British Journal of Sociology of Education

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbse20

Back to zero? Precarious employment in academia
amongst ‘older’ early career researchers, a lifecourse approach
Nerida Spina, Kathleen Smithers, Jess Harris & Inger Mewburn
To cite this article: Nerida Spina, Kathleen Smithers, Jess Harris & Inger Mewburn (2022)
Back to zero? Precarious employment in academia amongst ‘older’ early career researchers,
a life-course approach, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43:4, 534-549, DOI:
10.1080/01425692.2022.2057925
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2057925© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group.
Published online: 25 Jun 2022.

Submit your article to this journal

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttps://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cbse20

British Journal of Sociology of Education
2022, VOL. 43, NO. 4, 534–549
https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2057925

Back to zero? Precarious employment in academia
amongst ‘older’ early career researchers, a life-course
approach
Nerida Spinaa, Kathleen Smithersb, Jess Harrisb

and Inger Mewburnc

Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; bUniversity of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia;
Australian National University, Canberra, Australiaac

ABSTRACT

Despite the diversity of entry points into academia, little research exists
examining the experiences and impact of precarious employment at
different life stages. Drawing on interviews with 19 academics employedcasually or on fixed-term contracts in Australian universities, this paper
illustrates how precarious employment is experienced at different lifeand career stages. Using Foucauldian understandings of power anddiscourse alongside a life-course sociological approach, we explore how
parenthood, relationships and life decisions are shaped by precarious
employment in the academy. Discourses around academic ‘pipelines’
and ‘early careers’ obscure the experiences of those entering academia
as a second-career; and those in long-term precarious employment.
These employment structures have deep personal, professional andfinancial impacts. By identifying the intersection between precarious
employment and life stages, we argue that an understanding of theeffects of precarious employment requires further, urgent attention to
support the diverse needs of academics.

ARTICLE HISTORY

Received 30 March 2021
Accepted 22 March 2022
KEYWORDS

Academic employment;
Academic pipeline; Age;
Life stage; Precarious
employment

Introduction
Progression from doctorate to professoriate is sometimes described as a pipeline, suggestinga smooth professional journey. The pipeline metaphor, however, is inadequate and misleading: obscuring the multiple entry and exit points of academic careers, those who neversecure permanent work or progress to the professoriate, and how careers are experienced
across individuals’ life-course. The so-called ‘Early Career Researcher’ (ECR) phase, used
to describe both teaching and research academics, is particularly misunderstood and undertheorised. Drawing on research literature on academic careers and individual life courses,
this paper addresses the diverse impacts of precarity for ECRs across life stages and challenges us to rethink what ‘career planning’ might entail, particularly for those embarking
on a second career. Age and ageism within the growing number of workers in insecure
employment has been considered in sectors such as retail and hospitality (e.g. Parry and
McCarthy 2017), but less so in academia, which is the focus of this paper.
CONTACT Nerida Spina

n.spina@qut.edu.au© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

British Journal of Sociology of Education

535

In this paper, we examine regimes of truth (Foucault 2012/2014) about academic careers,
especially the discourse on becoming an academic through differing stages of life. Our aim
is to expose discursive rules that underpin our systems of thought, determining who has
the authority to speak, what can be known (and by whom), and whose interests and views
are prioritised. Foucault wrote that:
Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth; that is, the types of discourse
which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one
to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those whocharged with saying what counts as true (Foucault 1980, 131).

Discourses privilege certain perspectives, while creating discursive prohibitions aroundother points of view in specific times and places. Our analysis of interviews with academics
experiencing precarious employment in universities or research institutions across Australia
sought to understand regimes of truth about academic careers, bringing together Moen
and Sweet’s (2004) life-course sociological approach with a Foucauldian focus on discourse.
We identify the discursive construction of academic careers that can marginalise those in
precarious employment.
In any discussion about university employment, the profound changes that have occurredin work more broadly since the 1980s must be acknowledged. In Australia, government
funding dropped from almost 90% of university revenue in the late 1980s, to less than 50%
by the mid-2000s (Marginson and Marshman 2013). While Hugo (2005) suggested that theageing Australian academic workforce would result in mass retirements by 2015, decreases
in university funding have left little room for the 40,000 new university positions predicted
to replace those who retire (Group of Eight 2010). Long-standing fears about academic
workforce sustainability have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, national lockdowns and resultant restructuring of many universities worldwide (Thatcher et al. 2020).
The impact of the pandemic is likely to make the employment of ongoing staff financiallyriskier for institutions, potentially creating an even greater reliance on project-based ‘softmoney’ and precarious employment structures, particularly for those in the early stages of
their career. The pandemic appears to have magnified the changes of the neoliberal university that have been occurring over the past three decades (Smyth 2017), shifting responsibility for financial security and career progression from the institution to the individual.
Watermeyer et al. (2021) propose the notion of ‘pandemia’ to describe the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic on academia. They argue that the pandemic has ‘emboldened’ universities to take further steps towards neoliberal governmentality, including work intensification, job losses, and university transformations under managerialist leadership. The
resulting risk of precarity has sparked widespread fear that has ‘neutralis[ed] any kind ofcounteraction or resistance’ (656). There is strong evidence that significant restructuring,increased workloads and precarity have resulted in Australian universities during pandemic(e.g. see Bowyer et al. 2022).
Substantial research has focused on the relationship between academic employment,
gender, marital, and parental status (Ivancheva, Lynch, and Keating 2019). Research in the
US identifies women who are married with children are 132% more likely than male counterparts to work in insecure employment (Wolfinger, Mason, and Goulden 2009). Femaleidentifying academics are less likely to receive promotions to high-level academic positions

