Neither work nor leisure: temporalities and life world realities of split shift work in the Austrian care sector

Abstract

Employment conditions have been subject to far-reaching flexibilization and fragmentation in recent decades. One of the many ways to make labor flexibly available and cost-effective is to divide the working day using split shifts. In this qualitative study on the home care sector in Austria, we investigate the workers’ experiences of split shifts as example of fragmented work and unsocial working times. On an empirical level, the findings show that split shifts imply severe challenges for the workers. On a conceptual level, the research emphasizes the need to consider complex and subjective dimensions of time in researching working times. Our findings suggest that even seemingly clear delineations between work and non-work time are in fact fragile and ambivalent. In that sense, the interruption between the two shifts in split shift work is neither work nor real leisure.