work (Tracy et al., 2006). As a cyclical process, sense-making is a continual aspect of our everyday lives, and we are constantly adding to our “banks” of knowledge that help us determine what will be said and done in the future. Research has utilized sense-making to examine retrospective accounts and personal narratives to see how workers negotiate their work and identities (e.g., Golden, 2009; Schmidt & Dutnow, 2005). Workers make sense of dirty work and emotional labor as they relate their experiences. Because sense-making is revealed in talk that explains past experiences to describe current situations and to project plans for the future (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005), it is well suited for exploring agents’ narratives about their work. Thus, the following research questions guide this research:

Research Question 1: How do Border Patrol agents describe and make sense of their experiences of emotional labor at work?

Research Question 2: How do Border Patrol agents describe and make sense of their experiences of taint and taint management at work?

Method

This research draws on a two and a half year ethnographic study in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas. The data include 165 hr of participant observation, more than 40 hr of in-depth interviews, and 7 recorded hours of actual “in situ” communication. I visited 10 stations, 6 regional offices, and joined agents as they “walked the line” along the border.

I had conversational contact with more than 85 agents, 5 of whom were women. Approximately 35% of participants were White/Caucasian and about 64% were Hispanic (predominantly Mexican American), 2 agents were African American, and 2 agents were of Asian American ethnicity. The demographics I observed reflect the gendered nature of the Border Patrol which, like many law enforcement agencies, remains a consistently masculine field. Although the general public may be unaware of racial demographics of agents, approximately 52% of agents are of Hispanic origin (Pinkerton, 2008), so my research was closely reflective of the racial and gendered nature of the Patrol as a whole.

I conducted participant observation in various locations, including orientations, meetings, detention centers, vehicle checkpoints, and “ride along” trips in the field. I took “jottings” notes in the field, attempting to capture the scenes with “thick description” (Geertz, 1973). I converted jottings into detailed field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) resulting in 167 single-spaced pages. I also audio recorded snippets of live in situ conversations, meetings, and classes, totaling approximately 7 hr, or 72 transcribed pages.

I conducted 29 formal interviews with 25 participants, utilizing two interview guides in two phases of research. The first included open-ended questions on topics such as stress or agents’ interactions with the public. In later stages of data collection, I used a focused interview guide that reflected the thematic groupings found in initial data analysis as well as the sensitizing concepts (Blumer, 1954; Tracy, 2013) learned from past research on dirty work and emotional labor. The focused interviews allowed “member check” opportunities (Bloor, 2001; Lindlof & Taylor, 2011) and provided additional rigor for my research (W. L. Miller & Crabtree, 2005). Interviews varied from 30 min to more than 3 hr, totaling 899 pages in transcription.

Throughout data collection, I wrote analytic memos (Charmaz, 2001), considered the sensitizing concepts (Blumer, 1954; Tracy, 2013), and conducted open coding (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011), looking for themes and patterns and areas that stood out as particularly puzzling or interesting. I utilized the constant-comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), generated several broad “high inference” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011) categories, and created a code book. In the final stages of analysis, I used NVivo software to highlight the salience of individual codes and their interconnectivities.

Emotion at Work and the Public Face of Immigration

Agents in this research consistently voiced concerns about how the public, media, immigrants, and even their own families perceive their work, expressing frustration with the lack of understanding about the emotional labor they performed. In this section, I review the types of emotional labor agents perform. I then report how agents perceive their emotional labor and how agents make sense of dirty work taint. Finally, I discuss the strategies that agents described for managing that taint.

Agents’ Emotional Labor

Agents did not readily discuss the emotional aspects of their work. In fact some agents, like Agent Harley, laughed telling me, “Do we get trained to be emotional? There’s no . . . definitely no training in anything like that.” This response is not surprising, given the fact that emotional labor is rarely articulated, particularly in traditionally “masculine” occupations such as law enforcement (Dick, 2005; Tracy & Scott, 2006, 2007). However, when I asked questions like, “How do you know how to act when you do an arrest?” agents articulated a wide variety of emotional skills and tools needed to be successful in their job.

“Traditional” or “masculine” emotional labor

Agents informed me that they learned how to act during an arrest—such as not showing emotion at all or showing aggression—through formal organizational training and a culture that encouraged more “masculine” emotions or “machismo” displays. Agent John, an agent for 9 years, explained that agents have “a lot of training in the . . . Use of Force Continuum.” The “Use of Force Continuum” is a tool for helping agents decide what kind of “force” to use, such as when to yell, use physical aggression, or draw their firearm. Agent John said the continuum enabled him to act “big and tough” even though he might feel scared, angry, or “full of adrenalin.”

Similarly, “Agent Presence” was another tool agents learned as a way to regulate their own emotions as well as the public. Agent Rafael, who had been an agent for 5 years, explained that “they [the Patrol] keep hammering at the academy and here [in the field] . . . ‘Officer presence, officer presence. Officer presence says everything.’” He went on to explain that officer presence “is your demeanor during an encounter. If you’re soft spoken, nice, kind, you know, sometimes that takes away from your officer presence.”

