Contingent Employment, Workforce Health, and Citizenship By Marc ...

the part of their employers. Rogers (1995) explored the ways in which the social organisation of temporary work empowered or constrained workers and the ways in which gender was embedded in temporary work (e.g., women’s marginal labour force position).

The concept of liminality in relation to contingent work is also relevant to its conceptualisation as disadvantage. Garsten (1999) used the concept in a metaphorical sense to convey the ambiguous and marginalised position of contingent workers. She described their position as ‘a particular kind of being betwixt and between social structures’ (p. 601). Contingent workers share the interstructural and ambiguous characteristics of liminality¹³ because they lack the structural bonds of full-time employment but are still drawn into circles of loyalty, and because they occupy a position that is between permanent employment and unemployment. This liminal position implies disadvantage because it increases control and self-monitoring. For instance, despite their marginalised position in the workplace, temporary workers often engage with their work such that their day-to-day work experiences are indistinguishable from those of permanent workers.

Disadvantage is also implied in discussions of employment status, which is simply the designation of a worker as either temporary or permanent and full-time. Employment status is a key determinant of rights, protections, and entitlements. It also defines the nature of the social relations of work, particularly in terms of control or power. For full-time workers, for example, the framework of the standard employment relationship predetermines protections and entitlements (Tassie, 1997). For workers who do not have these social and legislative protections, access to these benefits are in many cases dependent on the benevolence of employers or on workers’ capacity to negotiate