Negotiating the different degrees of precarity in the UK academia during the Covid-19 pandemic

There is a growing consensus that the on-going COVID-19 pandemic has amplified uncertainties and inequalities stemming from the neoliberal restructuring of higher education sector across Europe (Collini 2020). Unlike many one-off crises, there are enduring ambiguities on when the pandemic will end, which have raised concerns about the future of the academic labour market and working conditions (European University Institute 2020). Within this context, the United Kingdom stands out among other countries in the Global North due to: first, its fee-based higher education system that largely depends on international students and employs casualised academic labour (Murray 2018: 165) and second, controversial COVID-19 policies that allegedly shifted from ‘herd immunity’ to a national lockdown of everyday life in the UK (Perrigo 2020). The ensuing travel restrictions, physical distancing and ‘shielding’ advised for the vulnerable as well as the economic uncertainties stemming from the pandemic have put the UK universities’ major sources of income (mostly coming from overseas students’ tuition and accommodation fees, and research grants) in jeopardy (BBC News 2020a). As in other global crises (Ahmad 2018: 108), the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the most vulnerable sections of society (The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 2020). In UK higher education, the pandemic has affected precarious academics most adversely. To reduce spending, universities made staff redundant (The Guardian 2020a), were unwilling to renew contracts of fixed-term academics (The Scotsman 2020), froze hiring (Kirsop-Taylor and McKay 2020), and increased the workload of precarious academics (McKie 2020). This particularly impacted women who were also entrapped in domestic work and childcare responsibilities (The Guardian 2020b). The pandemic has intensified uncertainties around working conditions and the job market as the situation is unlikely to improve in the near future.

Scholars have described precarity as an ontological condition of vulnerability (Butler 2009), and a socio-economic term denoting gendered and racialised inequalities (Arday 2018; Burton 2018; Joseph-Salisbury et al. 2020; Vohlídalová 2020) and labour-related insecurities (e.g. skill reproduction, work, job market, representation) in the working environment and the job market within the context neoliberalism (Standing 2011). Furthermore, scholars have defined precarity a form of socio-cultural reproduction through which precarity is internalised, contested, and deliberated (Bone 2019; Harris and Nowicki 2018). Building on the latter two strands, in this on-going study, we approach precarity as a multi-layered term signifying (gendered) casualisation of labour, labour-related insecurities and their navigation in uncertain working environments and the job market. We explore how precarity is being experienced by early career academics (this includes PhD students and academics who completed their PhDs within the last 10 years) in UK academia within the context of the COVID-19 crisis. We ask: How do early career academics adapt to increasing ambiguities in the higher education sector under the new living, working, and job market conditions brought by the pandemic? More specifically, we elucidate the extent to which early career academics have been able to mediate precarity during the on-going pandemic in different contexts.

We will address these issues through semi-structured interviews with precarious early career academics in the UK based in the fields of social sciences and humanities, which are vulnerable in terms of attracting funding and creating stable job positions (Gupta et al. 2016: 13). Based on our preliminary findings, we argue that early career academics’ gender, employment status (unemployed/employed, contract type and research/teaching/administrative positions), and university affiliation influence the degree to which they are able to instrumentalise and negotiate precarity during the COVID-19 crisis in the UK.

Precarity in academia is specific neither to the pandemic nor neoliberalisation of higher education (Bourdieu 1984; Courtois and O’Keefe 2015; Deem and Lucas 2007; Kwiek 2019; Reay 2004). The academia is inherently ‘highly stratified’ (Kwiek 2019: 8), and uncertainties in academia are intertwined with social stratifications based on discipline, age, race, and gender (Kwiek 2019: 15). Studies have highlighted the significance of social and cultural capital to have a position in the academia (Bourdieu 1984; Deem and Lucas 2007; Thorkelson 2016: 484). This social and cultural capital is inextricably bound by racialised (Arday 2018; Thorkelson 2016: 483) and gendered inequalities at universities, which work as ‘spaces of exclusion’ (Emejulu 2017 quoted in Mirza 2018: 4) through the institutional reproduction of white-male dominance in the UK academia (Joseph-Salisbury et al. 2020).

In line with global commodification of higher education under neoliberalism, UK universities acted like for-profit corporations (Becher and Trowler 2001: 6; Mirza 2018: 6). They increased fixed-term, zero-hours and part-time contracts rather than permanent ones (Courtois and O’Keefe 2015: 44) to supply more teaching and research with less money (Ivancheva 2015: 43). This has led early career academics jumping from one poorly paid temporary contract to another in the hope of securing a permanent position in the future (Allen and Gupta 2016: 100; Bone 2019: 1218; Murray 2018: 165). To gain a permanent position, they have to be ‘REF-able enough¹’ (Murray 2018: 166) by publishing more and writing successful research grants, while fulfilling the duties of their insecure contracts (Allen and Gupta 2016: 94).

