‘It’s My Passion and Not Really Like Work’: Balancing Precarity with the Work–Life of a Volunteer Team Leader in the Conservation Sector

Abstract

Working with volunteers is a challenging occupation, especially in an environment of increasingly precarious casualisation. Although this trend is evident in other types of work, workers’ engagement with the purpose and mission of volunteerism can particularly emphasise blurred boundaries between the work and non-work spheres, potentially confusing employee identities. Emerging from an ongoing ethnographic study, this account draws on Sally’s precarious experiences as a leader of volunteers in the conservation sector. She reflects on the joys and challenges of leading volunteers in a messy environment of paradoxically interacting overwork and underwork, while highlighting issues of precarity and balance within and beyond her role as employee.