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Article
Publication date: 18 April 2024

Amrita Hari, Luciara Nardon and Dunja Palic

Educational institutions are investing heavily in the internationalization of their campuses to attract global talent. Yet, highly skilled immigrants face persistent labor market…

Abstract

Purpose

Educational institutions are investing heavily in the internationalization of their campuses to attract global talent. Yet, highly skilled immigrants face persistent labor market challenges. We investigate how immigrant academics experience and mitigate their double precarity (migrant and academic) as they seek employment in higher education in Canada.

Design/methodology/approach

We take a phenomenological approach and draw on reflective interviews with nine immigrant academics, encouraging participants to elaborate on symbols and metaphors to describe their experiences.

Findings

We found that immigrant academics constitute a unique highly skilled precariat: a group of professionals with strong professional identities and attachments who face the dilemma of securing highly precarious employment (temporary, part-time and insecure) in a new academic environment or forgoing their professional attachment to seek stable employment in an alternate occupational sector. Long-term, stable and commensurate employment in Canadian higher education is out of reach due to credentialism. Those who stay the course risk deepening their precarity through multiple temporary engagements. Purposeful deskilling toward more stable employment that is disconnected from their previous educational and career accomplishments is a costly alternative in a situation of limited information and high uncertainty.

Originality/value

We bring into the conversation discussions of migrant precarity and academic precarity and draw on immigrant academics’ unique experiences and strategies to understand how this double precarization shapes their professional identities, mobility and work integration in Canadian higher education.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 March 2009

Kristin Carls

This paper deals with flexibilisation of work and employment in large‐scale retailing. Its aim is two‐fold: first, to highlight how an authoritarian workplace regime and normative…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper deals with flexibilisation of work and employment in large‐scale retailing. Its aim is two‐fold: first, to highlight how an authoritarian workplace regime and normative forms of control interact, in the attempt to achieve workforce alignment to flexibility. Second, to explore how employees make sense of experienced workplace conflicts, and to what extent they are able to develop capacities to act and to influence their working conditions.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on a qualitative study undertaken in four large‐scale retailing companies in the Italian city of Milan. It is based on 45 semi‐structured, problem‐centred interviews with employees, shop stewards and union officers.

Findings

Analysis reveals how control manifests in “forced availability” based on individualised, informal daily flexibilisation, and sustained by resulting precarisation. Employees are active participants, as the functioning of the work organization depends on their capacity to balance in‐built contradictions. Yet, their capacity to act remains limited. They are trapped by individualised concepts of labour relations: a merit‐oriented understanding of work as a “fair exchange” and a personalised perception of social relations and interactions at the work place.

Research limitations/implications

The research encountered challenges in accessing temporary employees due to their fear of negative repercussions. This makes the sample slightly biased towards permanent, part time and fulltime, employment. Yet, it is also an opportunity, as it makes it possible to map experiences of precarisation across different employee groups.

Originality/value

Using the concepts of “coping practices”, “common sense” and “capacity to act”, the paper proposes to go beyond the dualisms of the resistance‐control debate. It points at the contradictory and interlinked character of employees' coping practices of adaptation, appropriation, conflictive negotiation and resistance.

Details

Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, vol. 6 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1176-6093

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 12 April 2022

Jeová Torres Silva Júnior, Jailson Santana Carneiro, Patrick Wendell Barbosa Lessa and Carlos Leandro Soares Vieira

The challenges of the growth of the sharing economy are becoming more and more noticeable and urgent, especially concerning labor relations (e.g. uberization). The purpose of this…

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Abstract

Purpose

The challenges of the growth of the sharing economy are becoming more and more noticeable and urgent, especially concerning labor relations (e.g. uberization). The purpose of this paper is to understand what app-based drivers think of working conditions and labor relations.

Design/methodology/approach

The research was carried out in three stages: bibliographical and documental research, and two empirical research, a quantitative one with the application of a questionnaire in a sample of 54 respondents and another qualitative one using an interview script with ten drivers. For data analysis, the abductive method and the content analysis technique were used.

Findings

The results reveal they have an exhausting labor routine, by checking that they work more hours per week than those who have a formal job. They are driven mainly by the extra income and flexibility that digital platforms of the sector of shared private transportation can offer, although the costs intrinsic to the activity often affect their revenues significantly.

Research limitations/implications

The number of answers from women was very small, which hinders the analysis of the potential specificities of women app-based drivers. Future studies could focus on this public for a more precise analysis, to bring the discussion on gender to the working context of app-based drivers.

