Economic Insecurity, Work, and Mental Health among Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Men: A Critical Narrative Inquiry into Precarious Work
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Precarious employment has proliferated across Western capitalist economies and is associated with economic insecurity and poorer health. This dissertation investigated precarious employment among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people through an exploration of what is known (scoping review) and what more can be learned from precariously employed LGBTQ+ workers (narrative inquiry).A scoping review guided by an intersectional framework found that LGBTQ+ people were overrepresented in precarious forms of work, including underemployment and part-time work. Additionally, they experienced hostility and discrimination when looking for employment and in the workplace that contributed to increased labour market precarity. A community-engaged narrative inquiry was then conducted among 20 gay, bisexual, and queer men experiencing precarious employment in Toronto, Canada. Guided by political economy frameworks, Polkinghorne’s narrative analysis was used with attention to plotlines, characters, settings, and temporality within and across participants’ stories. A new story was constructed that provides rich insights into lived experiences and the meanings of these experiences among participants, as well as the structural conditions that shape these experiences and meanings. Two analyses were conducted using this method. The first analysis explored labour market experiences and identified the mechanisms that led participants into precarious employment and economic insecurity. Cisheteronormativity, alongside racism, xenophobia, and ableism, shaped participants’ experiences from adolescence to adulthood through LGBTQ+-adversity in adolescence, overt and perceived discriminatory practices in hiring, and harassment and discrimination on the job. Participants’ stories illustrate unique ways that LGBTQ+ people might be particularly susceptible to exploitative labour markets. The second analysis explored the relationship between precarious employment and mental health. Results illustrate a cyclical pattern whereby participant’s adverse adolescent experiences associated with LGBTQ+-related discrimination negatively impacted their mental health, which in turn shaped their employment trajectory. Upon entering the labour market, precarious employment was exacerbated by mental health challenges and, subsequently, precarity exacerbated these challenges. This dissertation addresses the dearth of scholarship in three primary areas: occupational health among LGBTQ+ populations, LGBTQ+ poverty, and LGBTQ+ employment. Implications inform labour market policies and social service and public health practice when supporting LGBTQ+ people experiencing mental health concerns, economic insecurity, and employment challenges.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.017 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".