Photo: Louisa Michael/Facebook
A Kenyan student living in the United Kingdom has described the realities of survival jobs abroad, highlighting the unstable but flexible nature of agency work and the challenges many international students face in the labour market.
Louisa Michael, who relocated to the UK for studies, says she has remained in continuous employment since arriving, but has worked across multiple sectors due to the nature of student job opportunities and restricted working hours.
She explained that she secured her first job within two weeks of arrival and has never since experienced unemployment.
However, she noted that most student roles are concentrated in a few sectors such as healthcare assistance, warehouses, and retail, leaving limited room for career-specific employment.
According to her, students who avoid these common roles often end up frequently changing jobs, as companies are generally reluctant to hire individuals who can only work part-time hours.
“Don’t get me wrong, a few people who come in as students are able to get customer service jobs, but it’s limited because not a lot of companies want to employ you for just 20 hours,” she said.
To navigate this limitation, she joined a staffing agency that allowed her to take up short-term shifts across different workplaces. This included roles in hospitality, retail, and logistics, depending on demand.
She described working as a bartender, waiter, wine server, stock taker, retail assistant, and in catering assignments, often switching roles within the same week.
The flexibility, she said, came with variety but also a lack of routine. “Some days I was working in hospitality, other days I was in retail or doing stock replenishment. It was always changing,” she explained.
One of the most unusual assignments she took was a traffic warden-style role during a temporary event job. She described it as well-paying but physically and mentally draining due to inactivity for long hours.
The job required workers to direct vehicles in a parking area, monitor spaces, and ensure proper parking during what was expected to be a busy event. However, turnout was lower than anticipated, leaving only a few workers on shift.
“We were just two people on an 11-hour shift. After a couple of hours, everything went quiet and there were no cars coming in,” she said.
She recalled that the job provided no seating, forcing workers to remain on their feet throughout the shift while moving around an almost empty parking area. Despite the low workload, leaving the site was not permitted.
“You can’t sit, you can’t lean on cars, you’re just walking back and forth doing nothing,” she said.
Although the job paid significantly above the minimum wage at the time, she said the experience was uncomfortable and unsustainable. She estimates earning about £160 for the shift, but still felt the work was not worth the conditions.
She said the lack of activity affected her physically, leading her to fall ill after the first day and again after attempting a second shift, after which she cancelled the remaining days.
“I hated that shift because I was idle. The money was good, but it didn’t feel worth it,” she said, adding that prolonged inactivity made the job harder than physically demanding roles.
In contrast, she said she preferred busy environments such as kitchen work, where constant activity made shifts feel shorter and more structured.
Despite the challenges, she described agency work as beneficial for building experience across multiple sectors while allowing her to choose shifts based on availability and preference.
For her, the flexibility outweighed the instability, offering both income and exposure to different working environments.
“The best part was the experience and the freedom to choose when and where to work,” she said, adding that the arrangement ultimately made her life more manageable as a student abroad.