Underemployed but overworked: reframing the paradox of underemployment through the lens of racial capitalism

Abstract

This article reframes time-related underemployment through the lens of racial capitalism. This lens enables an understanding of underemployment as more than an effect of neoliberalisation, but as a consequence of othering processes intrinsic to capitalism that render specific communities exploitable. To illustrate our conceptual argument, we draw on in-person interviews with underemployed workers in the commercial cleaning sector in Switzerland. Based on this data, we explore the paradoxical concurrence of these workers as simultaneously underemployed and overworked.

Keywords: Cleaning ; Part-time work ; Precarious labour ; Racial capitalism ; Underemployment