From ‘workations’ to ‘emotional salary’: the normalisation of labour precarity in the Spanish press

Abstract

This study analyses the presence and circulation within the Spanish press of media narratives that romanticise and promote the trendification of labour precariousness. To this end, it focuses on emerging concepts presented as aspirational trends in the sphere of work. Specifically, it examines the terms ‘emotional salary’, ‘workations’, ‘power naps’, ‘reskilling’/‘upskilling’, and ‘Chief Happiness Officer’, which have appeared frequently across various newspaper titles between 2014 and 2024. These concepts promote particular employee behaviours in the workplace, advocate diverse corporate strategies, or highlight the alleged benefits of implementing changes to working conditions. The sample comprises 1,021 items drawn from generalist newspapers (El País, El Mundo, El Confidencial, and ElDiario.es) and business dailies (Expansión and El Economista). Using Critical Discourse Analysis as its methodological framework, the findings indicate that homogeneity constitutes the central organising principle of these journalistic narratives. Over the decade under examination, the selected outlets have displayed remarkable continuity in their approaches to new labour trends. Similar homogeneity is also evident across titles: with the exception of ElDiario.es, very similar discursive strategies and framing devices are observed across the different newspapers. More specifically, articles employing the key concepts under study encourage workers to perceive themselves as individuals responsible for enhancing their own well-being: they are always capable of performing more, and more efficiently. Within the workplace, certain strategies are implemented that prompt employees to modify their behaviour in order to transform themselves and attain an ideal state of personal fulfilment and professional performance. In a post-industrial society characterised by a labour market that demands flexibility while offering uncertainty, precariousness becomes a structural feature of the contemporary productive system. This study makes a relevant and underexplored contribution by demonstrating how the media not only disseminate labour-related concepts as aspirational fashions, but also depoliticise precariousness and reinforce neoliberal frameworks of work. In doing so, the research examines how media discourse participates in the reproduction of labour inequalities.