Agents also described being trained to be “professional” at all times. Agent Mathias elaborated that being professional included “maintaining your bearing.” For Agent Antonio, being professional was “staying calm, no matter what’s going on.” Managing emotions to portray a stoic facial expression served to help the public stay calm too. As Agent Cameron explained, “If you’re gonna be a—a slobbering mess because you’re so emotionally overcome in a certain situation, that’s not good for anybody.” He went on to articulate the importance of staying “in control,” explaining,

When people see you coming, they should know this person is going to help me, or this person’s in charge, they’re arresting me. They don’t need to see somebody who’s gonna look like . . . they’re ready for Oprah.

In this way, being “professional” is deemed a performance of emotional neutrality that helps the agent be “in charge.” The idea that emotion makes agents a “slobbering mess” implies that emotion makes one weak or out of control. Furthermore, being “ready for Oprah” highlights the understanding of some agents that showing emotion is a “feminine” performance, because Oprah implies feminine traits such as talking about one’s inner feelings—which is not appropriate for Border Patrol agents to enact in the field. This statement also reveals that some agents may not want to show emotional displays for fear of being deemed weak by other officers or the public. The absence of emotion (stoicism) is an enactment of emotional labor requiring employees to actively perform emotionlessness regardless of the emotions that might be felt (e.g., Martin, 1999). Stoicism and “masculine” emotions were described as instrumental for being an effective Patrol agent, but were not the only emotional labor performances agents described. They also discussed the role that care work and compassion played in their work.

“Feminine” or “care-work” emotional labor

In addition to the organizationally prescribed and trained emotional labor of stoicism and forcefulness, agents also described “feminine” or “caring” emotional labor as part of their job. Agents framed emotion and emotional care work as a “normal” part of their job, albeit less known by the public. Agents also explained that caring emotion was frequent, intense, unpredictable, and yet ironically, “no big deal.” For example, Agent Carlos, after telling me about a particularly hard day when he rescued a woman, said the “same thing” “happens all the time.” In this way, the “feminine” emotional labor was not an anomaly, but rather was described as important and frequent.

Care work involves instrumental, physical care for another, as well as emotional support provided in conjunction with the physical care. Compassion is defined by the empathetic response a person has when they feel someone is in need, which spurs on compassionate acts (Frost, Dutton, Worline, & Wilson, 2000; K. I. Miller, 2007). For example, Agent Samuel recounted a story from his days on patrol. He came upon a boy who hadn’t eaten for days. “I felt for the kid,” Agent Samuel explained, “So I took the seven bucks I had for my lunch, and went and bought the kid a bucket of chicken.” His compassion or empathy for the child led him to provide the child with food—something not required or even encouraged by the organization. In other law enforcement occupations, workers often shun “feminine” compassion or care-work aspects of their jobs to distance themselves from work that is often looked down upon by the public (Tracy & Scott, 2006, 2007). However, agents described compassion as an important part of their job. Agent Samuel discussed these tensions as he concluded his story:

You think anybody wants a human interest story [about the Patrol] like that? No, no, no. Those big bad Border Patrol agents? Nah, they don’t do that [feed kids]. Yes, they do. And they do it a lot more times than what other people are aware of. No, they don’t tell anybody about it. Why? It’s a personal thing . . . You find these people out there, so you give them a hand . . . You didn’t do anything special.

The agent is explaining that care work and compassion are simultaneously a “normal” event (“they do it a lot more times than people are aware of”); at the same time, it is a silenced or privatized aspect of their work (“nobody wants a human interest story” and agents “don’t tell anybody about it”).

As agents work in remote areas, they are frequently called upon to “rescue”² the public, providing initial medical care and transport to medical facilities or detention centers. Agents routinely told stories about providing medical care and emotional support, oftentimes with no other emergency medical services. Immigrants face many potential dangers including injuries such as broken bones, severe blisters, heatstroke or dehydration, and injuries caused by abusive human smugglers or criminals roaming the desert looking for victims, such as muggings, assault, or rape and agents are frequently called to respond to these types of events. Other care work included responding to emergency calls not related to immigration. For example, Agent Scott described receiving a domestic violence call at the home of a local resident. When he arrived, the male perpetrator was no longer on the scene. Agent Scott provided emotional support to the victim, by “consoling her, listening to her story, and handing her Kleenex” until medical care and police arrived.

Indeed, agents’ job also required them to work with a wide variety of “clients.” Part of the complicated nature of being “a lawyer, a paramedic, a guidance counselor . . . in addition to an arresting officer,” as Agent Debbie put it, means working with diverse publics. Agents were particularly affected by their care work with children, because, as Agent Yvonne insisted, “the children are innocents . . . They didn’t choose to come over here.” Providing care and compassion to children as well as adults who presumably have more freedom in the choices they make requires agents to perform care, regardless of potential demographic differences and circumstances. Similarly, agents must work with all members of the public, regardless of how those people might place judgment on the Border Patrol and agents.

