ABSTRACT

Contexts create affordances for non-permanent workers in their journey of learning to be and to become. Identifying contexts in non-permanent work is challenging because boundaries are far more fluid than in permanent work. Due to their contractual arrangement, non-permanent workers traverse multiple work environments, social contexts and geographical boundaries on a regular basis, and engage in multiple communities and practices. In navigating this wide terrain of non-permanent work, significant meaning-making is required of non-permanent workers as they learn to be and become a practitioner. The ubiquity of contexts in non-permanent work entailing significant meaning-making by non-permanent workers in their journey of being and becoming raises important questions in terms of how contexts can be meaningfully conceptualised in non-permanent work. Non-permanent work in traditionally low-wage occupations such as food and beverage, despatch rider and removalists are in fact seen as paying better and offering less rigid conditions than in permanent work.