536

N. SPINA ET AL.

in Australia (Dobele, Rundle-Thiele, and Kopanidis 2014) and represent less than half ofthe ongoing academic workforce in the UK (Ivancheva, Lynch, and Keating 2019). Thosewith caring responsibilities are further disadvantaged, with Klocker and Drozdzewski (2012)
controversially asking ‘how many papers is a baby worth?’. While research into the impactof gender and caring responsibilities on traditional academic careers is vital, the focus of
this paper is on other impacts of individual life-courses, including the intersection between
age and precarious employment status, which have not yet been fully considered.
Understanding how people navigate careers in neoliberal times, within and beyond
academia, is complex and demands sophisticated methodological approaches. The ‘sociology-derived life-course perspective’ (Patton and Doherty 2020, 300) has emerged as a fieldthat seeks to understand how ‘careers extend beyond occupational concerns and into otheraspects of people’s lives, such as family careers and marking progressions through family
forms and structures’ (Moen and Sweet 2004, 212). Moen and Sweet’s work is foundational,
examining the interplay between careers and lives, and how these unfold over time. They
argue current employment structures position individuals as responsible for managing how
their life-course impacts on their career, highlighting the relevance of intersections between
contextual factors such as age, socio-economic advantage, gender, sexuality, race, institutional and labour market conditions, and workforce policies, to careers and lives.
In this paper, a life-course perspective is used to problematise dominant discourses ofacademic careers, especially the homogenous grouping of insecurely employed academics.
This analysis is designed to uncover power relations and unstated assumptions made by,
and about, precariously employed academics. In illuminating impacts of insecure employment for people across their life-course, we hope to give practitioners and institutions agreater understanding of the professional development and mentoring needs of academics
in different forms of employment, and at different life stages.

‘Truths’ about academic careers
The global rise of precarious employment in academia has been relatively well-documented(Spina et al. 2020). While casual or fixed-term work was once considered a steppingstone
to an academic career (van Anders 2004), there has been substantial growth in the numberof academics who are precariously employed for years or decades.
The precarious workforce has proliferated alongside the massification of higher education, increasing demands on teaching staff, while producing an oversupply of workers with
degrees. In Australia, annual graduations from higher degree research (HDR) programs
have more than doubled in two decades, from 5,738 in 2001 to 11,165 in 2019 (Departmentof Education and Training 2020). Simultaneously, the number of ongoing positions inuniversities has been outstripped by contingently employed academics (Ryan, Connell, andBurgess 2017). These changes mean the majority of HDR graduates are more likely to join
the precariat than the professoriate, should they remain in academia at all.
Discourses of academic work, including the ubiquitous ‘publish or perish’, are underpinned by competition and highlight the use of specific metrics of career success. Despite
awareness of current academic employment prospects, some studies report PhD candidates
and ECRs (of all ages) feeling confident about the job market if they have established apublishing track record (Bosanquet, Mantai, and Fredericks 2020; Dufty-Jones 2017). This
regime of truth, described as the ‘cruel optimism’ of academia, leads precarious academics

British Journal of Sociology of Education537

to maintain hope for meritocratic employment while pursuing an insecure future(McKenzie 2018).
These discourses about academic careers suggest that precarious work in universities
offers a stable entry to the ‘pipeline’ of an academic career (van Anders 2004, 511). This
discursive truth requires problematisation, given broader societal changes to the natureof employment and university structures. Some studies suggest potential employees must
become extraordinary academics, referred to as ‘superheroes’ (Pitt and Mewburn 2016)or ‘rockstars’ (Smyth 2017), to secure ongoing work. Bexley, Arkoudis, and James (2013)
found that younger academics in Australia were more likely to plan to leave academia thanolder colleagues, although this varies by discipline. Science graduates, for example, aremore likely to find employment outside academia (Mewburn et al. 2020). McCarthy andWienk (2019) showed that PhD students in science were also more likely to consider workoutside of academia, while humanities students overwhelmingly identify with an academic
career path.
The pipeline metaphor intimates an idealised view of academic work as a life-longendeavour, obscuring the experiences of those who leave academia or enter university
employment later in life. Age is frequently used as a measure of if a worker is ‘on’ or ‘off ’schedule, in terms of regular progression towards a career path (Strike and Taylor 2009).
The discourse of ‘regular’ career progression effectively presents ECRs and the precariat as
homogenous groups, inhibiting a deeper understanding of the life-courses and different
experiences of individuals.
Older academics in precarious employment are often discursively positioned as a‘problem’ for the institution (c.f. Earl, Taylor, and Cannizzo 2018). Stereotypical depictionsof precarious workers tend to focus on those under 35 and are frequently associated with
ECR status, meaning they are within 5 years of the completion of their doctoral studies.
While there is research on precarity for this group (e.g. Browning, Thompson, andDawson 2017), there is a lack of attention paid to those who enter the academy over 40,
as a second career. The experiences of ‘second career academics’ have generally been
researched in the context of ongoing employment (Herman et al. 2020). The changing
nature of precarious work, however, has prompted a need to examine the experiences ofsecond career academics in insecure employment. In this paper, we examine how precarious academics from different life-stages are constituted and constitute themselves
within the context of the contemporary institution. Given the significant number of
precariously employed academics of all ages, this research is vital for establishing more
equitable and sustainable employment that meets the needs of both workers anduniversities.

