Staying in Bad Jobs: An “Institutional Peg” as Poland’s Adaptation to Precarious Markets

Abstract

Why and how do workers stay in bad jobs? Based on 972 questionnaires and longitudinal data from 45 interviews, the article finds substantial support for the labor of love and the psychic income theories and no support for the miscalculated risk and commitment device theories. It documents personal strategies (overworking and childlessness) and institution-related strategies (diploma-hoarding and institutional pegs—a term introduced in this article). The article argues that the existing dichotomy of market-driven art and the state-subsidy-driven art could be enriched by the third model epitomized by Poland—a country with neither the art market comparable to that of the United States or the United Kingdom nor a state spending on art comparable to that of France or the Netherlands—where free higher education is used as a fallback option in the context of scarce resources.