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Modern careers are marked by periods of feeling betwixt, or “in-between,” – yet, there is no validated measure of this experience, recognized as subjective liminality. The present research aims to (1) operationalize subjective liminality and (2) develop and validate a scale to measure it.

A literature review was used to operationalize subjective liminality, and the scale validation was performed using four separate samples: 150 workers on M-Turk, 151 graduate and professional students at a large Midwestern University, 252 unemployed individuals in the US and Canada, and 416 full-time employed individuals in the US.

Subjective liminality was conceptualized as a second-order latent construct reflected by three dimensions: feelings of anxiety, ambiguity and reduced group identification. A 9-item scale was developed and validated to measure it.

This study clarifies and measures an emergent construct in the career transition and organizational change literature.

The purpose of this paper is to provide readers with a deeper theoretical understanding of liminality, its utility in understanding the experiences of graduate student researchers and how being explicit about the liminal nature of the graduate student experience can be especially impactful for students from marginalized communities.

This conceptual paper examines liminality as an essential component of researcher identity development and how an awareness of this liminality relates to effective and inclusive librarian support of graduate student researchers. The authors explore the affective and academic implications of operating in this liminal state and how direct acknowledgment of this inbetweenness, especially within the spaces of classroom instruction and research consultations, can be leveraged as an inclusive practice. The authors ground this exploration in critical pedagogy.

Graduate student researchers often operate in an unacknowledged liminal state, which causes students to question the importance of their previous knowledge and life experiences and feel discouraged and uncertain about their potential place in academia. This is particularly damaging to students from communities that have been traditionally marginalized and excluded from higher education.

The authors are liaison librarians to education and health sciences at a large, minority-serving, urban research institution in the western USA and draw on their experience supporting students in disciplines that include many students returning to graduate studies after substantial professional experience. This work makes a contribution to library and information studies by focusing on the concept of liminality. The authors offer a conceptual perspective on liminality relative to librarians and their support role in the graduate student experience.

This paper aims to explore the stages and processes of work identity reconstruction following a major health-related career shock.

In-depth case study and interpretive phenomenological methods are used to allow for deep reflective self-analysis of post-career shock stages. The paper explores the identity processes and stages a Chief of Human Resources of a multinational firm experienced after being deprived from his main working abilities as a result of a brain stroke.

Post-shock work identity stages and processes are identified, as long as the importance of identity threat, liminality, identity internalization and relational recognition in the reconstruction process. The findings propose new coping responses that may allow individuals to escape a diminished work identity: identity shedding and identity implanting.

While career shocks play a significant role in career development, there is currently little understanding of how career shocks may affect individuals' work identity or sense of self, particularly over time. The paper provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon, through process data collected at several points in time over a period of 14 years.

Despite the prevalence of technology in health care, marketing research on social media in the birthspace is limited. The purpose of this paper is to explore how birthing women leverage social media for transformative well-being in the liminal context of birth.

A qualitative study of women who had recently experienced birth was undertaken. Thematic analysis of data from in-depth interviews reveals birthing women’s digital practices and social media capabilities for well-being in a liminal space.

Within the birthspace, women use social media and digital platforms in an effortful and goal-directed way for role transitions and transformation, curating self and other history, goal striving and normalizing experience. These digital practice styles facilitate consumer integration of the liminal digital birthspace and in situ service encounter enabling diverse value outcomes. Drawing on liminality and social presence theories, the authors interpret these practices as demonstrating three interactive liminal stages of suspending, comprehending and transforming. Multi-modality and rapid connection afforded by digital devices and social media platforms provide social presence (according to perceived immediacy and intimacy) enabling transformative well-being outcomes.

This study is unique, as it provides insights into the traditionally private health service experience of birth. Further, the authors extend the understanding of liminal spaces and use of digital technology, specifically for transformative outcomes, by proposing a framework of consumers’ digital practice styles for well-being in liminal spaces.

This paper examines why individuals start their hospitality careers by becoming temporary lifeguards while aspiring to later promotion. It reports data from young people working in one major upmarket hotel chain that operates in the Gulf but has a global reach. This study aims to address issues regarding this often-overlooked career path for young staff.

A qualitative questionnaire was distributed to lifeguards working in a luxury hotel chain in a Gulf country to explore their reasons for working as a lifeguard and their experiences in this role. Data were analysed using QDA Miner and WordStat to generate coherence and similarity indices.