Research methods
This paper analyses face-to-face and videoconference interviews conducted with 19 precariously employed academics in universities and research institutes throughout Australia.
The research was conducted with approval from the University of Newcastle’s Human
Research Ethics Committee (H-2017-0392). Participants’ identities have been protectedusing pseudonyms and potentially identifying information has been removed. Interviewees
were recruited through the authors’ networks, including Twitter. Participants were locatedin Australian research institutions across metropolitan and regional areas. A number also

538

N. SPINA ET AL.

had prior experience in the US and New Zealand (see Table 1 in Appendix). Participants
represented a range of academic disciplines, including social sciences, education, business,health, science, and humanities.
Interviews, lasting between 45 minutes and 2 hours, were audio recorded and transcribedwith pseudonyms assigned to people, locations, and institutions. Participants had a broad
range of experience levels and previous employment, with many working across different
institutions on multiple fixed-term or hourly-paid contracts. The majority had more than
5 years of precarious employment.
A process of thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) was used, including inductive
and deductive processes, with interviews initially coded for references to age, life-courseand career status. Thematic data analysis enabled themes to be identified to ‘captur[ing]something important about the data in relation to the research question and represent[ing]some level of patterned response or meaning with the data set’ (Braun and Clarke 2006,
82). In relation to our research question –– what dominant discourses circulate about academic work, and how do these discourses position precariously employed academics at
different life-stages? –– three themes were identified as being associated with life-courses:
commencing an academic career, the dwindling currency of previous careers, and financial
insecurity for retirement. As thematic analysis is a method for identifying themes or patternsof meaning (Braun and Clarke 2006), these themes were representative across the data set.
To arrive at the themes, the authors each read the data separately and then collectively, toarrive at mutual agreement.
Our interviews uncovered taken-for-granted ‘truths’ about traditional academic career
paths, focusing on these three themes. We use a Foucauldian lens to understand how thesetruths and associated discourses support the replication of power relations and practices.
In the following sections of the paper, we explain each of the three themes using the lifecourse sociological framework, and Foucault to theorise our findings.

Commencing the academic career
A large proportion of the participants entered academia with a belief that education credentials – primarily the PhD – and experience in teaching and/or research would improvetheir employment opportunities. Instead, participants at various ages and life-stages reported
that the PhD was an impediment to finding work outside of academia. Many had not been
intentional in seeking an academic career but had been introduced to academic workthrough short-term contracts during or immediately following their doctoral studies. Chris,a woman in her 40s, said:
I never planned to do research as a career, I never planned to do anything with my PhD otherthan put it in a little pile and then move on and go [back into school] teaching for the rest of
my life…

During her PhD, Chris gradually moved into research work before leaving her school
teaching role. Discourses of ‘falling into’ academic work were normalised and shared byour participants; they described the PhD as a personal goal that happened to lead to casual
academic work, rather than an intentional entry into the academic pipeline. Interviewees,
like Delilah, described opportunities that ‘snowballed’ after the PhD:

British Journal of Sociology of Education

539

Calling it a career, I think, is a bit fancy. Most things - [having worked] as a graphic designer
and then as a teacher, like a lecturer – all of these things have always come through word of
mouth. I’ve never had a business card, I’ve never advertised.

A number of participants discursively constructed their own labour as being locatedoutside of ‘an academic career’. As Delilah noted, calling her work a career would be ‘a bit
fancy’. Rachel (30s), who had well over ten years of research experience in multiple universities and institutes, laughed when asked about her academic career, noting sarcastically,‘what’s that? I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those!’In terms of life-course, decisions to accept work alongside doctoral studies were attributed
to a perception of academic work as flexible, and able to suit personal circumstances. For
example, Chris described her choice to complete a PhD as a function of her life-course,
providing greater flexibility to care for young children than her previous career. Her decision
to take on research contracts similarly reflected this discourse of flexibility, allowing work
to be balanced with parenting responsibilities. Sydney undertook her studies while onmaternity leave. She described that ‘a couple of small projects’ came her way, and that ‘itjust made sense’ to consider a PhD and academic work after she graduated from her masters
degree. During her PhD she supported herself with a scholarship and short-term contract
employment. Alongside life-stage, the issue of flexibility appears to be gendered with manyof our female participants reporting that flexible academic work aligned with caring responsibilities (Ivancheva, Lynch, and Keating 2019). Male participants in our research weremuch less likely to engage in the discourse of flexibility, or to raise the issue of balancing
caring responsibilities.
Patton and Doherty (2020) argue that career decisions ‘need to consider all family
members; however institutions (e.g. employers) tend to engage with family members as
individuals, not as a cohesive unit’ (299). Our interviews indicated that family structuresand individual life-stages were highly relevant in decisions to engage in casual or shortterm academic work. We identified a pervasive discourse, produced by ongoing and precarious academics alike, that constituted short-term academic work as flexible and fittingwith participants’ lives beyond work. Such discourses around employment in academia
worked to ‘construct certain possibilities for thoughts’ (Ball 1990, 18), creating truths about
how academic careers might emerge in ways that would work alongside the desires of
supporting families across different phases of the life-course. This set of truth claims,
however, did not fit with the embodied experiences of our participants as they sought
more secure employment in universities. In the following sections we identify how dominant discourses of academic work, including this discourse of flexibility shaped expectations for academic careers, contributed to difficulty finding other work, and the ways inwhich older casual academics began to resist this discourse.

The dwindling currency of a PhD, or a previous career
Our participants – including both highly experienced academics who had not been offeredongoing work and second-career academics – indicated that prior experience did not advantage them in building a career either inside or outside of academia. Delilah, who was in herlate 50s, felt that her previous career and doctoral qualifications had diminished possibilities

540

N. SPINA ET AL.

outside of academia. She described that she, ‘qualified herself out’ of her previous career.
Unable to secure permanent work in academia, a number of participants looked for workoutside of academia and found that having a PhD was a barrier to employment in government or industry. Amelia (40s) said:
The irony for me is, while I’ve always said I never did any of this for a career, it surely, probably
damaged any career that I could have had. Because having a PhD, I think it actually is a negative. People see it and they kind of go, ‘What is that?’ My husband keeps telling me, ‘This is
ridiculous.’ You know? For the money that you get… Now that I’m trying to build a career, I’m
thinking about my post-PhD life. I’ve got children that are getting older and life gets more
expensive and I just … yeah, that lack of stability has been very emotionally taxing thissemester.