Practical implications

The authors’ intention with the research reports was to make them relevant, leading to effective policies concerning working conditions and labor relations in the sharing economy, and to stimulate other surveys to understand the activity of an app-based driver of shared private transportation.

Originality/value

The authors’ research and this article contribute to the discussion on new work relationships, motivations and (dis)satisfaction with the activity, from the perspective of app-based drivers.

Details

Revista de Gestão, vol. 29 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1809-2276

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Precarious Work
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-288-8

Book part
Publication date: 30 December 2004

Raquel Edith Partida Rocha

The purpose of this document is to show the effects of globalization on the workers of the electronics cluster in the state of Jalisco. It begins with the assumption that the…

Abstract

The purpose of this document is to show the effects of globalization on the workers of the electronics cluster in the state of Jalisco. It begins with the assumption that the globalization has impacted the interests of the workers in their working conditions and created the precarization of workers. The text is divided in three sections: the first section presents the characteristics of the electronics cluster; the second section outlines a profile of the workers of this industry, and the last one presents the results of the precarization of work.

Details

Globalism/Localism at Work
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-229-0

Book part
Publication date: 17 October 2022

Jocelyn Finniear, Mrinalini Greedharry and Geraint Harvey

This chapter begins by introducing trade unions: their purpose in representing members, different perspectives on the role and impact of trade unions and the opposition they face

Abstract

This chapter begins by introducing trade unions: their purpose in representing members, different perspectives on the role and impact of trade unions and the opposition they face within the workplace. The chapter proceeds to discuss the role of, and particular challenges faced by, trade unions in the civil aviation industry. There follows a discussion of the role of women in civil aviation and both the crucial role played by women within trade unions and the role of trade unions in representing the interests of women. The chapter closes with a discussion of the role women might play in the revitalisation of the labour movement within the civil aviation industry.

Details

Women, Work and Transport
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-670-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 23 February 2022

Owen Stewart-Robertson

The paper aims to explore the value of various notions of precarity for the study of information practices and for addressing inequities and marginalization from an information…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to explore the value of various notions of precarity for the study of information practices and for addressing inequities and marginalization from an information standpoint.

Design/methodology/approach

Several interrelated conceptualizations of precarity and associated terms from outside of library and information science (LIS) are presented. LIS studies involving precarity and related topics, including various situations of insecurity, instability, migration and transition, are then discussed. In that context, new approaches to information precarity and new directions for information practices research are explored.

Findings

Studies that draw from holistic characterizations of precarity, especially those engaging with theories from beyond the field, are quite limited in LIS research. Broader understandings of precarity in information contexts may contribute to greater engagement with political and economic considerations and to development of non-individualistic responses and services.

Originality/value

The presentation of a framework for an initial model of information precarity and the expansion of connections between existing LIS research and concepts of precarity from other fields suggest a new lens for further addressing inequities, marginalization and precarious life in LIS research.

Abstract

Details

Inquiring into Academic Timescapes
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-911-4

Abstract

Details

The Rise of Precarious Employment in Europe
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-587-0

Book part
Publication date: 4 July 2019

Patrizia Zanoni

Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the “sharing economy,” this chapter develops a critique of the dominant discourse of platform-mediated work as fostering the…

Abstract

Drawing on the case of the recent Belgian law on the “sharing economy,” this chapter develops a critique of the dominant discourse of platform-mediated work as fostering the inclusion of individuals belonging to historically underrepresented groups (e.g., women with caring roles, people living in remote areas, individuals with disabilities, etc.) into the labor market. Exempting platform-mediated employment from social contributions and substantially lowering taxation, the law facilitates platform-based crowdsourcing firms’ predatory business model of capital valorization. The author argues that this business model rests precisely on the externalization of the costs of the social reproduction of this “diverse” labor through its precarization. These costs are not only externalized to individual workers, as often held. They are also externalized to the Belgian welfare state, and thus ultimately both to taxpayers and firms operating through classical business models, which fund the welfare state through taxation and social security contributions. For this reason, the debate surrounding platform-based employment might paradoxically provide a historical opportunity for recovering the Belgian tradition of social dialog between employers’ associations and trade unions. The author concludes by identifying key foci for action to ensure a better protection of workers of crowdsourcing firms including classifying them as employees, revising the conditions of access to social security protection, inclusive union strategies, the leveraging of technology to enforce firm compliance, and fostering counter-narratives of firms’ accountability toward society.

Details

Work and Labor in the Digital Age
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-585-7

Keywords

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