Emotional Labor Is Dirty Work

Agents framed the Border Patrol as the “face of immigration” that was consistently critiqued and looked down upon. Regardless of whether they performed “masculine” or “feminine” emotion, agents discussed being watched and judged. During an Entry on Duty meeting, the training agent told new agents (on the job for about 2 hr) that one of the tools they would need to “survive the Patrol” was to be aware that “You guys [sic] will be in the public eye all the time.” Agents therefore are socialized into an awareness of being scrutinized from the very start of their careers.

Agents recounted numerous stories about negative encounters with the public, such as protesting immigrants’ rights activists; local ranchers complaining of government encroachment on their land; and motorists arguing that their civil liberties are violated by having to stop at a checkpoint. Agents said they were “cussed out” and “flipped off” and several relayed stories of physical assaults—One agent had someone try to hit her with their car. Some agents, who identified as “Mexican” or “Hispanic,” noted that other Hispanics or Mexicans sometimes accused them of being traitors to their people or race. For example, Agent Rafael recalled, “Sometimes, other people that are Hispanic will try to make me feel guilty for being Mexican and working for the Border Patrol. They insinuate that I’m a traitor, . . . ” At the other end of the spectrum, agents recounted instances of criticism that they were not doing enough to enforce immigration from the local communities, politicians, or the Minutemen organization. In one instance, Agent John noted that he often encountered local “ranchers who have a vested interest . . . want us to do a lot more to keep traffickers off their property.”

In sum, agents described their work as a “thankless job.” Agent Antonio summed it up as, “We do all this work, put our lives on the line, and the public doesn’t care or doesn’t want us here.” Yet, regardless of the nature of the public critiques, a common thread was that agents felt that a large portion of the criticism associated with their work was directly linked to how the public views the emotion—or lack thereof—within their job duties. Agents felt that their emotional labor caused many in the public to perceive the Patrol negatively.

Criticism of “masculine” stoicism and force

When agents described receiving explicitly negative feedback from the public, they insisted that most criticism was related to agents’ emotional labor of stoicism and forcefulness. Agents claimed that the very emotional labor that the organization trained them to do was contributing to the public’s negative opinion of the Patrol. In other words, agents explained that one of the reasons why the public did not like the Patrol was because of how agents acted emotionally—as “mean,” “emotionless,” or “uncaring.”

Agent Samuel—a high ranking agent with more than 25 years of experience at the Patrol—explained, “We’re of course, the public figure [of immigration] that can be pointed at. You know, ‘the Border Patrol doesn’t care.’” Agent Zachary said, “The media portray us like we don’t care,” and suggested negative perceptions occurring because of how the Patrol is “seen looking mean in pictures with some immigrant in handcuffs.” Agent John explained the public thinks agents are “the big bad law enforcement.”

Similarly, several agents discussed the challenge of working at checkpoint stations. Although they saw the value of having a place in which to check vehicles for undocumented immigrants, narcotics, or weapons, they also frequently expressed concern over the public’s reaction to being stopped by an agent. As one 3-year veteran explained, “We’re supposed to be professional at all times, so we just ask the questions we need to ask in a calm and respectful way. But there are plenty of folks who still hate us for that.” As Agent Diego noted, “Some people don’t see us as calm. They think we’re mean because we don’t smile or react.”

Criticism of “feminine” care work and compassion

Even though reportedly less frequent, agents also discussed experiences when their care work was criticized. For example, one agent remembered his interaction with Minutemen “militia” members who had detained two women along the border. The agent arrived and responded to what he observed were the women’s “obvious dehydration and fear” by giving them water and privacy in the back of his truck. He explained, “These girls needed help, but one of the Minutemen guys laughed at me and called me a pussy because I wanted to make sure they were okay.” Similarly, Agent Enrique recounted a time when he pulled over to check on a vehicle on the side of the road only to have the occupants tell him to “get back to my real job arresting aliens.” Most criticism of the care work or compassionate emotional labor stemmed from the perception that this work does not reflect “normal” or “masculine” responses, or that caring emotions were “fake” and not a “real” reflection of the Patrol as a law enforcement agency.

Not surprisingly, many agents said the organization itself “looked down on” the care work as “feminine or too emotional” as Agent Kevin explained. “We don’t get trained to do the rescues,” said Agent James, “we just get sent on the calls and then have to deal with it.” This mirrors emotional labor literature finding that men often struggle with perceptions of sexuality or sexual orientation when they enact caring, friendly, or “soft” emotional labor practices (Chong, 2009; Scott & Myers, 2005; Tracy & Scott, 2006). However, even with the stigma, many agents still insisted that compassion and care work are an important aspect of their job. As they faced criticism for their emotional performances—whether traditionally “masculine” or “feminine”—agents expressed tensions between what was socially acceptable, what was organizationally prescribed, and what emotions they personally wanted to employ. As Agent Luis told me, “Sometimes, I just feel torn. But I gotta do what feels right to me in that given situation.”

