Emotion Management by Service Workers: Case Studies on Livelihood Protection Case Workers Yuka OMURA (Graduate Student, Waseda University) The current Japanese economy has the characteristic of so-called service economy in which the proportion of service workers tends to increase. Within the categories of such service are the “human-care service” workers who are required to provide “emotional labor,” a term specifically defined by A. R. Hochschild. They must manage their emotion to adapt to the appropriate emotional states and their expressions required by the work. While engaged in emotional labor, contemporary service workers sell their minds, as A.R. Hochschild emphasized, and such emotional labor produces negative effects among them. Many researchers, however, criticized Hochschild, in that emotional labor also exerts positive effects on workers by promoting worker autonomy, emotional management skills, and private or intimate customer relationships. The aim of this paper is to examine emotions experienced by livelihood protection case workers and management of emotions both among the workers and their clients. Additionally, their effects on both the workers and their clients would be considered. In this study, ten livelihood protection workers were interviewed. Based on the interviews, this paper analyzes the emotion management and its impact on workers. Under the pressure of serious livelihood-related conditions of their clienteles, livelihood protection workers experience various emotions-sympathy, anxiety, sorrow, joy, etc.?and manage them. They should never react emotionally and accomplish their tasks of understanding client needs and supplying proper assistances. In view of the task, livelihood protection workers build trust-relationship with clients while keeping adequate distance fronl them. But there exist certain contradictions that are difficult to deal with. First, the norm of their task itself has inherent contradictions. Typically, they need to adopt their clients and have empathy with them but keep away from getting over-involved and maintain appropriate relationships with the clients. Second, the relationship between livelihood protection workers and clients is unequal and there is an absolute status differences between them. It so happens that livelihood protection workers are not able to think of their clients objectively. Third, there are some gaps between present law or legal institutions and the present conditions. Hence livelihood protection workers suffer from conflicts between the organizations they belong to and client needs.
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