Enacting Remote Working in an Era of (Un)certainty: Care of Personal and Professional Self

Abstract

This research explores the experiences of US based professional workers engaged in enforced remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a Critical Ethnographic methodology (Clair, 2003; Denzin & Lincoln, 2018; Given, 2008) underpinned by Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022; Byrne, 2022), it examines how employees in a large, US multinational company called OmniSat navigated the shifting boundaries between home and work life from March to September 2021. Data was collected through virtual semistructured interviews and digital instant chat messages, allowing opportunity for insights into key themes such as corporate expectations, self-care, self-perception, and certainty/uncertainty. Reflexive practice (Bazeley, 2007; Behar, 1997; Denzin & Lincoln, 2018) was concurrently engaged with throughout the entire research process, with researcher reflexive commentaries embedded in each chapter. The theoretical framework used draws from Foucault’s (1997; 1984; 1982; 1979) post-structuralist theory and Ball’s (2003; Ball & Olmedo, 2012) neoliberal performativity to explore how workers self-regulate under a corporate gaze, balancing autonomy with pressures to perform. The findings suggest that remote working reshaped the concept of the professional ‘self’, highlighting both opportunities for greater flexibility and autonomy and challenges such as isolation and the reallocation of domestic space for work. These experiences reflect broader uncertainties in a neoliberal employment landscape. This research contributes to an understanding of how professional and personal ‘self’ is continuously redefined in response to changing work practices, offering a critical perspective on the dynamics of power, performativity, and resistance in contemporary work environments.