Making Sense of Taint by Expressing Tensions

Agents made sense of emotional labor and the criticism associated with that work by talking about the tensions, challenges, and stress they felt doing emotional labor work. Workers in any occupation strive to establish a positive sense of self and make sense of their work within the organizational practices and societal discourses that inform what is perceived “positively” versus “negatively” by the public (Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). Negotiating tensions is a complex part of identity management (Meisenbach, 2008). However, the Border Patrol agents in this study faced additional contradictions and confusion because different audiences view their work as simultaneously positive and negative. Weick and Roberts (1993) suggest that in moments of ambiguity and tension, an employee’s identity is disrupted. Research on dirty work in law enforcement has also explored how tensions, such as discipline versus care, create opportunities for alternative taint management strategies (e.g., Rivera & Tracy, 2014; Tracy, 2004). What is particularly interesting here is how the tensions stem directly from workers’ own experiences of taint as it relates to their performances of emotional labor.

Agents primarily expressed a tension between the emotional labor that the organization prescribed for them (stoicism or force) and the emotional labor that they felt was needed to be competent in instances requiring care work. This tension was described as “being torn,” as a “surprise,” a “challenge,” or a “clash” for agents. Even agents with prior law enforcement experience indicated that they had no idea what they would be doing when they joined the Patrol. Agent Paul explained that new agents graduate from the academy “prepared to go out and catch a terrorist and bad guys and smugglers and people that would, you know, cut their throat.” However, when they “come to the field” what happens is that

now they’re dealing with mom and pop and grandma and grandpa . . . and a bunch of little kids who walked across the desert and need help. And so now that clashes [with what we were taught at the Academy].

This lack of training, preparation, and support for caring emotional labor led to feelings of tension or confusion about what agents are expected to do in the field. Many described this tension as a need to “switch” between types of emotional labor, or to quickly decide in the moment how to act. For example, Agent John told a story about tracking what he thought was a large group of immigrants, only to find a young woman and her infant shivering in the night air. He described this complex emotional labor process as “switching” between the more stoic “professional” aspects of the job and the care work used to help those in need. “It’s one of those things where the human side of you takes over,” he explained. “When you’ve been tracking that group for 15, 20 miles” and then “all of a sudden you come upon them” and some of them are in “really bad shape,” that’s when the “humanitarian side automatically comes out.”

In one poignant example of how these tensions play out for agents, Agent James recounted a time when he was called to an apprehension and was surprised to find a severely ill woman on the ground, her head resting in the lap of a young undocumented male immigrant traveling with the group. Agent James called for an ambulance, but was anxious because he did not have the “medical skills or training” to help the woman, and he knew it would be a long time before the ambulance came. He worked to make the woman as comfortable as possible, while providing comforting words to the man, telling him “don’t worry; the ambulance will be here soon.”

After the ambulance arrived, Agent James asked the man who had patiently stoked the woman’s hair, “Is this your mom or your sister?” and the man responded, “I have no idea who she is . . . we were running in a group and . . . and she fell over.” Agent James asked the immigrant why he did not keep running with the others in the group, and the man responded, “Well, she reminded me of my mom and I couldn’t leave her like that. So I stayed with her.” Agent James was especially touched by the man’s generosity, saying, “ . . . the emotions hit me.” And yet, Agent James still had to arrest the immigrant man. He confessed,

Nothing broke my heart worse than . . . when I had to tell the guy “Turn around.” And I handcuffed him . . . This guy had so much compassion, but I still had to do my job. And so I . . . arrested him. I’m the professional, right? But because of the . . . compassion, the only thing I could do for him is offer him my lunch . . . And then I went to the cab of my car and I cried. I just sat there and cried and cried and cried . . . because of all the uh . . . emotions. And then I took him [the immigrant] in and processed him like everybody else.

This story illustrates the complexity of the emotional labor process. Agent James was expected by the organization to be a first responder, even though he was not trained for it. In fact, the organization proscribes that Agent James remain stoic as a “professional” representative, rather than showing any compassion. However, the interaction with the immigrant who stayed by the woman’s side led Agent James to enact compassionate emotional labor as part of what he felt he needed to do “because of the emotions.” And throughout all of this, Agent James “masked” his own felt emotions, acting and responding as “the professional” mandated by the organization, then taking a break to “cry and cry and cry” in private before going back to work.

