Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this paper, I examine the ways in which poor African-American temporary workers construct their work as meaningful and integrate it into their broader life experiences. Temp work, while unstable and generally low paying, is viewed as a means of gaining access into the formal economy in which they have been historically marginalized. Through temp work, participants not only gain the feeling of being productive members of society, but gain economic resources that they can use to perform other social roles that are important to them, including that of parent and provider. Yet this construction of the meaning of work is built upon lowered expectations of what work can be, and ultimately enmeshes these workers in contradictory sets of social relations that they perceive as an escape from their impoverished living conditions, but ultimately reinforce the racial and socioeconomic inequalities from which these conditions are created.