Stigma and spoiled identities: rescripting career norms for precariously employed academic staff

Abstract

Despite the fact that precarious modes of employment have become increasingly common in academic careers, studies have shown that precarious contracts are often hidden and masked within higher education structures. This has important implications for the identities of those on such contracts. This paper uses Goffman’s work on stigma, ‘spoiled identities’, and identity management, and Archer’s concepts of morphostasis and morphogenesis as heuristic devices to examine the ways in which precariously employed academic staff experience their work and think about their identities. In doing so, the paper maps out the complex relationship between structure, agency, and identity in precarious academic careers and the ways in which participants reproduced embedded career norms and dominant career scripts through the process of masking the stigma of their precarity.