Recently, we shared with our participants in the Underemployment Research Project findings from the first conversations we had together at the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024.
We invited the 60 participants to either online or in person meetings in the four cities that are the focus of the research: Bristol, Glasgow, Nottingham, and Great Manchester. So, during October and November 2024, we hosted four informal get-togethers with them (two online meetings and two in-person meetings in Bristol and Manchester).
All participants were underemployed at the time they got involved in the project in 2023. In other words, while they were employed, they were either working in jobs that did not provide the number of hours they wanted, that paid below the real living wage, or did not require the skills or qualifications they had. All our participants were underemployed in one or more of these three dimensions that constitute underemployment (time, wage, and skills underemployment).
We presented the first report from the qualitative analysis of these first conversations (the report can be found at this link) and there were insightful comments and discussions amongst the groups. While we could only present a small part of the analysis, those that attended said that the findings resonated with their experience and the experiences of others they knew.
They also said that it felt good and reassuring to know that others are grappling with similar situations and issues. This realisation proves that they are not alone, and that their lived experience is shared, which challenges some of the individualist discourses that are often dominant in labour market narratives of employment and unemployment.
“The research has shown that there’s other people out there that are in a similar position, it does make you realise that this is a pattern and something that people like myself and others are experiencing”
While lived experiences are of course individual and subjective, our findings reflect experiences that in the academic literature have been labelled as the ‘shared typical’ (Kor et al., 2021; Smith et al., 2021). In the informal get-togethers, participants reflected on the causes of underemployment which appear as ‘constellations of motives’ (Wright Mills) shared by many of them. Some of these causes are linked to historical and contextual situations and therefore are structural factors.
It was also impressive that these meetings brought out a sense of solidarity and support amongst those attending. Participants mentioned that sharing knowledge created a sense of power to counter individualisation. Alongside this, attendees emphasised the importance of the research findings and hoped the findings would influence positive change in terms of underemployment in general and their lived experiences in particular.
We are as always indebted to our participants because without their time and insights, this important research would not happen.
We look forward to publishing further findings in due course. To receive updates, you can subscribe on our website at Underemployment Project.