Amelia’s response exemplifies a recurring motif across interviews, that obtaining a PhD
only proved beneficial when first looking for academic work. Many participants felt thatin pursuing a PhD, they had been sold a lie about its value, particularly for those who werein their 40s or 50s. Rather, what mattered was social capital available in the form of networks
with tenured academics who could provide access to contracts (Heffernan 2021). Delilah,
who had had a significant professional experience prior to moving into academia, notedthat it was most important to ‘meet people who have some influence and who are interested
in sort of working in partnership – then you get further work.’
The importance of networks for securing work in universities has been highlighted inresearch literature, with most networks established during the PhD (e.g. Heffernan 2021;
Spina et al. 2020). Numerous factors can enhance or diminish networks built by academics
in precarious employment, including changing institutions or losing contact with PhD
supervisors. Participants could identify causes of the disintegration of their network, suchas following the death of a PhD supervisor, maternity or health related leave, the closure ofa faculty or department, or retirements. For example:… after my PhD supervisor died, I thought well that’s the end of my brilliant career. (Delilah,
late 50s)
So how do we build up the research networks if we don’t know anyone? It’s hard to build up
networks…It’s just hard. All the people we work with retire. (Penny, 40s)

Charles, reflected on his experience of work disappearing following the death and retirement of his doctoral supervisors. He said:
It still makes me angry that I used to tutor in social statistics. Absolutely loved it. Then I had
work over in a business faculty… and I loved it. Then it all stopped and that was where it
became a real problem with finding any work at all.

Charles was not alone. Other participants who had been working precariously in academia for more than 5 years experienced similar challenges. For second-career academics
like Amelia, Charles and Delilah, prior life or work experience did not appear to provide
any advantage in building an academic career. For others, like Penny, Rachel and Laura,
extensive research experience did not lead to secure employment.
Here, we return to the dominant truths that circulate around academic work. For example, when many of our participants were offered academic work early in their research
careers, it was suggested that teaching and research opportunities would not only provide

British Journal of Sociology of Education

541

flexible work but would lead to more stable, flexible work in the future. These truths are
put to work, becoming a taken-for-granted knowledge, dispersed across the academy. As
Foucault explains, power is not simply a mechanism wielded by those in a position of
authority, but rather ‘it comes from everywhere’ (1978, 93). In this understanding of power
as relational, the dominant discourse of academic work, for example, is produced andreproduced by academics in ongoing and precarious positions alike during hallway conversations, faculty meetings and over coffee. The reproduction of these discourses by thosealready working in academia appears to provide some authority for ‘what counts as true’(Foucault 1980, 131). This ‘politics of truth’ was silent on the ongoing nature of insecure
work for an increasing number of academics, and on the likelihood of securing a tenured
position after the age of 40. Dominant discourses not only shape what may or may not be
said (and thought); they are ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they
speak’ (Foucault 1972, 49). The idea that academic work can be understood with a metaphorof a pipeline from PhD to the professoriate is at odds with the everyday realities of many
people working in universities, including older and second-career academics. We note that
Covid, and associated university responses, have amplified these issues (e.g. see Watermeyer
et al. 2021).
As we have argued elsewhere (see Smithers et al. 2021), tenured academics can play animportant role in improving the working conditions of precarious academics and in providing honest assessments of academic work, expectations and career prospects. There isan increasing number of tenured academics who have stood in solidarity with those in
precarious work, through critiques of the neoliberal university and collective action (seefor example, Connell 2019; Gill 2016; Smyth 2017). Despite these instances of solidarity,
dominant discursive practices in universities continue to constitute insecure academic positions as a flexible form of employment that is likely to lead to more secure work. While thispathway is possible for some contract academics, those who are over 40 face additional
challenges, as explored in the following section.

An insecure career; an insecure retirement
The pipeline metaphor is damaging for those who find themselves in the precariat longterm. The constitution of ‘early career’ in this pathway is especially injurious for thoseembarking on a second career. At over five years post-PhD, and no longer constituted as
early career, participants began to feel invisible or devalued, despite significant professionalor academic experience. Participants with many years of precarious employment experience
had lost hope of finding ongoing work:
They always hire me on a [the lowest professional salary scale for each contract]. I supposethat was the lowest they could give… So irrespective of 30 years of experience in research [Ihave not been able to find permanent, well-paid work]… (Penny, 40s)
I think once they saw how old I was [I didn’t get the job], I don’t know. I really put it down toage… (Jill, 50s)
You have to pretty much accept that, that’s the end of your career, you know. And the closer
to 60 I get, because I’m 58 this year… I have to think, well perhaps it’s true, maybe it really isclose to the end of my useful working life, I just have to accept it. (Charles, 50s)

542

N. SPINA ET AL.

Traditional transitions into retirement have changed little in terms of how and when
individuals can expect to retire (Moen, Sweet, and Swisher 2005). Yet the reality for precarious academics is that employment prospects will likely diminish before they are readyto retire. Many participants talked about the detrimental effect that their PhD and years or
decades in insecure employment had on their retirement savings. Forced early retirements
were likely, as people like Jill, Delilah and Charles found themselves less able to secure work.
It was apparent that academics who are insecurely employed no longer have a ‘taken-forgranted script’ (Moen, Sweet, and Swisher 2005, 238) which enables them to be active indeciding when to work or transition into retirement.
Participants in their 40s and older, and who had been in the precariat for some time,
expressed concerns about financial security more frequently than concern about career
progression. As Amelia identifies:
I just think to myself, ‘You know what, I’m 45 I want to retire one day.’ I just want 15 years
or more. I don’t care at this point in time what it is, provided I like the people I work withand it’s consistent and I’m not expected to work every weekend. I’m getting too old for
this.