Scholars addressed these issues in the neoliberal re-structuring of higher education through the lens of precarity. Focusing on livelihoods of precarious academics, studies have emphasised how gendered and racialised experiences of insecurity, depression, and instability due to short-term contracts, heavy workload, and competitive job market are internalised, instrumentalised, culturally reproduced, and resisted (Bone, 2019; Bothello and Roulet, 2019; Burton, 2018; Hofman, 2018; Ivancheva, 2015: 40–41; Standing, 2011; Thorkelson, 2016). Scholars have argued that early career academics of colour and women are prone to work under insecure contracts (Joseph-Salisbury et al. 2020: 15) and have to work harder to assert themselves in academia without the institutional support senior male academics enjoy (Burton 2018: 122). These studies highlight casualisation of women's labour (Vohlídalová 2020) under the ‘domestic burden of care’ (Ivancheva 2015: 42) both at the household and the university (Murray 2018; Reay 2004). They show that precarity in academia is experienced through insecurities in daily life, and uncertainties in employment.

Drawing on these aspects, we approach precarity in academia as a heterogenous phenomenon.

There are degrees and ‘hierarchies of precariousness’ in academia arising from ‘structural features of employment (such as employment contract type, access to leave entitlements, labour market trends) as well as contextual/structural factors that affect the lives of workers (including their sense of security, housing options, effect on personal relationships)’ (Bone 2019: 1219). For example, precarious academics are faced with the ‘stratification between research and teaching’ (Ivancheva 2015: 39) as the first attracts more income for the university (Deem and Lucas 2007: 125). Thus, precarity in academia is experienced differently in line with labour-related conditions. While some are dragged into precarious employment in the absence of other job opportunities, others normalise precarious employment to gain more experience in the field, earn extra money, and kick-start their careers (Ivancheva 2015: 43; Murray 2018: 166; Standing 2011: 59). In what follows, we will demonstrate that the on-going COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and diversified ‘hierarchies of precariousness’ (Bone 2019: 1219) in the UK higher education sector, and early career academics negotiate varying degrees of precarity in the gendered working and living conditions and the academic job market. We begin by outlining the methods we employed to investigate experiences of precarity in academia during the pandemic.

Building on a multifaceted conceptualisation of precarity, we carried out online semi-structured interviews with 9 (6 women and 3 men) early career academics, who reside or aspire to jobs in the UK, and are based in the fields of social sciences and humanities (See Table A1 for a detailed description of each informant). Our interview questions focused on early career academics’ changing work and life routines, and struggles to find a position in the academic job market ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ the pandemic.² We employed both theory and data-driven coding processes, with data coded in terms of early career academics’ demographic characteristics, employment status, changing work and life conditions, previous experiences and future prospects in the academic job market. Main themes that were developed in the course of analysis involved contested experiences of precarity, gendered aspects of precarious work conditions during lockdown, and hierarchically organised features of employment in the shrinking academic job market. Within this context, precarity stands out both as an emic term frequently used by the interviewees to explain their employment status, and an analytical lens, denoting labour-related insecurities in the academic work and labour market environments (See A2 for further reflections on the methods).

We should note that our preliminary findings were derived from a limited sample that we have reached so far in this on-going study. Therefore, we do not claim to make any generalisations, and we are aware that our informants’ narratives do not yield a holistic picture of precarity in academia that also involves other significant dimensions such as class, race, and ethnicity (Joseph-Salisbury et al. 2020; Mirza 2018; Thorkelson 2016: 483). Nevertheless, as the following section on data analysis shows, voices of our informants provide valuable insights on varied experiences of precarity in the UK higher education sector, in the two intertwined spheres of work life and job market, in line with changing ‘structural features of employment’ (Bone 2019: 1219) under the global pandemic.

Here, we move on to discuss how hierarchically organised, gendered, and structural inequalities of work and life influence early career academics’ (in)ability to cope with labour-related uncertainties in their (1) working routines and living conditions, and (2) participation in the job market during the pandemic in the UK.

Our on-going research shows that gender and hierarchically organised ‘structural features of employment’ (Bone 2019: 1219) influenced the degree to which our informants could negotiate their precarious positions by adjusting their everyday lives and work routines during the pandemic (See Table A1 for employment statuses of informants).

