As a member of the Labor Geography research group, I examine the emergence and consequences of the phenomenon of time-related underemployment in the cleaning sector through empirical research.

"I Need More Hours." Experiences of Underemployment in Switzerland’s Cleaning Sector

The aim of this PhD project is to shed light on the phenomenon of time-related underemployment and examine its emergence and consequences in the cleaning sector in Switzerland, in particular in cleaning companies. It examines underemployment in cleaning companies against the background of the continuous flexibilization of labor, that hit the cleaning sector early and hard in the course of neoliberalization: Cleaning has become more and more outsourced, labor time fragmented and the pressure on time and salaries increased. The reason for the particular exposure of the cleaning sector to these processes, according to researchers, is it being a feminized and migrantized sector.

The research project thus aims to take these lines of social differentiation into account in the exploration of the emergence and consequences of underemployment in the cleaning sector. Building on the theoretical approaches of racial capitalism and Black feminist thought, it aims at understanding how lines of social differentiation shape and are shaped through the creation of underemployment.

The empirical part of the project will be based on conducting semi-structured interviews with sector representatives and people in decision-making positions within the companies. However, I am also interested in learning from the experiences of cleaning staff affected by underemployment in order to better understand the phenomenon of underemployment in cleaning companies in Switzerland.