In attempts to ‘play the game’ by exceeding job expectations (Spina et al. 2020), participants found that rather than being in employment that was flexible and supported thepersonal circumstances of their life-stage, the opposite was true. Most participants in thisstudy said they did not aspire to be a person ‘at the top’, after having spent a significant
amount of time in the precariat. Rather, they hoped for consistency and to one day be able
to retire. For example, Rachel said:
If you can afford to retire one day, that’s quite an achievement in itself. I think the idea of
having a career path is, sadly, not there for a lot of people anymore. (Rachel, late 30s).

This statement was in line with the views of many participants who were more focussed
on securing work than seeking promotion or tenure. For these academics, financial security
and the ability to plan for retirement was paramount.
The dislocation of typical labour trajectories and entitlements meant that those who saw
themselves as unencumbered from financial responsibilities – including having children –felt they were in a better position to self-fund life in the academic precariat. This sentimentis echoed by Ashley, who noted that the challenges of long-term insecure employment areexacerbated by a wide range of intersecting factors, including caring responsibilities, gender,
health, and life stage:
Contract work really only benefits those who have certain sets of privileges, so they might nothave a family, they can move around and it’s not a problem, they might not have any healthissues that require access to a particular kind of health service, they may not have issues relating to their gender or sexuality, and so they can live anywhere and they’re not going to bediscriminated against, same with ethnicity or race or religion. Disability issues, chronic illnesses. I do think contract work only really benefits someone who doesn’t have a lot of that inplace. And the rest of us, we have to try and manage all of those things while staying employed.

Emma, who was in her 40s, characterised herself as ‘lucky’ that she didn’t have dependents. Amy, also in her 40s, identified lack of security as a significant challenge that was
exacerbated by her personal circumstances:

British Journal of Sociology of Education

543

I think recently my biggest challenge has been struggling with the lack of stability, long term
stability that I’ve got two young children… I’ve got two other research contracts that both end
in January. I don’t know what February is gonna bring.

Precarious academic employment is thus at odds with a broad range of intersecting
factors related to an individual’s life-course. Comparing her experiences with that of acolleague who appeared to be content in precarious work, Riley said:
But I also think that’s a reflection of who he is and where he is in his life; he’s a young man, helives at home with his parents, he doesn’t have a mortgage to pay, he doesn’t have children to –that he has to nurture and grow and cater and provide for, so perhaps if he was ten years further in his life and he was married with a mortgage and children, that the decision for him
would have been very, very different.

For most, ongoing insecure academic work left participants in a constant state of personaland financial stress, as they attempted to navigate a context where secure work seemedincreasingly unlikely despite extensive professional, research and educational experiences.
Participants repeatedly pointed to a work structure that dominated their lives, leaving themwith little time, energy, or money to pursue personal needs, interests, or goals. After morethan a decade of insecure work, Emma found a non-academic job at a university to support
her financial, emotional, and physical health. While she hoped to continue to publish in
her own time, the stress of living in the precariat influenced her decision, saying:
I don’t want to go through the pain of applying and applying. Not even applying – goingaround talking to people, ‘do you have [any work for me]?’ ‘do you have anything’, ‘do you haveanything?

Standing (2011) characterises those in the precariat as supplicants, who are reduced toasking for favours, including being offered temporary work. This was certainly the case forthe participants, who, as their networks diminished, found themselves increasingly asking
for work, rather than being offered work. This is remarkably different to descriptions of
how work was offered early in their move to academia: where they were offered opportunities constituted as a pathway to an academic vocation which would offer flexibility to suitvarious stages of their life-course.
As we have shown, interviewees bore the personal and financial risks associated withprecarious work. People across various stages of life described how they were enticed into
academic work as a flexible option. The flexibility offered was done so on the basis that it
would accommodate the needs of men and women wanting to spend time with young
children, and second-career academics exploring a new career interest through study.
However, once in the precariat, most found it either difficult or impossible to follow theirown research interests and move beyond insecure work.
In addition to feeling that many tenured academic staff were not aware of the severityof the situation, there was a sense that those outside of academia were unaware of how rife
casualisation is within academia. For academics who had transitioned from previously
secure careers and were of an age where there is a broad expectation of job security, thiswas especially disheartening.
Yeah, it’s funny because one of my classes we were talking about teaching about social classes
this semester and I introduced them to the five or six or seven different classes, the way that

544

N. SPINA ET AL.

they’re divided and I showed them the Precariat…. I was saying to them, I’m in the Precariat
because I don’t know where my income is coming from quarter to quarter, basically, or evenless than that. And they were so surprised. (Amy, 40s)

Amy went on to explain that telling her students about her position was intentional.
Using her position of authority in tutorials, Amy disrupted the notion that academic careers
are inherenlty stable and elite. In this paper, we have aimed to further challenge the dominant discourses of academia as a pipeline to ongoing progression with high levels of financial reward. Our participants’ experiences demonstrate that this is not the case for many
academics.

