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University of Essex homepage Events The Double Shift
Event

The Double Shift: Side Jobs as a Strategy to Maintain Legitimacy and Purpose Among Independent Musicians

  • Wed 19 Feb 25

    12:00 - 13:00

  • Online

    Zoom

  • Event speaker

    Dr Jérémy Vachet

  • Event type

    Lectures, talks and seminars

  • Event organiser

    Essex Business School

  • Contact details

    Melissa Tyler

While precariousness is widely recognised as a feature of cultural working lives, literature documenting cultural work often portrays side jobs as ‘humdrum’ or ‘bad’, if not a sign of outright failure at making it as an artist.

Based on participant observation and thirty-two interviews of musicians, this article takes a different approach by suggesting that people may resist contingency, dull activities, and compelled entrepreneurialism in music work by partially opting out from a full-time career without quitting their music activities or considering it a failure.

Unveiling different types of side jobs related and unrelated to music, the article presents the struggle and ethical dilemmas resulting from being pulled between a calling for music and economic imperatives. Findings suggest that participants can be better off when resorting to waged labour unrelated to music because it provides relative security that balances out the uncertainty of music activities.

Speaker

Dr Jérémy Vachet received his PhD from the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds (UK) in 2019. His thesis considered how experiences of precariousness and insecurity under conditions of neoliberalism threaten the well-being and self-realisation of aspiring musicians. He is now Associate Professor at the Culture and Communication Department at Audencia Business School Nantes (France), and an associate member of the LabSIC at the Sorbonne Paris North University. Jeremy is also Secretary of the Media Industry Studies Interest Group at the International Communication Association (ICA).

Jeremy’s latest publications include the articles ‘Toward a Sociological Explanation of Anxiety: Precariousness, Class and Gender Among Independent Musicians’, published in The Sociological Review (2024), “Utopia isn’t for Everyone’: Career Inequalities and Adaptations Among Female Independent Musicians’, published in Biens Symboliques/Symbolic Goods (2024), and the book Fantasy, Neoliberalism and Precariousness: Coping Strategies in the Cultural Industries, published by Emerald (2022).

Centre for Work, Organization and Society (CWOS)
Research degrees at Essex Business School
Research from Essex Business School
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