by Claudio Morrison and Janroj Yilmaz Keles

Introduction

A paper for the Symposium on ‘Inequalities in HE during Covid-19’ (SRHE Conference, 6 December 2023, Birmingham) provides new evidence on the ‘social suffering’ that university students endure due to precarious employment. Based on findings from the project ‘Learning from Labour: Critical Pedagogy for Working Students’ carried out at Middlesex University in 2022-2023, the study explores the educational and employment challenges faced by working students in UK post-92 universities (MDX News, 2023). Researchers Janroj Keles, Claudio Morrison and Parisa Dashtipour surveyed students at their university to understand their work experiences, challenges, employment rights awareness, and workplace difficulties. The preliminary findings of the research are summarised in an extensive report (Morrison, Dashtipour, and Keles, 2023).

Headline news has reignited debates about how financial hardship and challenging labour market conditions are squeezing students’ study-life balance, and alarmingly raised claims that part-time jobs may disproportionally disadvantage less privileged students (BBC News 2023). This directly contradicts widely held beliefs that these jobs offer valuable benefits of labour market flexibility and resilience. The Middlesex study reveals how thousands of university students in the workplace may regularly face discrimination, unpaid hours, threats of dismissal and shifts changing at short notice. The study further reveals a concerning lack of awareness among students regarding their employment rights, including benefits like maternity leave.

Academic debates and research background

The issue of ‘incompatibility’ between work and studying is neither new nor it is unique to the UK. In the UK conditions shifted significantly after the 1990s reforms with the creation of post-92 universities, the replacement of grants with loans and tuition fees and a diversified student body. Early research by Moreau and Leathwood (2006) on post-92 students concluded that students from working class background were disproportionately impacted by the lack of state support, as the ‘benefits of flexible labour predominantly accrue to the employer’ (2006: 37). Since austerity, even ‘white, middle-class students of traditional age’ face a ‘double deficit’ of financial shortfall and increasing pressure to gain employability skills (Hordósy, Clark and Vickers, 2018: 361). Studies covering EU countries show that around 70% of university students are active in the labour market above the accepted ten-hour threshold (Lessky and Unger, 2022). This ‘time-consuming’ employment is particularly prevalent among business students with first-in-family background; this is explained by increasing participation of underrepresented groups, greater appreciation of work experience and higher costs of living and is associated with higher drop-out rates. Research on student-workers by employment scholars remains limited (Rydzik and Bal, 2023). Several researchers highlight the multiple vulnerabilities experienced by students as a peripheral casualised workforce (Alberti et al, 2018; Ioannou and Dukes, 2021, Rydzik and Kissoon, 2022). Mooney (2016), for example, criticizes the fact that hospitality management takes a ‘dispassionate’ attitude toward casually employed students, failing retention. UK research further highlights sexist and discriminatory attitudes in the industry (Ineson et al, 2013; Maxwell and Broadbridge, 2014). Recent research identifies multiple effects of insecurity induced by precarity arguing for ‘student-workers as a conceptually distinct category of workers impacted in particular ways by labour flexibilization’ (Rydzik and Bal, 2023). However, there is some disagreement regarding the idea that all jobs involving precarious labour have negative outcomes. Other studies have questioned slippages between ‘the concepts of precarious work and precarious workers’ (Campbell and Price, 2016: 314) and between precarity as ‘waged work exhibiting several dimensions of precariousness [and], precarity [as] the detrimental effect of labour-market insecurity on people’s lives’ (Antonucci, 2018: 888). Students may avoid the short-term effects of insecure, low-paid jobs by exercising choice (Antonucci 2018). According to Whittard et al (2022: 762) ‘students possess skills attractive to employers, they may receive training and, in some cases, employment opportunities after graduation’. Additionally, Grozev and Easterbrook (2022: 259) argue that ‘the experience of working alongside studying can help to reaffirm students’ commitment to their studies and make them resilient learners.’ In sum, research so far has highlighted the economic and motivational pressures pushing low-income students towards low-paid/low skills precarious jobs. A limited amount of research has detailed both the potential incompatibilities between these jobs and education and the long-term risks associated with precarity. However, student agency and their ability to strategize remain contested. The Middlesex study contributes to these debates by adding evidence on the structural constraints that student workers face in the ‘labour process’ which encompasses work organisation, workplace power structures and ensuing social relations. This ultimately sheds light on what it truly means to be a precarious worker in this specific context.

Method

The research aimed to adapt and adopt critical pedagogy to the post-92 HE to raise the quality of learning experienced by working students and their agentic power in the workplace (Neary et al, 2014). Following an engaged research approach, the research used multiple methods, including a survey, interviews, in-class discussions and reflective essays. Academics across the University employed student-centred, research-engaged learning strategies to stimulate critical reflection on students’ work experiences and socio-political backgrounds (Dashtipour and Vidaillet, 2020). Their accounts illustrate work experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, the problems encountered, coping strategies and their knowledge of employment rights.

