printEmotional Labor and the Paradoxes of Service Work among Russian Youth
Bocharov V.Yu.
and. Sci. (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., Department of Sociology and Cultural Studies Samara University, Samara, Russia; Assoc. Researcher Sociological Institute of FCTAS RAS, St. Peterburg, Russia v.y.bocharov@utmn.ru
Gavriliuk Т.V.
Cand. Sci. (Sociol.), Assoc. Prof., Department of General and Economic Sociology University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia tv_gavrilyuk@mail.ru
The article has been prepared witht he support of the Russian Science Foundation, grant No. 25-28-00071.
Bocharov V.Yu., Gavriliuk Т.V. Emotional Labor and the Paradoxes of Service Work among Russian Youth. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2026. No 7. P. 16-30
This article analyzes the contradictory situation of Russian youth employed in the service sector, based on data from a questionnaire survey of workers in four service segments (retail, personal services/logistics, education, and healthcare) in the city of Tyumen (N = 1866, age 18–30). It reveals a paradox of high overall job satisfaction (88.4%) against a backdrop of low long-term professional loyalty and deprivation in the area of social guarantees. Drawing on A.R. Hochschild’s theory of emotional labor, the authors focus on analyzing the invisible yet resource-intensive aspects of service employment. The study records the dominance of «surface acting» strategies: two-thirds of workers are forced to simulate emotions they do not feel, and more than half regularly suppress negative affects, creating a high-risk zone for emotional burnout. Attention is paid to the gender specifics of emotional loads and sectoral differences in the perception of one’s work as a «service». It was found that formal employment stability is combined with intense emotional exploitation that is not compensated by wages or a social package. To describe this situation, the authors propose the concept of «precarity of feelings», which captures the worker’s alienation from their own emotional resource against the external stability of labor relations. The conclusion is drawn about the need for institutional compensation for emotional costs and the development of support measures for service economy workers to prevent deprofessionalization and burnout.
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