In contrast, Agent Manuel indicated he did not want to become a BORSTAR (Border Search, Trauma, and Rescue) agent—a position that requires specialized training in first aid and medical care—because of how it was viewed by his peers, his family, and the community. “They call them ‘Desert Nurses,’” Agent Manuel explained. “And, yeah, there are guy nurses, but you know what they say about guy nurses. They’re sissies.” He laughed nervously before concluding, “I can’t do it. I like helping people but I’m not gonna go holding everyone’s hand or crying or shit like that so that people talk shit about me.” For Agent Manuel and many of the agents I spoke with, the caring emotional labor, as well as the physical tasks associated with care work, were seen as low status, feminine, and worthy of mockery. Thus, they may shy away from work they want to do, because of the stigma attached to it.

In this way, tensions are experienced not only between the organizational expectations and agents’ own personal ethical or “humanitarian” guidelines but also are a result of social constraints around the emotional labor. Law enforcement officers are expected to be stoic and forceful, yet not all situations require this kind of emotional performance. What’s more, the “audience” or the people the agent is working with may influence what the agent feels is the “correct” emotional performance. In some instances, agents may feel their use of stoicism and force is affirmed by other law enforcement officers or members of the public who critique undocumented immigration. Yet in other instances, they may feel that a caring or compassionate response is more fitting, as expected by social norms. Agents often feel “damned if they do and damned if they don’t” with regard to emotional labor because no matter what emotional labor they perform, there is an audience who would critique it. As one agent put it, “It’s a catch-22. You just never know what’s the right way to act.”

The tensions agents described reflected an astute understanding of the stigmas associated with the types of emotional labor they perform and highlighted tension between the organization and the individual. Workers feel a tug and pull between what they do as part of their organizational identity and what they do to maintain their unique identities outside of their workplace. Particularly interesting is that as they make sense of their work among these tensions, agents create new opportunities for identity negotiation.

Making Sense of Dirty Work and Engaging Emotional Labor

As illustrated by the analysis, agents were acutely aware of negative critiques of their work. They made sense of these emotional labor critiques by describing tensions as “clashes,” “heart-breaking,” and a “catch-22.” The tensions resided largely between the multiple audiences and the potential critiques from those audiences. They then made sense of those tensions by choosing specific emotional labor responses, based on the identity they wanted to negotiate in a given situation. Based on their desire to resolve or control the tensions caused by emotional stigmas, agents saw emotional labor as a potential strategy for dealing with criticism. Following a sense-making model (Weick et al., 2005), their stories portray complex decision-making processes for managing emotional labor and taint, based on past experiences and hopes for how the organization or the public will view them in the future. From their choices, we can see agents selectively employ emotional labor strategies to make sense of and cope with their unique position in the public’s many eyes.

Engaging “masculine” emotional labor for protection

Agents said the Border Patrol encourages them to be stoic and “professional” when interacting with the public, particularly when fielding critiques or threats. In addition to remaining “calm” or “professional” in interactions with the public, the organization encouraged them to “walk away” from conflict situations. Walking away from public criticism while performing stoic emotional labor helped agents to rise above their “felt” emotions and cope with critique.

Agent Mathias, a 13-year Patrol veteran, told me, “First, an officer in general [is] trained to deal professionally, at all times, with the public.” He added, “That means . . . not responding to negative comments or that kind of thing . . . just to maintain your professionalism . . . and move on.” Similarly, supervisory Agent John explained, “the thing that I always preach to my guys [sic] is, don’t let your emotion get the best of you.” Agent Mathias’ and Agent John’s comments reflected many agents’ sentiments about organizational expectations: Show no emotion and move away from the situation as quickly as possible.

Agents therefore strategically utilized the stoicism or forcefulness when they wanted to be acceptable to the organization or to an audience that would be similar to their workplace—such as other law enforcement or those who support the mission of the Patrol. For example, one agent stated that the closer he was to a physical Border Patrol building, such as in a detention center or at a checkpoint station, the more likely he was to “stay calm and show no emotion” to the public. The physical proximity of the organization’s buildings reflects an awareness that showing too much emotion, or emotion deemed “feminine” or inappropriate, might result in negative organizational consequences—from hazing by fellow agents to referrals to counseling and even a write-up.

In fact, “inappropriate” emotional responses may be dangerous for agents who let it “get the best of them.” Agents felt that if the public viewed them as “emotional” they would equate that emotion with weakness and try to take advantage of them. As Agent Rafael noted,

. . . if you’re firm, you know, there’s a less likelihood of you, uh . . . being hurt by somebody . . . So you have to set the tone for them to know that you mean business . . .

For Agent Rafael and the other agents who talked about “officer presence,” aggressive emotional labor is used to maintain agents’ safety and survival.

In this way, agents were able to strategically use organizationally prescribed and trained emotional labor of stoicism or force when they felt they might face negative consequences, or when they feared danger for themselves or others. However, agents did not always choose to follow the organization’s guidelines for stoicism or aggression. They also often deliberately engaged in compassionate emotional labor as a strategy for dealing with and educating a critical public.