Discussion
Enlisting a precarious workforce has assisted the transformation of universities into structures with burgeoning numbers of workers at the bottom of an employment pyramid. Yet,
dominant discourses around the nature of academic careers often render the experiencesof insecurely employed academics invisible. Given the increasing proportion of the academic
workforce, we have attempted to dismantle the idea of a one-size-fits all career trajectory
and the rigid views surrounding insecure work. Precarious work can suit the needs of someacademics at different times in their life-course but provides reduced opportunities formany at different life-stages.
Our findings suggest there are few options available to the academic precariat for gaining
financial security or developing a career outside of the ‘regular’ PhD to professoriate pipeline. Taking leave at different phases of the life-course, for instance to care for aging parents
or young children, or for ill-health, can lead to financial insecurity, a deterioration of networks, and significant challenges in finding work. While individual biographies featured
frequently in decisions to commence academic work, there was little evidence that universities attended to their individual life-course needs once employed.
Rather than being flexible, or a point d’appui to a linear academic career, the precariat
workforce might be better described as ‘a bridge to nowhere’ (Alcover 2017, 232). As thedata we have presented highlights, academia is unique in that ‘entry’ or ‘early career’ positions often include a diversity of age-brackets, including older, ‘second-career’ workers andlong-term insecurely employed academics (Herman et al. 2020). Little attention, however,is paid to individual needs and realities at different life stages in supporting those within
the academy. The discourses of promotion and ambition that circulate in universities often
silence discussions about insecure employment, particularly in terms of issues of age, academic or professional experience, second-career employment and financial precarity. We
argue that many who are precariously employed enter the academy immersed in dominantdiscourses that constitute academic work as appealing and flexible. However, once they arewithin the institution, they find that the path which is given discursive authority is thepathway towards tenured positions and professorship. Resistance to this dominant discourse
is often relegated to ‘small-scale, micro-negotiations of power’ (Gill 2016, 42) that occur incasual conversations, department meetings and, increasingly, on social media by insecurely
employed and ongoing academics alike. We acknowledge that for many academics withongoing employment, the state of pandemia has increased the risk of speaking out, in a
climate of university restructures, downsizing and redundancies.

British Journal of Sociology of Education

545

However, we argue that it is vital to continue to find ways of amplifying resistance tosupport the needs of precariously employed academics at all stages of their life and career.
The Australian National Tertiary Education Union has worked to raise the profile of issues
relating to the increasing casualisation within universities over the past decade. Union
initiatives, including the ‘Charter of Casual Academic Rights’ (NTEU undated), and National
Week of Action have been designed to draw attention to the significant and growing numberof insecurely employed academics. Broader campaigns, such as the Australian Council ofTrade Union’s Secure Jobs – Worth Fighting For were also described as placing universities
in a ‘starring role’ (Evans 2021, 15). Despite these campaigns, universities in Australia haveaccelerated managerialist policy, with many undertaking significant restructures resulting
in almost 60,000 jobs lost by the end of November 2021 (Evans 2021). Collective resistanceis vitally important in advocating for a higher education system to make substantial change
to appropriately support their employees. For example, while the Charter of Casual
Academics’ Rights sets out rights such as the right to be remunerated for work within twoweeks and be assigned a designated workstation, these rights were not reflected in theexperiences of our research participants. Moreover, none of our participants mentioned
the union or their work in advocating for casual and contract academics in their interviews.
Rather, they sought advice and solace from those already within the institution. For thisreason, we argue that both collective and individual resistance is required to bringabout change.
Expectations about academic careers are deeply entrenched in popular culture publications, and in the experiences of many ongoing academics. There is an emerging view that
doctoral supervisors should prepare PhD students for a career outside of academia throughprofessional development and career counselling (Dufty-Jones 2017). Not all academics,
however, are adequately equipped to offer this support as they are almost inevitably subject
to the same regimes of truth that we have identified that dictate how to ‘be’ an academic,
often informed by their own experiences of entering academia.
Research suggests the longer one spends in precarity following doctoral completion, themore difficult it becomes to find secure employment (Bosanquet, Mantai, and Fredericks
2020; Wolfinger, Mason, and Goulden 2009). Even in the small sample of participants inthis project, we came across a wide range of academics in terms of their life-course. This
paper describes a reality that is problematic for many, particularly for older workers. Despiteextensive experience in non-academic settings, second-career academics may be renderedless visible as their networks deteriorate, leading to significant financial consequences. In
Charles’ words, at the end of every contract ‘you’re back to zero’. For second-career academics who are constituted as ECRs despite extensive work histories, there is a very realrisk of appearing too old to be supported in an academic career pipeline, or even to sustain
insecure work – despite extensive qualifications and experience. Moen and Sweet’s (2004,
212) characterisation of traditional careers is that they are constituted as orderly, and generally upwards occupational mobility over time; this represents a sharp contrast to the
trajectory of our participants.

Conclusion
In this paper, we have considered how age and life-course are worthy of further attentionin understanding academic employment. Modern, neoliberal university structures rely on

546

N. SPINA ET AL.

insecure employment structures, with individuals bearing the costs of downturns, supply,and demand fluctuations (Snyder 2016). Financial risks have moved almost entirely onto
workers, as highlighted and worsened by the pandemic. We ask: what are the costs, toacademia and to society, of the career patterns we identified in this paper?
We identified a number of truth claims that play out in academic employment. First,
that academic work is flexible and part of a life-long vocation with a relatively clear career
trajectory. Second, the view that those employed on insecure contracts post PhD will generally move through the pipeline towards permanency and promotion. Yet, large numbersof academics endure long-term precarity and narrowing employment options within andbeyond universities. There exists a discursive silence around prior experiences of the precariat, including second-career academics, who find themselves at the bottom of the pyramid, with little option but to continue on, because the regime of truth outside universities
is that PhDs are unhelpful. Finally, once in academic work, a ‘career’ involves moving from
ECR status through to the professoriate. Instead, short-term academic contracts tended tocreate personal and financial pressures, and a narrowing of employment options.
In writing this paper, we are not suggesting wholesale institutional change. Acknowledging
the current context, and following Foucault, we are reminded that power relations areimbued within academia, and that change does not always need to be top-down. The large
number of people across various stages of life in the academic precariat warrant a reimagining of what an academic career looks like. As such, we argue that challenging the dominantdiscourse that all PhD graduates want to be academics; or that all those in academia strive
towards that professoriate would be a place to start, but not finish.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Nerida Spina
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2923-0104
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7301-5658
Kathleen Smithers
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4584-6993
Jess Harris
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0683-5255
Inger Mewburn

