Chapter 16: Ancillary Staff in Higher Education: In/Visibility and Mis/Recognition

Catering, cleaning and security staff (referred to as ancillary staff in this chapter) fulfil an important role in Higher Education (HE). Despite the significance of their contribution, research about this group remains scarce. A notable exception lies in Peter Magolda’s 2016 ethnography of cleaners on two US campuses. This chapter addresses this dearth of research and builds on a research project funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education (SRHE), which involved a literature review, a national survey of UK universities, 20 interviews with ancillary workers and on-campus observations. The literature review the authors conducted highlighted that the research tends to ignore individuals’ perspectives, with Magolda’s study one of a few exceptions. This scarce body of work also points to a range of injustices faced by this group. As a result, researching the experiences of ancillary staff is a matter of social justice, even more so as members of this group are often from minoritised backgrounds.

With the above in mind, the authors reflect on the in/visibility of ancillary staff in academic cultures and their related mis/recognition. In particular, the authors explore how, through scholarly organisational and administrative processes, this group is often rendered invisible in the online and offline spaces of HE, while also commenting on how they often have limited control on their own in/visibility. The authors argue that this in/visibility is linked to classed processes of misrecognition, which position ancillary and other so-called support staff at the margins of academia. Last, the authors ponder on the implications of these findings for ancillary staff themselves and for researchers.