Being in Work

In this paper, we carve out “being in work” as people’s desire and effort to habituate themselves in experiences of work. We do so from the unusual angle of two disabled persons, Bibek and Neema, who struggle for work in Nepal and Tanzania. Drawing on disability anthropology and the anthropology of work, we show how our interlocutors circumstantially emphasize different ways to be in work and engage in activities that broaden the horizons of what counts as proper work. These efforts are interrupted by the closure of projects, declining health, environmental disasters, accidents, economic crises, and the effects of a pandemic. What concerns us here is how Neema and Bibek maintain a place in work across these circumstances by exploiting the malleability of different features of work, such as activities, compensations, place and time, skill sets, equipment, or work-related ethos. Our insights redirect focus from structures of exclusion and the negative appeal of “precarious labor” toward exploring people’s ongoing efforts to belong and feel normal through work. In the Global South (and elsewhere), finding decent work is equally desired by nondisabled populations, which renders disability a privileged position from which to explore matters of occupational existence and circumstantial disablement.