Findings

The research presents a picture in line with existing data on students’ employment during the pandemic. Its findings, however, suggest that the social suffering of student-workers is underestimated and consequently there is a stronger connection between ‘bad’ jobs and poor educational outcomes than previously thought. The study sample included females (61%) students living at home (34%), international/overseas students (44%), British (32%) and EU-settled residents (18%). Among surveyed students, 90% reported ‘not having enough money to live on without working’. In particular, fifty per cent work part-time and a third work in zero hours, freelance or informal jobs. Further, findings reveal how 68% of respondents have their work schedule changed at short notice, 28% do not always or ever see a payslip, 22% complain about unpaid extra work, and 17% claim some of their wages are paid cash-in-hand to avoid taxation. There is widespread evidence of discrimination and harassment and poor working conditions: almost 30% claim experiencing discrimination at work (almost 10% do so frequently), and 24% reported bullying; 22% claim threats of dismissal and 12% of disciplinary action; 20% reported accidents and injuries at work. Lack of knowledge of employment rights is one of the main reasons for difficult relationships with employers and it appears to exacerbate precariousness in the workplace.

Labour process analysis identifies the structural constraints that make such workplaces toxic and exploitative environments. Poignant respondents’ accounts describe a disorganised but highly exploitative work regime which relies on employees’ precarious conditions for its reproduction. Management strategies include lengthening of working time, deskilling and effort intensification combined with functional flexibility. Due to their short-term commitment, lack of experience and rights awareness as well as their desire for flexible hours, students become dependable workers. However, student-workers are no mere victims of unscrupulous employers and exploitative work designs. Resistance to unfair conditions also materialises either by withdrawing labour (turnover) or as workplace small-scale individual (foot-dragging, work-to-rule) and collective (solidarity, grievances) resistance.

The authors are concerned that these workplace issues may have an impact on students’ performance. Morrison, the project’s Principal Investigator, argues that student jobs are psychologically and physically taxing, as such immediately interfering with their ability to benefit from learning. Such experiences also lower their labour market expectations. The causes appear to lie in their lack of control over the conditions of their work and their poor awareness of labour rights. Precarious employment and exploitative business models make such problems a structural feature of these jobs. Keles, a co-investigator, exposes the dark side of student work for overseas students:

“Overseas students are trapped in a cycle of exploitation and bear the brunt of exploitative work. They typically work under unfavourable conditions, such as long hours – up to 30 per week – low pay and usually unsocial hours. Moreover, a significant proportion of oversees students reported that they have experienced bullying and undervaluing at these toxic work environments. In addition to increasing students’ vulnerability and mental health issues, these precarious employment conditions also lead to a number of other problems during their studies like poor academic performance”.

Drawing on extensive teaching experience, the researchers are adamant that these conditions may significantly contribute to low attendance, missing deadlines, requesting extensions, and even failing to turn in their assessments on time at the university.

Implications

Overall, the study emphasises that it is not poor education that allegedly prevents students from succeeding in the labour market, but rather it is the latter, due to the social suffering it causes, that prevents students from making the most of their learning opportunities.  Post-92 universities should not be unfairly blamed for failing students’ employability. However, recognition of the significant challenges students face should lead universities as well as students and educators to turn these struggles into an opportunity for collective, social and pedagogic change. Therefore, while advocating changes in employing sectors and in university funding to reduce students’ reliance on low pay/low skills jobs, the authors urge universities, unions, and civil society to act towards improving student’s agency and bargaining power by raising their labour and employment rights knowledge and awareness of workplace collective conditions.

Universities constantly and rightly encourage students to gain work experience to increase their employability, they should also support working students by including employment rights as part of the taught curriculum, providing topical advice services and offering additional well-being support. Initiatives like Hospitality Now (Lincoln University, 2024) or the Hertfordshire Law Clinic (Hertfordshire, 2024) show this is both a timely and feasible approach.

Anyone interested in viewing the report and/or sharing experiences of supporting working students is welcome to contact the research team C.Morrison@mdx.ac.uk, J.Keles@mdx.ac.uk.

Claudio Morrison is a Senior Research Fellow in Employment Relations and HRM at Middlesex Business School. Over the last 20 years he has carried out ethnographic research in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe investigating the working lives and resistance practices of labour migrants and industrial workers. Current work includes the development of alternatives to mainstream ethics and the promotion of critical pedagogies and reflective learning in western academia.

Janroj Yilmaz Keles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Social Sciences, Faculty of Business and Law at Middlesex University, researching on peace and conflict, gender, political violence, migration and (digital) social movements. He is one of the co-investigators of GCRF HUB – Gender, Justice and Security and  the Nuffield Foundation funded  the Afghan resettlement in England: outcomes and experiences project. He served as an editor for the British Sociological Association’s journal Work, Employment and Society from 2018 until 2022.His monograph Media, Conflict and Diaspora (I.B. Tauris, 2015), was well received by the academic community.