References
Alcover, Carlos-Maria. 2017. “Bridge Employment: Transitions from Career Employment toRetirement and Beyond.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Age Diversity and Work, edited by Emma
Parry and Jean McCarthy, 225–263. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ball, S. 1990. Politics and Policy Making in Education: Explorations in Policy Sociology. London:
Routledge.
Bexley, Emmaline, Sophie Arkoudis, and Richard James. 2013. “The Motivations, Values and Future
Plans of Australian Academics.” Higher Education 65 (3): 385–400. doi:10.1007/s10734-012-9550-3.
Bosanquet, Agnes, Lilia Mantai, and Vanessa Fredericks. 2020. “Deferred Time in the Neoliberal
University: Experiences of Doctoral Candidates and Early Career Academics.” Teaching in Higher
Education 25 (6): 736–749. doi:10.1080/13562517.2020.1759528.
Bowyer, Dorothea, Milissa Deitz, Anne Jamison, Chloe E. Taylor, Erika Gyengesi, Jaime Ross, Hollie
Hammond, et al. 2022. “Academic Mothers, Professional Identity and COVID‐19: Feminist

British Journal of Sociology of Education

547

Reflections on Career Cycles, Progression and Practice.” Gender, Work & Organization 29 (1):309–341. doi:10.1111/gwao.12750.
Braun, Virgina, and Victoria Clarke. 2006. “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative
Research in Psychology 3 (2): 77–101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp63oa.
Browning, Lynette, Kirrilly Thompson, and Drew Dawson. 2017. “From Early Career Researcher to
Research Leader: survival of the Fittest?” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 39(4): 361–377. doi:10.1080/1360080X.2017.1330814.
Connell, Raewyn. 2019. The Good University: What Universities Actually Do and Why its Time for
Radical Change. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Department of Education and Training. 2020. “Higher Education Statistics, Award Course
Completions For All Students by Level of Course 2001 to 2019” Accessed January 8 2021. http://
highereducationstatistics.education.gov.au/Default.aspx
Dobele, Angela R., Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, and Foula Kopanidis. 2014. “The Cracked Glass Ceiling:
Equal Work but Unequal Status.” Higher Education Research & Development 33 (3): 456–468.
doi:10.1080/07294360.2013.841654.
Dufty-Jones, Rae. 2017. “The Career Aspirations and Expectations of Geography Doctoral Students:
Establishing Academic Subjectivities within a Shifting Landscape.” Geographical Research 56 (2):
126–138. doi:10.1111/1745-5871.12270.
Earl, Catherine, Philip Taylor, and Fabian Cannizzo. 2018. “Regardless of Age’: Australian University
Managers’ Attitudes and Practices towards Older Academics.” Work, Aging and Retirement 4 (3):300–313. doi:10.1093/workar/wax024.
Evans, Michael. 2021. “National Week of Action for Secure Jobs and Safe Workloads.” Advocate 28(3): 15–18.
Foucault, M. 1972. The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. Translated by A.
M. Sheridan-Smith. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. 1978. The history of sexuality. Volume 1. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York:
Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. “Truth and Power.” In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings, 1972–1977, edited by Colin Gordon, 109–133. New York: Pantheon Books
Foucault, Michel. 2012/2014. On the Government of the Living: Lectures at the Collège de France
1979-1980. Translated by Graham Burchell, edited by Michael Sellenart. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Gill, Rosalind. 2016. “Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of Neo-Liberal Academia.”
Feministische Studien 34 (1): 39–55. doi:10.1515/fs-2016-0105.
Group of Eight. 2010. “Future demand for Higher Education in Australia” Accessed January 8, 2021.
https://go8.edu.au/oldcontent/sites/default/files/docs/backgrounder-future-demand-for-higher-education-in-australia.pdf
Heffernan, Troy. 2021. “Academic Networks and Career Trajectory: ‘There’s No Career in Academia
without Networks.” Higher Education Research & Development 40 (5): 981–994. doi:10.1080/072
94360.2020.1799948.
Herman, Nicoline, Maria Jose, Misiwe Katiya, Merlisa Kemp, Natalie le Roux, Claudia Swart-Jansen
van Vuuren, and Charmaine van der Merwe. 2020. “Entering the World of Academia is like
Starting a New Life’: A Trio of Reflections from Health Professionals Joining Academia as Second
Career Academics.” International Journal for Academic Development 25 (4): 1–13.
Hugo, Graeme. 2005. “Demographic Trends in Australia’s Academic Workforce.” Journal of Higher
Education Policy and Management 27 (3): 327–343. doi:10.1080/13600800500283627.
Ivancheva, Mariya, Kathleen Lynch, and Kathryn Keating. 2019. “Precarity, Gender and Care in the
Neoliberal Academy.” Gender, Work & Organization 26 (4): 448–462. doi:10.1111/gwao.12350.
Klocker, Natascha, and Danielle Drozdzewski. 2012. “Commentary: Career Progress Relative toOpportunity: How Many Papers is a Baby ‘Worth’?” Environment and Planning A: Economy andSpace 44 (6): 1271–1277. doi:10.1068/a4547.
Marginson, Simon, and Ian Marshman. 2013. “System and Structure.” In The Dawkins Revolution:
25 Years On, edited by Gwilym Croucher, Simon Marginson, Andrew Norton, and Julie Wells,
56–74. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