Three of the five informants in research positions did not experience any radical increase in their work routines during the lockdown, since they did not have teaching responsibilities. Two of them reported that lockdown created a lot of time to focus on their own publications. Jenny (30, Female, post-doctoral researcher) noted that her daily working routine ‘got even better’ during the pandemic, because she did not have to go to the office. Likewise, Greta (33, Female, part-time post-doctoral researcher) felt that she could spend more time on writing because she was at home and fieldwork activities related to her post-doctoral position were paused. Both informants described having supportive partners who equally shared domestic work with them. Being in research positions and having favourable living conditions, these women could instrumentalise their flexible time during lockdown and use it for skill reproduction necessary for their future employability (Ivancheva 2015; Standing 2011).

Our interviews indicate that early career women academics in teaching positions may be more vulnerable under lockdown. All informants who were and still are in teaching positions agreed that online teaching was more burdensome than research and teaching in class. Mia (33, Female, -previously- fixed-term lecturer), for instance, described that the sudden shift to lockdown increased the workload of younger academics. They were expected to carry out all activities online and assist senior academic staff in the transition to online teaching. Apart from online teaching, Mia organised three-hour slots where she gave 15-minutes phone-calls to each student for helping them. In her words, ‘this allowed the flexibility for [her four-year-old] daughter’ to adjust to her new environment at home, because her nursery was closed during lockdown. Mia and her husband (also an academician) had to take turns for online classes so that one can take care of their daughter, while the other was teaching in their ‘home office slash a nursery slash living room’. While such manoeuvres relieved some pressure of ‘domestic burden of care’ (Ivancheva 2015: 42), she still attended her students’ needs during the pandemic:

It was clear from our interview that despite her attempts at negotiating work-life balance with her husband and adjusting students to a more flexible schedule, Mia was squeezed between the care responsibilities of family and students in the absence of university-led assistance.

Our interview with Mia revealed that lack of institutional support from the university led precarious academics in teaching positions to face other problems during the pandemic. She explained that;

During this transitory period, those in teaching positions had no choice but to risk their health, continue teaching in-class, and attend the needs of their students without the guidance of the university. Mia added that against the backdrop of overwhelming teaching-related workload, uncertainties about health, and increased (domestic) care responsibilities without any university-led assistance during the pandemic, as a precarious academic she had no choice but to postpone research and writing. At this time of crisis, ‘structural features of employment’ (Bone 2019: 1219) not only include (teaching / research) position and employment type (part-time / full-time / short-term contract / zero-hour contract), but also institutional support from the university. So, unlike Greta, the features of Mia's employment and living conditions did not allow her to instrumentalise lockdown for writing and publishing, i.e. skill reproduction (Standing 2011) necessary for being ‘REF-able’ to remain in the academic job market (Burton 2018). Thus, the ‘stratification between research and teaching’ (Ivancheva 2015: 39) seems to increase during the pandemic. Precarity during the pandemic could only be instrumentalised by those in the better-off research positions with favourable living conditions, i.e. in higher levels of ‘hierarchies of precariousness’ (Bone 2019: 1219).

Our informants devised different strategies for dealing with ‘coronavirus-triggered hiring freeze’ (Woolsten 2020) and job market insecurity. One option was developing social capital by building informal ties (Deem and Lucas 2007; Reay 2004) with members of the staff at the university to replace the void created by the lack of institutional support from the university. For example, Jenny noted that senior colleagues at her research centre supported her career progress and the research project she was leading. Against the backdrop of hiring freeze, she was informally told that her contract could be extended or made permanent. Her chance of getting a permanent position could be negotiated even during the pandemic through the support of her colleagues. Jenny acknowledged that not everyone in academia receives such support: ‘a lot of people who got hired to other people's research projects […] only get support for the project and they got exploited’. Accordingly, leading a research project was a significant feature of employment that influenced the degree to which Jenny experienced precarity.

Institutional support and social capital seem to work especially when early career academics prove that they can bring money to the university. Before the pandemic, Mia was teaching on a fixed-term contract at a UK university. Later, she was invited from another university to fill up another lecturer's position. She started negotiating with the new university for a longer contract, and then she agreed its three-year contract offer on the condition that ‘if an opportunity comes up to create a permanent role’, the university should realise that there is a ‘permanent gap’ in this specific field she is teaching, and act accordingly. When this opportunity came up; however, the university looked for candidates with wider research areas. Mia told her employers;

The heads of her department and school passed her case up to the university administration. They calculated how much money each member of the staff in the department brought to the university. Mia was ‘miles ahead of anyone else’ with 266 hours of teaching a semester. This ‘business argument’, in Mia's words, was so strong that the university administration was convinced to appoint her as a permanent lecturer during the hiring freeze. This negotiation between the university and Mia illustrates the further neoliberal restructuring of UK universities (Becher and Trowler 2001: 6; Mirza 2018: 6). Moreover, despite Mia's relatively disadvantageous teaching position in the ‘hierarchies of precariousness’ (Bone 2019: 1219), precarity was navigable due to her specific field of teaching and the money she brought to the university. In other words, precarity could be negotiated through social capital, hierarchically organised structural features of employment (employed in someone else's project / leading one's own research / teaching area-specific courses / institutional support of the university), and the money brought to the university.