Engaging “feminine” emotional labor to “humanize” border patrol agents

Many agents argued that utilizing less organizationally accepted forms of emotional labor, such as compassion, care work, or friendliness, might be a better way to negotiate public critiques of the Patrol as uncaring or unfeeling. In addition, agents engaged emotion, though selectively, in an attempt to create more healthy work identities and to feel they were contributing to “the greater good.”

First, agents described using compassionate or friendly emotional labor strategies to “educate” the public and combat the “ignorance” associated with criticism. Agent Yvonne explained, “Agents do a great job. They go out there and . . . they’re in the heat and they’re rescuing and saving people’s lives and people don’t see that”; and went on, “I think it’s silly because most of the things that are said [negatively], it’s because people don’t know what we do. . . it’s ignorance.” To educate the public, agents engaged emotional labor of friendliness and talked to the public about their work. While agents recognized that talking to the public was not a tactic formally supported by the organization, they explained that conversations were vital for garnering trust and showing the “humanity” of the Patrol. For example, Agent Carlos explained that he takes every opportunity to talk with people in the community, from interactions at a gas station, to how he treats people at a checkpoint. “I want to talk to them so that they can see that I’m not mean,” he explained. “If people can see that I smile and am friendly, and if I tell them about all the good work we do, they’ll be able to . . . get it. They’ll get that we’re not all bad.”

At other times, agents talked about using more passive strategies of showing the public that they care by volunteering, donating to charities, and building relationships with community members. Agents discussed the importance of giving back through community service. One described collecting books for a local school, and another recalled starting an annual fund-raising event for cancer. “If we show them that we care,” yet another said, “then that will help them see the other side of the Patrol.”

In addition to helping the public to see the “other side,” agents’ strategic use of feminine emotional labor also made agents feel “human.” By showing compassion and care, agents felt good about themselves and felt that they were “giving back” to the “greater good.” Agent Steven stated, “I think it’s a calling just to know that I was able to make someone’s life easier. I was able to take away someone’s pain.” He concluded, “I’m just wired altruistically . . . ”

Many agents, such as Agent John, framed compassion as simply being “human.” Almost every agent I spoke with told me stories about providing food, water, or other supplies to immigrants—either their own lunch or dinner, or else using their personal money to purchase supplies at a nearby store. For example, Agent Debbie recalled assisting rape victims at the hospital, explaining why they needed to do a rape kit and then running to the local Walmart to purchase them clothing, because, as she put it,

they [the clothes] get cut off by whoever molested them [the victim] on a trail somewhere. Uhm . . . so all of a sudden, I mean we definitely do switch back and forth in this job. I mean there are times where I’m pretty aggressive and I need to be and, you know, if I’m making an apprehension that’s a large group . . . But there’s definitely a more humanitarian me that has to come out when we’re dealing with a situation like that.

Similarly, Agent Samuel suggested, “this is just what a human being does for another human being. How else could we go home at night and look at our own kids?”

Emotional Taint and Taint Management Strategies

As illustrated by their complex and emotion-filled stories, agents enact a variety of emotional labor and make sense of these experiences by articulating their work as a “clash” or tension between organizational expectations and criticism from multiple audiences. Still, agents provide compassion even when the job does not require it and when others may look down on such emotional labor. Given that past research indicates agents would be likely to distance themselves from tainted groups (Kreiner et al., 2006; Tracy & Scott, 2007), and most masculine occupations shun traditionally “feminine” emotional labor (Tracy, 2005; Tracy & Scott, 2006), understanding why agents invest in care work illustrates potential links between emotional labor and taint management.

Emotional Taint: More Than Social Stigma

This analysis suggests the need for a reevaluation of the typology of dirty work. According to Hughes’ (1951, 1958) germinal definition, jobs are tainted when they are considered physically, socially, or morally dirty by society. The initial concept was solidified by Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) who assumed “the physical, social and moral dimensions exhaust the domain of sources of taint.” This framework has become the standard across dirty work literature.

However, my analysis suggests that work may also be emotionally tainted. Agents reported that the emotional displays required by the job are viewed negatively by the public. Emotional labor of “professionalism” (stoicism) and “agent presence” (aggression, confidence, and forcefulness) is a demonstration of emotion that goes “counter to the more heroic of our moral conceptions” (Hughes, 1951, p. 319) when it is used against citizens, such as at a checkpoint, or against a child. Similarly, care work and compassion represent “symbols of degradation” (Hughes, 1951) and work that “wounds one’s dignity” (Hughes, 1951) because it requires agents to be subservient to groups of people whom some members of the public critique as “less than.” Agents’ performances of care work are also tainted because care work is low status and viewed as demeaning, particularly within gendered discourses of masculinity. This research therefore adds to our understandings of both emotional labor and dirty work by specifically suggesting that the emotional labor in a wide variety of occupations is, indeed, emotionally tainted.

