Precarious Employment and Stress: The Biomedical Embodiment of Social Factors. PRESSED Project Study Protocol

Abstract

The PRESSED project aims to explain the links between a multidimensional measure of precarious employment and stress and health. Studies on social epidemiology have found a clear positive association between precarious employment and health, but the pathways and mechanisms to explain such a relationship are not well-understood. This project aims to fill this gap from an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating the social and biomedical standpoints to comprehensively address the complex web of consequences of precarious employment and its effects on workers' stress, health and well-being, including health inequalities. The project objectives are: (1) to analyze the association between multidimensional precarious employment and chronic stress among salaried workers in Barcelona, measured both subjectively and using biological indicators; (2) to improve our understanding of the pathways and mechanisms linking precarious employment with stress, health and well-being; and (3) to analyze health inequalities by gender, social class and place of origin for the first two objectives. The study follows a sequential mixed design. First, secondary data from the 2017 Survey on Workers and the Unemployed of Barcelona is analyzed (N = 1,264), yielding a social map of precarious employment in Barcelona that allows the contextualization of the scope and characteristics of this phenomenon. Drawing on these results, a second survey on a smaller sample (N = 255) on precarious employment, social precariousness and stress is envisaged. This study population is also asked to provide a hair sample to have their levels of cortisol and its related components, biomarkers of chronic stress, analyzed. Third, a sub-sample of the latter survey (n = 25) is selected to perform qualitative semi-structured interviews. This allows going into greater depth into how and why the experience of uncertainty, the precarization of living conditions, and the degradation of working conditions go hand-in-hand with precarious employment and have an impact on stress, as well as to explore the potential role of social support networks in mitigating these effects.

Association between informal employment and depressive symptoms in 11 cities in Latin America

“…Similarly, we found that the association between informal employment and prevalence of depressive symptoms was significant overall. There are several plausible mechanisms through which informal employment may lead to poor mental health ( Bolibar et al, 2021 ). Drawing on research on precarious employment and health from Europe (which has many shared characteristics as informal employment), prior studies suggest that material deprivation (i.e., insufficient wages) ( Benach et al, 2007 ), perceived job insecurity ( Ferrie et al, 2002 ; Witte, 1999 ) and the temporariness of employment ( Bartoll et al, 2019 ; Virtanen et al, 2005 ) are associated with adverse mental health outcomes.…”

“…Other pathways may include psychosocial stress, in part related to effort-reward-imbalance (e.g., high effort jobs with insufficient wages) ( de Araújo et al, 2019 ; Siegrist & Marmot, 2004 ) that may exacerbate mental health disorders. Additionally, lower-quality employment could erode social support networks, which could act as a buffer to stressful events ( Bolibar et al, 2021 ). Although these speculative mechanisms are plausible, we acknowledge that there are differences between LAC and European countries in terms of cultural norms, level of economic development, and social protections that may make the mechanistic framework for LAC slightly different from the Europe-derived mechanism.…”

“…Moreover, the work environment for men and women are systematically different across and within occupations in terms of the labor distribution and job tasks. Additionally, inequality in gender and socioeconomic status could result in the uneven distribution of social support and subsequently health ( Bolibar et al, 2021 ).…”

Precarious Employment and Chronic Stress: Do Social Support Networks Matter?

“…This is a cross-sectional study corresponding to the second phase of a three-phase sequential mixed research design oriented to identify the pathways and mechanisms explaining the well-established relationship between precarious employment and health [23]. In the previous phase, secondary analysis of the Survey on Workers and the Unemployed of Barcelona (EPYPB, 2017-2018) was used to map the sociogeographical distribution of precarious employment in the city of Barcelona.…”

“…More generally, precarious jobs may limit workers' control over their professional and personal lives, leading to experiences of job insecurity, feelings of betrayal and injustice, feelings of powerlessness and being out of control, a lack of future opportunities, or a lack of professional identity [19][20][21][22]. As for precarious employment, there is a suspicion that its relation to health outcomes may be affected by a deleterious impact on the social support networks [23]. Individuals in a more precarious situation tend to have smaller and less diverse networks [24] and, given the tendency to socialize with people from similar socio-economic situations [25], the networks of those in a precarious situation also tend to be less capable of providing resources.…”