It is found that the attractions include good training with a well-established company operating in an upmarket location, but other important factors include career prospects, skill enhancement, self-development, monetary savings and experience working in one of the world’s most exciting tourist locations.

The results offer implications for management looking to recruit expatriate labour without considering long-term employment or residence. Nonetheless, while this offers opportunities to assess many potential long-term employees, there are costs to the practice.

Little research has been conducted on lifeguards and how employment in such roles can develop careers in hospitality. The study contributes to understanding motives and career development and conceptually suggests that liminal status complements those drawn to protean career development. The results shed light on how new employees, including management trainees, undertake liminal, protean careers, to care for family, develop their careers and enter markets that may otherwise be difficult to enter.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of documentation on the educational experiences, college readiness and aspirations of undocumented Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

This ethnographic study was conducted in a High School Equivalency Program at a large university in the Midwest. Data was collected during two semesters across a three-year span. Participants included six Mexican migrant and seasonal farmworkers who were preparing to earn their General Educational Development (GED) diploma. Using the grounded theory, data was collected and analyzed simultaneously where initial and focused coding took place, followed by cross-case analysis.

Analysis of student interviews, participant observations and in-depth fieldnotes that include the K-12 educational experiences, experiences during and after the High School Equivalency Program reveal that undocumented Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers aspire to earn a GED diploma to access a better future inclusive of college. However, the legal liminality, the uncertainty and ambiguity of being undocumented, impacts their educational journey prior to, during and beyond the High School Equivalency Program. Furthermore, undocumented Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers are unable to change their material conditions with a GED because of their documentation status.

Although researchers have studied the education experiences of Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers, analysis and consideration of documentation status is missing. This study contributes much needed findings about the impact of documentation status on the educational experiences, college readiness, and aspirations of Latinx migrant and seasonal farmworkers.

While the main emotional labor strategies are well-documented, the manner in which professionals navigate emotional rules within the workplace and effectively perform emotional labor is less understood. With this contribution, I aim to unveil “the good, the bad and the ugly” of emotional labor as a dynamic theatrical performance.

Focusing on three geriatric long-term care units within a French public hospital, this qualitative study relies on two sets of data (observation and interviews). Deeply rooted within the field of study, the chosen methodological approach substantializes the subtle hues of the emotional experience at work and targets resonance rather than generalization.

Using the theatrical metaphor, this research underlines the role of space in the practice of emotional labor in a unique way. It identifies the main emotionalized zones or emotional regions (front, back, transitional, mixed) and details their characteristics, before unearthing the nonlinearity and polyphonic quality of emotional labor performance and the versatility needed to that effect. Indeed, this research shows how health-care professionals juggle with the specificities of each region, as well as how space generates both constraints and resources. By combining static and dynamic prisms, diverse instantiations of hybridity and spatial in-betweens, anchored in liminality and trajectories, are revealed.

This research adds to the current body of literature on the concept of emotional labor by shedding light on its highly dynamic and interactional nature, revealing different levels of porosity between emotional regions and how the characteristics of each type of area can taint others and increase/decrease the occupational health costs of emotional labor. The study also raises questions about the interplay of emotional labor performance with the level of humanization/dehumanization of elderly people. Given the global demographics about an aging population, this gives food for thought at a social level.

In this paper, I explore what shapes the identities of digital nomads (DNs), a class of remote workers who travel and work concurrently. Through extensive fieldwork and interviews with 50 digital nomads conducted in seven coworking hostels in Mexico in 2022, I construct a theory of DN identity. I base this upon the frequent transformations they undergo in their Circumstances, which regularly change their worker identity.

DNs relinquish traditional social determinants of identity, such as nationality and religion. They define their personal identities by their passions and interests, which are influenced by the people they meet. DNs exist in inherently transitive social spaces and, without rigid social roles to fulfil, they represent themselves authentically. They form close relationships with other long-term travellers to combat loneliness and homesickness. Digital nomads define their worker identities around their location independence. This study shows that DNs value their nomadic lifestyle above promotions and financial gain. They define themselves by productivity and professionalism to ensure the sustainability of their lifestyle. Furthermore, digital nomad coworking hubs serve focused, individual work, leaving workplace politics and strict ‘office image’ norms behind. Without fixed social and professional roles to play, digital nomads define themselves personally according to their ever-evolving passions and the sustainability of their nomadic life. Based on these findings, I present a cyclical framework for DN identity evolution which demonstrates how relational, logistical, and socio-personal flux evolves DN’s worker identities.