However, not everyone could strategically negotiate their position by making the ‘business argument’. Juri (28, Male, unemployed) and Elsie (a third-year funded PhD student) had no option but leave academia (Bhopal et al. 2018). Juri told us that he lost most of the hope he had because of the pandemic, and he might stop looking for a job. Similarly, Elsie noted that graduate teaching contracts were not going to be renewed next year at her university and she did not know whether her funding would be extended. She explained that her university supported undergraduate students more, who are prioritised as potential sources of income (Courtois and O’Keefe 2015: 45; Standing 2011: 70). Without the financial assistance of the university, Elsie told us that she decided to quit academia (See A3 for further discussion on the analysed data).

Our preliminary findings have shed light on differing degrees of precarity experienced by early career academics working on temporary contracts in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gender and ‘structural features of employment’ (Bone 2019: 1219) such as employment status and institutional support of the university influence how early career academics negotiate precarity under amplified uncertainties of the global pandemic. Early career women researchers with favourable living conditions could instrumentalise the flexibility that comes with post-doctoral fellowship and utilise lockdown as a writing retreat, whereas those in teaching positions were entrapped in worsening gendered working and living conditions in the absence of institutional support from the university. Not only has the ‘stratification between research and teaching’ (Ivancheva 2015: 39) has widened, but also differences in degrees of precarity have become starker under the pandemic.

These illustrate the extent to which different degrees of precarity can be negotiated at a time of crisis, and raise new questions about those who are already in vulnerable positions, and commodification of higher education. Who can negotiate precarity in the UK higher education sector, especially at such times of exogenous crises? For instance, how can unemployed early career women academics of colour have access to the further shrinking academic field and contribute to academic knowledge production? How can the UK universities respond the challenges early career academics face, and reflect on the business models they have been employing? Our study opens the space for discussing such thorny questions around precarity in the higher education sector that will be relevant in the near future even when the pandemic is over.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Aysegul Can is a lecturer at Istanbul Medeniyet University. She received her Ph.D. degree in urban studies from the University of Sheffield. Her research interests include precarity in higher education, academic knowledge production, gentrification, housing, and urban policy.

Canan Neşe Kınıkoğlu is a lecturer at Istanbul Medeniyet University. She received her Ph.D. degree in sociology from the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include higher education, precarity, sociology of knowledge, nationalism, museums, and collective memory.

All informants voluntarily agreed to participate in our study as a response to the call for participation we circulated via e-mails and the web in April 2020. We carried out all interviews online during lockdown in the UK. Some participants were comfortable with face-to-face interviews, while others preferred only audio recording due to their concerns about anonymity. Most of our informants were concerned about their anonymity, since they were still early career academics who needed to navigate their path in academia towards a permanent position through formal and informal support mechanisms. In fact, one of our informants requested to review the sections in our manuscript, where we told her story and quoted her. For this reason, we anonymised all names, withheld information regarding their university affiliations, departments, and their research and teaching areas, and sent the manuscript to those who wanted to see it before submission. However, informants were not consulted on the themes that emerged in data analysis.

Our findings signpost the long-term effects of the COVID-19 crisis on precarity in the UK higher education sector. As the universities re-opened campuses in September 2020 in the wake of a second wave in the pandemic (BBC News 2020b), critiques claimed that universities ‘turned their backs’ (Finlayson 2020) on both their students as soon as their tuition fees were guaranteed and staff members who raised concerns about their health and working conditions (Busby, 2020). Our early findings showed that the pandemic has not only exposed but also amplified already existing labour-related insecurities, gendered inequalities, and the business aspiration of UK universities. Unlike other one-time disasters, the consequences of this prolonged pandemic will not easily disappear. In the post-COVID period, the number of precarious academics will likely multiply in the face of increasing number of new PhDs, the ensuing ‘coronavirus-triggered hiring freeze’ (Woolsten 2020), and the diminishing funding resources available for research. This may ultimately increase the insecurities and uncertainties surrounding the academic field which may build even higher ‘walls of exclusion’ (Mirza 2018: 6). Our on-going study yields significant insights on how early career researchers may instrumentalise, negotiate and challenge such conditions owing to the privileges or obstacles arising from their gender and structural features of employment.