UC Santa Barbara

During the COVID-19 pandemic, college students were abruptly forced into remote work arrangements that altered their work and life demands and impacted their work-life boundaries. Past research on ICT-reliant work and well-being notes that in contrast to the many benefits of ICT-enabled work arrangements, these arrangements can increase feelings of exhaustion when there is a discrepancy between demands and resources. Unlike traditional knowledge workers, college students do not receive the necessary training and infrastructural resources to balance their work-life boundaries. Additionally, underrepresented student populations are at an even greater disadvantage. As such, this study takes an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach to examining the effects of boundary permeability, boundary flexibility, and work-life conflict on work-engagement and exhaustion across a diverse student sample. Convergent findings from both the quantitative and qualitative strand of this research revealed that 1) college students are facing increased boundary permeability, work-life conflict, and exhaustion across all academic identities and 2) college students experience boundary characteristics and work-life conflict differently depending on their academic identities as either underrepresented or traditional students. The present research contributes theoretically to the boundaries and borders literature and research in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ), practically in that it highlights the support needs of various types of students, and methodologically in that it provides further support for the importance of mixed-methods research.