Precarity without borders: visions of hope, shared responsibilities and possible responses

Stoica, Georgeta; Eckert, Julia; Bodirsky, Katharina; Hirslund, Dan V.

doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12700

Cited by 6 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…This contraction leads to "dependence and powerlessness" (Chan, 2013). Settling for precarious employment contracts leads to loss of pay and long-term pension insecurity (Ivancheva et al, 2019) Often individuals are left with little choice but to play the game of a system that perpetuates the conditions of precarity (Stoica et al, 2019). Participants speak about "cruel optimism" and being in a "vicious circle" they silently perpetuate because of the externalities of their profession and in a "neoliberal" system (Voulvouli, 2019) Funding instruments and development opportunities are exclusionary to precariously employed individuals and groups…”

Section: Seven Findings Support This Category Examples Includementioning

confidence: 99%

Experiences of precarious work within higher education institutions: a qualitative evidence synthesis

Solomon

Plessis

2023

Front. Educ.

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IntroductionA qualitative evidence synthesis was employed, to identify and synthesize the best evidence on the experiences of precariously employed academics in high education institutions.MethodsThe Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) principles were followed. The identified studies were screened by titles and abstracts (n = 308)-full-text (n = 19), employing these inclusion criteria: studies reporting on precarious employment experiences in higher education; part-time or fixed-term academic positions; qualitative studies between 2010 to 2021. The selected studies were not limited to a particular geographical location. A quality appraisal was conducted. Data were extracted while findings from the included studies (n = 19) were collated using meta-aggregation with the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-QARI). The primary study findings emanated from research conducted across 14 countries both from the northern and southern hemispheres.ResultsNinety-four extracted findings were aggregated into 19 categories and then grouped into five synthesized findings: (1) Precarity is created and perpetuated through structural changes in the global economy and wider higher education landscape; (2) Coping strategies precariously employed academics used to endure precarious employment in higher education; (3) Gendered dimensions shaping employment precarity in academia; (4) Impact of precarious employment on academics; (5) Impact of academic precarity on the university.DiscussionThese precariously employed academics felt overwhelmed, vulnerable, exploited, stressed, anxious, and exhausted with their employment conditions. These circumstances include operating in unstable and insecure employment with no guarantees of permanent employment. The need to reassess policies and practices within higher education institutions is necessary and could offer these precariously employed academics the much-needed support and assistance to combat the effects of precarious employment.

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Section: Seven Findings Support This Category Examples Includementioning

confidence: 99%

Experiences of precarious work within higher education institutions: a qualitative evidence synthesis

Solomon

Plessis

2023

Front. Educ.

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“…These contracts, according to a 2019 survey of UK higher education by the UCU, were widespread with around 70 per cent of the 49,000 researchers and 37,000 teaching staff on fixed-term contracts (the majority of the latter being hourly paid), and a further 71,000 teachers employed as 'atypical academics' not counted in the main staff record. This is the story in the United Kingdom, but there is ample evidence that what has been called 'the adjunct crisis' in the United States (Clark 2019) is occurring across the rest of Europe and elsewhere (Hirslund et al 2018;Gleerup et al 2018;Stoica et al 2019).…”

Section: Precarity and Casualisation In Higher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precarity and dehumanisation in higher education

Mason

Megoran

2021

Learning and Teaching

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The increased reliance of universities on a pool of highly skilled but poorly paid casualised academic labour for teaching and research has emerged as a defining feature of higher education provision under neoliberal New Public Management. Based on seventeen visual timeline interviews with academics in the North East of England, this article augments and extends existing studies of precarity through a framing of dehumanisation and humanisation. Specifically, we suggest that casualisation is dehumanising in four ways: it renders individuals invisible; it leaves them vulnerable to exploitation; it denies them academic freedom; and it hampers them in constructing a life narrative projecting into the future. We conclude that casualisation is not simply the product of a reprehensible political economy, but that it is an afront to the very meaning and dignity of being human.

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“…– found professional and economic refuge in Turkey, only to be ‘othered’ and cast out by the Gülenist purge. The situations in Spain (Schwaller 2019) and Romania (Stoica et al 2019) are equally precarious.…”

Section: Authoritarianism Austerity and Audit: The Fraying Of The Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reflecting her experience of the Austrian academic climate, Rogler (2019) identifies increasing competition for academic positions and funding alongside enhanced managerial control of academic work as key features of the contemporary university. Stoica et al (2019) and Loher et al (2019) highlight the increasing number of PhDs competing within a diminishing pool of academic opportunity where tenure, or even its prospect, is scarcer and scarcer, and credit in the attribution of work is frequently denied to subaltern staff within teams, so that early career anthropologists subsist in a climate of what Lauren Berlant (2011) has called ‘cruel optimism’. A shift towards large (often multidisciplinary) projects brings with it new precarities and hierarchies.…”

Section: Authoritarianism Austerity and Audit: The Fraying Of The Acmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

Martin

2020

Soc Anthropol

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This article provides an overview of the main European social anthropology journals during 2019. It uses the concept of Exquisite Corpses, a technique devised by the Surrealists, an avant-garde art group of the early 20th century, to suggest a practice of transmitting knowledge across periods of fracture. It argues that this process characterises the way that some aspects of social anthropology's canon continue to be transmitted and remain influential, despite having been superseded by time, fashion and changes in social and academic attitudes. A wide range of scholarship is highlighted. Topics focused on include time, relations, borders, bureaucracy, ethics, and the challenges faced by academics in general and anthropologists in particular. These challenges are driven by the emergence of an authoritarian spirit across a number of fields in Europe and beyond, continuing austerity following on from the economic crisis, and the consolidation of an audit culture that drives the university in an ever more neoliberal direction. Despite the current rigorous climate, European social anthropology continues to be vital and relevant.

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Precarity without borders: visions of hope, shared responsibilities and possible responses

Cited by 6 publications

References 24 publications

Experiences of precarious work within higher education institutions: a qualitative evidence synthesis

Experiences of precarious work within higher education institutions: a qualitative evidence synthesis

Precarity and dehumanisation in higher education

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

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