Emotional taint is characterized by performances of emotion (or lack of emotion), whether “real” or “fake,” that are viewed as inappropriate (not fitting the situation), excessive (too much or too little emotion required for the situation), or vulnerable (causing the person to subject themselves to “difficult” feelings). These emotional performances are either organizationally mandated or socially constructed as “normal” for the occupation—Table 1 presents a typology of emotionally tainted dirty work and example occupations.

Table 1.

Emotional Taint Characteristics and Applicable Occupations.

	Description	Applicable occupations
Objectionable	The emotional display is viewed as negative or not preferred.	Stoicism may encourage judgments that a worker is uncaring, a complaint common for law enforcement officers, doctors, or lawyers.
Inappropriate	The emotional display is deemed as not matching the event or circumstance.	A bill collector may be viewed as inappropriate when being forceful with an elderly person.
Excessive	The emotional display is seen as too much or too little emotion related to the work.	A Disney worker may be seen as fake because they are too happy, or a funeral worker may display too little emotion and be seen as uncaring.
Vulnerable	The emotional display places the employee in a situation where they must admit shortcomings or feel discomfort related to the emotion.	Emotions such as compassion, sympathy, empathy, or sadness may be experienced by child protective services workers or hospice workers. Emotions such as guilt may be experienced by loan collectors or executioners.

When agents fail to show emotion or act aggressive in situations that members of the public may not feel are appropriate, the emotional labor is tainted. If an agent is compassionate to an undocumented immigrant, that emotional labor may be deemed excessive or unneeded, thus is tainted. Agents who provide care work or are friendly when they work with others may put themselves in risk of emotional strain, and this is emotional taint.

Emotional taint is socially constructed and represents emotional displays and emotional labor that are perceived as objectionable. Rather than simply being tainted because of the service or association with stigmatized groups as in social taint, emotional taint occurs when the emotion itself is what the public deems “dirty.” For example, like law enforcement officers, hospice workers perform emotional labor in the form of care work and compassion (Egbert & Parrott, 2003; Stacey, 2005; Way, 2010). Physical and social taint are related to the care work provided by hospice employees, but the performance of emotion—such as compassion—are also tainted as workers are vulnerable to emotions that most people would rather avoid—grief, sadness, or regret (Frost et al., 2000; Stacey, 2005). Indeed, what makes most of society say, “I could never do that job” is an aversion to the emotional work required by being a hospice worker. In the same way, part of what makes the public shun the job of a Border Patrol agent are the emotions an agent must either perform or feel—the stoicism, the compassion, and the potential guilt associated with the work.

The addition of emotion to the typology of dirty work taint provides several important theoretical contributions. First emotional taint broadens current understandings of what constitutes dirty work by adding a host of jobs and occupations in which emotion is part of the work. The addition of emotional labor processes to a dirty work framework answers the call by management and communication scholars to explore emotion and dirty work within spaces where it has previously been silenced, normalized, or overlooked (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2002; Fineman, 2005, 2008; Grandy, 2008; Grandy & Mavin, 2014). For example, in her study of municipal court judges, Scarduzio (2011) found that judges used emotional deviance as a way to manage both their emotional labor and the stigma associated with the emotional performances in their work. Occupations that may not have previously been considered “dirty,” such as judges, may now be studied as such.

Engaging Emotion: A New Strategy for Taint Management

Labeling emotional labor as a type of dirty work helps us to understand why emotional labor may be challenging for workers. Although past research suggests that emotional labor discomfort is the result of “emotive dissonance” (Hochschild, 1983), agents in this study did not feel they were “faking” their compassionate or “feminine” emotional labor, as suggested by emotive dissonance. Rather, agents made sense of their discomfort with some “masculine,” stoic or aggressive emotional performances by articulating what they perceived as the public’s negative reactions to their emotional labor. For agents in this study, the “pain” associated with emotional labor was caused largely by the fact that employees are not just performing certain emotions but are also negotiating emotional taint—the public critiques of the organizational expectations for performances of emotion.

Findings of agents’ negotiation of emotional taint inform our understandings about the options available for making sense of and responding to taint in light of competing critiques of agents’ emotional labor. Particularly challenging about agents’ emotionally tainted work is that discourses framing “professionalism” and “agent presence” are tainted differently than discourses framing agents’ care work and compassion. For example, a human rights activist would likely deem an agent’s emotional labor of forcefulness with an undocumented immigrant as excessive and morally unacceptable, while encouraging compassion by agents in the field. However, a member of the Minutemen might see the use of force as justified for the arrest of a criminal immigrant, while denigrating agents’ compassion as unnecessary. This analysis therefore helps show that not only are both faces of agents’ emotional labor emotionally tainted, but agents are caught within a tension of compassion versus stoicism and the discourses that frame both types of labor as tainted.

