An Ethnodrama on Work-Related Learning in Precarious Jobs

Abstract

This article is based on a research project on the lived experiences of precarious workers in Toronto, Canada. Using interviews with women in part-time, contract, and temporary jobs in three sectors (telemarketing, retail, and garment), the project explores the ways in which racial hierarchies structure jobs as well as forms of resistance that women exercise at work. The authors find that racialized processes stereotype workers and their skill sets, organize their work, determine their access to and exclusion from certain types of jobs, and impose cultural rules that classify and essentialize them in terms of race, language, and ethnicity. In this article, the authors use ethnodrama to represent their findings from this research project. Ethnodrama is a form that is well suited for this work because it allows us to bring the data to life through an embodied performance.