The anxious lives of academics on temporary contracts

There is a widespread impression that academics as a whole lead a carefree life, studying, writing and teaching about their favourite subjects, being well-paid intellectuals that remain unaffected by insecurities that plague the working class. But the reality is very different.

Academic work is increasingly devalued, the pressure is mounting, and working hours are being lengthened to the extent that they overwhelm personal life itself, swallowing up weekends and holidays. The most important problem, however, is faced by academics who do not have tenured positions. They teach a few hours at this university, a few hours at that university, one or two years in this research programme, two or three years in that programme. Their whole life is a relentless process of writing and submitting applications and waiting for the results, unable to plan anything outside this cycle.

Academics employed on temporary terms are trapped in insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, shame, low self-esteem. In this article, I wish to touch on something that is usually, not accidentally, left in the shadows: the psychology of these workers.

Working conditions organise the emotional and mental world accordingly. There is a double difficulty in talking about this subjective aspect. Like a double entrapment. Academics with temporary contracts are used to not talking about objective working conditions. But even more so, they are used to keeping the subjective conditions even more hidden in the dark, not daring to consider them noteworthy for discussion so as to reflect on them.

Thus, workers not only live in a state of anxiety, fear and shame, but also live in a constant denial and repression of these feelings, because these emotions must remain private at all costs, under no circumstances becoming public. If the objective working conditions are stigmatized, the subjective ones, especially the emotional ones, are doubly stigmatized. And in the few cases where the subjective aspect comes to the fore, it comes as detached from the objective conditions, as a problematic psychological situation, thus disconnecting the subjective feelings from any work demands and conditions, and driving the individual... to Xanax. But the employees' feelings are already coupled to the work environment, and reveal it vividly.

Academics in temporary positions find it difficult to talk about their scholarly work, their research and their teaching, in pure labour terms. There is a psychological difficulty in seeing their work as work, and thus seeing themselves as a worker. There are certain emotions that prevent them from doing this. For example, feelings of shame and guilt. Having a PhD comes with some recognition in society and some "status". However, this does not correspond to their working conditions, and this discrepancy produces feelings of shame and guilt. Shame and guilt are caused because the employee experiences his/her circumstances as a personal failure, and feels that he/she is responsible for this failure, as if it is a result of personal inadequacies. This shakes self-confidence and affects clarity.

Apart from guilt and shame, anxiety and fear are also dominant emotions in the lives of academics with temporary positions. Anxiety about having a job post at the university next semester. Anxiety about whether he/she will make the deadlines for funding applications that are relentless. If she doesn't make it, and if she doesn't succeed, she will be unemployed. But also fear. Fear in front of an evaluation committee on which much depends. Fear of registering with the guild, or fear after registering of becoming openly active, that it will have a negative impact should a permanent position open up in the department.

Fear and anxiety, among other things, kill any possibility of parrhesia, as well as the possibility of autonomous research. The result? Filling universities with docile faculty and researchers.

Dr Christos Hadjioannou

President of The Union of Doctoral Scientists Teaching and Research (DEDE)
[The article was published in the Cypriot newspaper Dialogue, in a special report on adjunct academic work, on Labour Day 2022]