‘Working to live, not living to work’: Low-paid multiple employment and work-life articulation

Smith, A.; McBride, J.

doi:10.1177/0950017020942645

‘Working to live, not living to work’: Low-paid multiple employment and work-life articulation

Smith, A.; McBride, J.

Authors

A. Smith

Professor Jo Mcbride joanne.mcbride@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

This article critically examines how low-paid workers, who need to work in more than one legitimate job to make ends meet, attempt to reconcile work and life. The concept of work–life articulation is utilised to investigate the experiences, strategies and practicalities of combining multiple employment with domestic and care duties. Based on detailed qualitative research, the findings reveal workers with two, three, four, five and even seven different jobs due to low-pay, limited working hours and employment instability. The study highlights the increasing variability of working hours, together with the dual fragmentation of working time and employment. It identifies unique dimensions of work extensification, as these workers have an amalgamation of jobs dispersed across fragmented, expansive and complex temporalities and spatialities. This research makes explicit the interconnected economic and temporal challenges of low-pay, insufficient hours and precarious employment, which creates significant challenges of juggling multiple jobs with familial responsibilities.

Citation

Smith, A., & McBride, J. (2020). ‘Working to live, not living to work’: Low-paid multiple employment and work-life articulation. Work, Employment and Society, 35(2), 256-276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020942645

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jun 13, 2020
Online Publication Date	Sep 9, 2020
Publication Date	Apr 1, 2020
Deposit Date	Jun 16, 2020
Publicly Available Date	Sep 10, 2020
Journal	Work, Employment and Society
Print ISSN	0950-0170
Electronic ISSN	1469-8722
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	35
Issue	2
Pages	256-276
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020942645
Public URL	https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1300030

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).