This helps explain why traditional dirty work taint management strategies may be less effective for emotional labor workers. Agents found alternative ways to negotiate emotional taint by strategically engaging specific types of emotional labor, based on their perception of the taint in each situation. This finding challenges past dirty work research that argues engagement in dirty work produces strain and reluctance to work (e.g., Baran et al., 2010). Engaging emotion may provide agents with additional choices for managing taint and give them a feeling of “control” over their work. For example, an agent feeling tainted for enacting stoic emotional labor may instead opt to enact friendlier or compassionate emotional labor. However, if they felt the situation is threatening, they might ignore or suppress the taint and enact forcefulness or stoicism to help maintain control of the situation.

Practical Applications

The findings suggest practical applications for organizations. First, organizations would benefit from providing explicit training on the emotional aspects of the job and ways to negotiate public criticism. Formal training decreases role ambiguity for employees by providing specific skills needed to successfully perform tasks, such as emotional labor or taint management (Ashforth & Saks, 1996; Jablin, 2001; Tracy, 2009). At the Border Patrol, training could include a unit at the academy that specifically addresses how compassion is a key part of providing first aid, and could include discussions about the challenges of being compassionate and communicating with a critical public.

Next, employees and organizations may benefit from explicit engagement in emotion, rather than silencing or ignoring it. Some scholars argue that caring for others may be more easily performed and more beneficial to clients when “real” or felt compassion is involved. For example, Larson and Yao’s (2005) study found that physicians were more effective healers and enjoyed more personal and professional satisfaction when they were engaged in the process of empathy and compassion. Similarly, Miller (2007) argues that the reason some people come to work is because of the emotional satisfaction and engagement they have with their clients. Therefore, compassion and care work may provide a way for employees to feel valued despite the “low status” often afforded to such emotional labor. As many agents noted, deliberately engaging in emotional labor helped them to feel valuable, because they felt they were contributing to the “greater good.”

However, engaging emotion can be challenging for many. Organizations whose workers engage in frequent emotional labor should plan ahead to train employees in coping with emotional strain and to watch for signs of emotional fatigue or stress. To best serve their employees, organizations can provide help to workers when they need to de-brief or talk about the emotions they perform and feel. In masculine occupations such as law enforcement, the organization will need to address the gendered expectations associated with not only the emotional labor but also with the process of de-briefing or talking about emotion and emotional taint. The practice of retrospective sense-making will be more fulfilling when the organizational culture provides a space in which men and women can experience, use, and discuss their emotion. In addition, communication about emotional labor, emotional taint, and coping strategies should become routine practice for workers—beginning with the training and early socialization period.

The findings also suggest organizations could benefit from having employees contribute to “public relations” strategies. This practice empowers workers, and may serve to improve the tainted occupations’ negative public image. Indeed, as agents at the Patrol are correct in assuming that the public knows very little about their work, allowing agents to give voice to their stories may provide an additional strategy for helping negotiate dirty work taint.

Conclusion

This research takes a closer look at both emotional labor and dirty work taint within a unique organizationand contends that emotional taint is an additional component within dirty work, while engaging emotion strategically is one way employees engage in emotional taint management. Agents’ stories and insights help us better understand the complexity of emotional labor within a myriad of social discourses that criticize the organization from different perspectives. The analysis demonstrates how emotional labor and taint management inform one another, expands and complicates the typology of dirty work, and provides us with new “dirty” occupations and taint management strategies to explore. Emotion is an integral part of organizational life (Fineman, 2008), and scholars will benefit from continued attention to the ways in which emotion can be engaged, rather than silenced.

Future research should continue to examine the intersections of identity, dirty work, and emotional labor while also exploring the role of broader social discourses, including more explicit explorations of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation in workers’ everyday lives. Research has connected dirty work and emotional labor to gender (e.g., Husso & Hirvonen, 2012; Tracy & Scott, 2006), but much work can be done in connecting all three concepts. In addition, race and class clearly play a role in constructions of dirty work and should be explored. Future research can explore how these factors further complicate the stigma associated with the Border Patrol. As the nation’s “dirty workers,” agents negotiate spaces of emotion, dirty work taint, and tensions between social discourses every day—a space that many Americans have the privilege to ignore.

Additional research should also continue to explore how emotional labor and dirty work may intersect in a variety of occupations (e.g. McMurray & Ward, 2014). We may continue to learn about emotion and dirty work through jobs with varying levels of depth and breadth of taint and examine ways emotional labor is socially constructed.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the role of her dissertation committee (Dr. Sarah J. Tracy, chair) as well as NCA conference reviewers and respondents, all of whom contributed feedback to versions of this manuscript along its journey. I also wish to thank the Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ) reviewers for their time and thoughtful assistance in shaping this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We received funding to support this research from Arizona State University’s Graduate College, the Graduate and Professional Student Association, and the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication.

Notes

Author Biography

Kendra Dyanne Rivera (PhD, Arizona State University) is an assistant professor in the communication department at California State University, San Marcos. Her research focuses on communication and wellness, with an emphasis in exploring stress, emotion, stigma, and resilience at the identity intersections of gender, race, socioeconomic status, and health.

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