Thinking Allowed: BBC in conversation with Prof .Dr. Jana Costas

What makes work feel meaningful? And how do factors like status and prestige shape this sense of meaning? These questions, among others, are explored in the latest episode of the BBC podcast Thinking Allowed. Featured in this episode is Prof. Dr. Jana Costas, organizational scholar at the Chair of Human Resources, Work, and Management at the European University Viadrina. In the episode, she shares insights from her research on cleaning staff at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, focusing on their daily quest for recognition, dignity, and visibility. For this study, Costas herself traded her notebook for a mop.

“The cleaners felt dignity and pride because they do things others wouldn’t—cleaning up messes that others find repulsive,” Costas explains. “They also find ways to carve out their own space at work, away from the eyes of supervisors. Just having a job, in an environment where employment is far from guaranteed, also contributes to their sense of pride,” she adds. Yet because the place, time, and tasks of cleaning work are often hidden or de-emphasized, Costas describes these workers’ experiences as “dramas of dignity.”

Costas’ ethnographic study, Dramas of Dignity: Cleaners in the Corporate Underworld of Berlin, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. The German edition, Im Minus-Bereich: Reinigungskräfte und ihr Kampf um Würde, followed in 2023 through Suhrkamp Verlag.

Learn more in the Thinking Allowed episode “Meaningful Work.”