‘Constellations of embeddedness’: theorising earning while learning (EwL) in school, further and higher education

Student employment ('Earning while Learning (EwL)) is commonplace in the UK and globally.Previous research has typically focused only on higher education, conceiving of students as abstract economic actors.Drawing on focus group data with 83 women students in school, further and higher education in England, the article offers a retheorisation of EwL through the novel concept of 'Constellations of Embeddedness'.The article makes several critical interventions.First, by disaggregating different educational levels, we complicate homogenising ideas about EwL and the student worker.Second, by synthesising theories from economic sociology and personal life, we propose a novel theorisation of the ways in which multilevel structures (education, the law, labour market) intersect dynamically and co-constitutively with the personal to shape practices and understandings across time.As a processual concept Constellations of Embeddedness offers a dynamic theory of structure and agency which can reveal change over time and space.