Employment during studies has become a defining feature of student life (Carnevale & Smith, 2018; Mandl & Menz, 2024), yet existing research is largely quantitative and offers limited insight into working students’ lived experiences. As Zhong et al. (2025) note, student employment remains a “black box,” with little known about the types of work students undertake or how earning while learning shapes their identities. Moreover, the work experiences of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds remain underexplored (Moreau & Leathwood, 2006; Hordósy et al., 2018).

This study draws on interviews with 88 low-income students in Israeli HE to explore the experiential and interpretive dimensions of these students’ engagement with work. Our analysis draws on a sensemaking perspective, which conceptualizes meaning-making as an ongoing process through which individuals interpret their experiences and orient their actions (Weick, 1995). Sensemaking involves the interplay between action and retrospective reflection (Weick et al., 2005) and, from a critical perspective, is shaped by broader discourses, power relations, and organizational rules (Mills et al., 2010).

Our study addresses two research questions: (1) How do low-income students experience work and navigate work and studies? (2) How do low-income students construct and understand work?

Four sensemaking narratives emerge from the analysis: The first, ‘work as part of life’, corresponds to the question “Who am I?”,centres on narratives of work as a defining and inseparable part of life, from adolescence to the present. The second, ‘work as motivation and aspiration’, is linked to the question “Why am I here?”, captures students’ motives for enrolment and their future visions after graduation, reflecting broader socio-cultural narratives of HE as a route to social mobility. The third, ‘work as precarious experience’, is related to the question “How do I manage?”, encompasses accounts of precarious work and the ongoing struggle to balance employment with study. The fourth, ‘work as a marker of difference’, is tied to the question “Where am I in comparison to others?”, involves students positioning themselves against higher-income peers who do not have to work, often expressing feelings of difference and alienation.

From these sensemaking narratives, we arrive at two overarching arguments.  The first concerns low-income students’ identities, and the second relates to structural inequalities within HE that emerge when considering students’ employment.

(1) A precarious working student identity:  Work emerged as a formative and identity-shaping dimension in low-income students’ lives. Participants described continuous employment in precarious jobs as natural, unavoidable, and central to their sense of self. Through retrospective sensemaking (Weick, 1995), students constructed work not as supplementary to HE but as constitutive of their student experience and identity. Work also functioned as a key marker of class distinction from other students. Together, these experiences produced a class-shaped identity as precarious working students—a dual identity as workers and learners, marked by financial strain and tensions between work and study. This identity reflects embodied precariousness (Taylor, 2022) within both the labor market and HE, characterized by self-reliance, pragmatism, economic caution, and a strong work ethic, alongside the internalization of neoliberal discourses of individual responsibility and resilience (Moreau & Leathwood, 2006; Webster & Rivers, 2019).

(2) Work as an invisible disadvantage in HE:  Students’ experiences of combining work and study prompted sensemaking about structural inequalities in the academic environment. Low-income students recognized that the necessity of employment undermines their academic success and reproduces disparities between those who must work and those who do not. One student described work as an “invisible spoke in the wheel,” capturing how class operates as a hidden axis of inequality in HE and how term-time employment perpetuates class-based disadvantage and privilege (Duffy, 2007; Walkerdine, 2021).

The present study is part of a broader research project on the experiences of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds in HE, drawing on 88 semi-structured interviews with low-income students either currently enrolled in, or having recently completed, undergraduate degrees. Participants were recruited through student social media groups and snowball sampling, and each received a small gift card as compensation. The sample comprised 88 students (25 men, 63 women) from diverse backgrounds, including Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (7), individuals from ultra-Orthodox (6) and Ethiopian communities (1), and immigrants from the former USSR (11). Among the participants, 58 were first-generation students, 23 had disabilities, and five identified as LGBTQ. The interviews were conducted via Zoom, to allow for flexibility with students’ timetables. Interviews lasted approximately one hour and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. In the interviews, students were invited to discuss their trajectories into HE, experiences during their studies, and anticipated futures. Data analysis followed grounded theory principles (Charmaz, 2006) and proceeded through an iterative coding process, attending to patterns, contradictions, and variations in the data. The theme of work emerged during the initial coding as a central category, which became the focus of the present paper. In the second stage of analysis, coding concentrated on students’ perceptions of and experiences with term-time employment. At this stage, we adopted the sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1995). In the final stage, themes and insights were refined and reinterpreted through the analytical lens of sensemaking, which directed attention to students’ retrospective accounts and processes of identity-related meaning making.

This study contributes to the growing body of research on student employment by addressing two underexplored areas: the experiences of low-income students, for whom academic life is inseparable from the necessity of work, and the ways in which students make sense of their work experiences during their studies. Participants described term-time employment as stressful, unstable, and often physically demanding, reflecting precarious work conditions (Campbell & Price, 2016). Lacking financial safety nets, students reported negative effects on their physical and mental wellbeing, as well as on academic performance, including missed classes, exhaustion, and limited time for coursework (Carnevale & Smith, 2018; Callender, 2008; Curtis & Shani, 2009; Moreau & Leathwood, 2006). Comparisons with peers who did not need to work intensified feelings of frustration, alienation, and non-belonging. These experiences reflect a double bind (Frye, 2019), as students were forced to juggle academic success and financial survival, often at the expense of both. Four sensemaking narratives emerge from the analysis: work as part of life, as motivation and aspiration, as precarious experience, and as a marker of difference. These narratives converge to two overarching themes: the class-shaped identity of “precarious working students”, in which precarity extends across both the labour market and higher education, and the structural inequalities within higher education revealed when work during studies is taken into account. These findings carry implications for HE institutions and policies, which should recognize that term-time employment is not a peripheral issue but a structural reality for many low-income students. Expanding need-based grants would lessen the reliance on extensive paid work. Moreover, increasing flexibility in timetabling and course delivery options could help to alleviate the disadvantages experienced by students with substantial work commitments.

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