548

N. SPINA ET AL.

McCarthy, Paul X., and Maaike Wienk. 2019. Who Are the Top PhD Employers? Melbourne: AMSI
and CSIRO.
McKenzie, Lara. 2018. “Invisible Anger: Intergenerational Dependence and Resentment among
Precarious Academics.” In Intergenerational Responsibility in the 21st Century, edited by Julia M.
Puaschunder, 33–54. Malaga: Vernon Press.
Mewburn, Inger, Will J. Grant, Hanna Suominen, and Stephanie Kizimchuk. 2020. “A Machine
Learning Analysis of the Non-Academic Employment Opportunities for PhD Graduates inAustralia.” Higher Education Policy 33 (4): 799–813. doi:10.1057/s41307-018-0098-4.
Moen, Phyllis, and Stephen Sweet. 2004. “From ‘Work–Family’ to ‘Flexible Careers’: A Life Course
Reframing.” Community, Work & Family 7 (2): 209–226. doi:10.1080/1366880042000245489.
Moen, Phyllis, Stephen Sweet, and Raymond Swisher. 2005. “Embedded Career Clocks: The Case of
Retirement Planning.” Advances in Life Course Research 9: 237–265. doi:10.1016/S10402608(04)09009-4.
National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU). Undated. Charter of Casual Academic Rights. http://
www.unicasual.org.au/rights/charter
Parry, Emma, and Jean McCarthy, eds. 2017. The Palgrave Handbook of Age Diversity and Work.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Patton, Wendy, and Catherine Doherty. 2020. “Career, Family, and Workforce Mobility: An
Interdisciplinary Conversation.” Journal of Career Development 47 (3): 296–309. doi:10.1177/
0894845317731157.
Pitt, Rachael, and Inger Mewburn. 2016. “Academic Superheroes? A Critical Analysis of Academic
Job Descriptions.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 38 (1): 88–101. doi:10.1080/
1360080X.2015.1126896.
Ryan, Suzanne, Julia Connell, and John Burgess. 2017. “Casual Academics: A New Public
Management Paradox.” Labour & Industry: A Journal of the Social and Economic Relations ofWork 27 (1): 56–72. doi:10.1080/10301763.2017.1317707.
Smithers, Kathleen, Jess Harris, Mhorag Goff, Nerida Spina, and Simon Bailey. 2021. “EthicalResponsibilities of Tenured Academics Supervising Non-Tenured Researchers in Times of
Neoliberalism and Precarity.” Journal of Educational Adminstration and History 54:1–17.
Smyth, John. 2017. The Toxic University. London: Palgrave McMillan.
Snyder, Benjamin H. 2016. The Disrupted Workplace: Time and the Moral Order of Flexible
Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Spina, Nerida, Jess Harris, Simon Bailey, and Mhorag Goff. 2020. Making It’ as a Contract Researcher:
A Pragramatic Look at Precarious Work. Abingdon: Routledge.
Standing, Guy. 2011. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury.
Strike, Tony, and John Taylor. 2009. “The Career Perceptions of Academic Staff and Human
Resource Discourses in English Higher Education.” Higher Education Quarterly 63 (2): 177–195.
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00404.x.
Thatcher, Arran, Mona Zhang, Hayden Todoroski, Anthony Chau, Joanna Wang, and Gang Liang.
2020. “Predicting the Impact of COVID-19 on Australian Universities.” Journal of Risk and
Financial Management 13 (9): 188–208. doi:10.3390/jrfm13090188.
van Anders, Sari M. 2004. “Why the Academic Pipeline Leaks: Fewer Men than Women Percieve
Barriers to Becoming Professors.” Sex Roles 51 (9–10): 511–521. doi:10.1007/s11199-004-5461-9.
Watermeyer, Richard, Kalpana Shankar, Tom Crick, Cathryn Knight, Fiona McGaughey, Joanna
Hardman, Venkata Ratnadeep Suri, et al. 2021. “Pandemia’: A Reckoning of UK Universities’
Corporate Response to COVID-19 and Its Academic Fallout.” British Journal of Sociology of
Education 42 (5–6): 651–666. doi:10.1080/01425692.2021.1937058.
Wolfinger, Nicholas, Mary-Ann Mason, and Marc Goulden. 2009. “Stay in the Game: Gender,
Family Formation and Alternative Trajectories in the Academic Life-Course.” Social Forces 87 (3):1591–1621. doi:10.1353/sof.0.0182.

British Journal of Sociology of Education

Appendix
Table 1. Research participants listed by age and length of time in research.
Name
AmeliaAmy
AshleyBillieBlakeCharles
Chris
DelilahElaineEmma
Jill
Jordan
Kathy
Laura
Penny
RachelRiley
Sam
SydneyAge (approx)
40s
40s
20s
30s
20s
50s
40s
50s
30s
40s
50s
30s
30s
30s
40s
30s
30s
30s
50s

Country
Australia and New ZealandAustralia and United States
Australia
Australia and United States
Australia
Australia
Australia
Australia
Australia and United States
Australia
Australia
Australia
Australia and United States
Australia
Australia and New ZealandAustralia
Australia
Australia
Australia

Length of time in research
10+
10+
6-10
6-10
0-5
10+
6-10
10+
10+
10+
6-10
0-5
6-10
10+
10+
10+
0-5
6-10
0-5

549