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Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism Dynamics of Contention and Their Consequences Lorenzo Cini Full Chapter PDF Scribd
Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism Dynamics of Contention and Their Consequences Lorenzo Cini Full Chapter PDF Scribd
Student Movements in
Late Neoliberalism
Dynamics of Contention and Their
Consequences
Edited by
Lorenzo Cini · Donatella della Porta
César Guzmán-Concha
Social Movements and Transformation
Series Editor
Berch Berberoglu, Sociology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA
This series tackles one of the central issues of our time: the rise of large-
scale social movements and the transformation of society over the last
thirty years. As global capitalism continues to affect broader segments of
the world’s population workers, peasants, the self-employed, the unem-
ployed, the poor, indigenous peoples, women, and minority ethnic groups
there is a growing mass movement by the affected populations to address
the inequities engendered by the globalization process. These popular
mass movements across the globe (such as labor, civil rights, women’s,
environmental, indigenous, and anti-corporate globalization movements)
have come to form a viable and decisive force to address the consequences
of the operations of the transnational corporations and the global capitalist
system. The study of these social movements their nature, social base,
ideology, and strategy and tactics of mass struggle is of paramount impor-
tance if we are to understand the nature of the forces that are struggling
to bring about change in the global economy, polity, and social struc-
ture. This series aims to explore emerging movements and develop viable
explanations for the kind of social transformations that are yet to come.
Student Movements
in Late Neoliberalism
Dynamics of Contention and Their Consequences
Editors
Lorenzo Cini Donatella della Porta
Faculty of Political Faculty of Political
and Social Sciences and Social Sciences
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Florence, Italy Florence, Italy
César Guzmán-Concha
Institute of Citizenship Studies
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To the people who struggle for a free education for all
Acknowledgments
The idea to write this book came during the preparation of the conference
on “The Contentious Politics of Higher Education. Student Movements
in Late Neoliberalism”, that we organized at the Center on Social Move-
ment Studies (Cosmos), Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), at Palazzo
Strozzi in Florence on November 16 and 17, 2017. The event was
part of a research project on the contentious politics of higher educa-
tion, financed with internal funds by SNS. While our research focused on
Chile, England, Italy, and Quebec, in the conference we were interested
in expanding the reflection on other recent episodes of massive student
protests in countries in Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
From the theoretical point of view, our aim was to bridge the fields
of social movement studies with the research on the politics of higher
education. For sure, all those protests address the neoliberal transforma-
tions of the system of higher education, enacted by governments of all
political leanings, promoting the outsourcing of personnel, the manage-
rialization of governing bodies, the introduction of tuition fees as well
as cuts to public funding. The outburst of the economic crisis in 2008
has represented a decisive watershed in this process of marketization: as
many governments across the world have adopted the neoliberal and pro-
austerity agenda as a way out of the crisis. These measures accelerated
the implementation of neoliberal reforms in countries where they previ-
ously did not exist. Although differences between countries continue to
be pronounced, national higher education systems are becoming more
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix
x CONTENTS
Index 293
Notes on Contributors
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Studies. Her first book The Zapatista Movement and Mexico’s Demo-
cratic Transition was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. Other
works have been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Journal
of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Latin American Politics
and Society, and Mobilization.
Thierry M. Luescher is a Research Director for post-schooling in the
Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and associate professor of
higher education affiliated to the University of the Free State (UFS) in
South Africa. He has a Ph.D. in Political Studies from the University of
Cape Town (UCT), a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Studies
from the UFS, and a B.A. in Politics, History, and African Languages from
UCT. Thierry has a passion for researching, teaching, and publishing on
the politics and policies of higher education, student politics, and student
affairs and their relationship to social justice and their relationship to
social justice and their relationship to social justice. His recent publica-
tions include Student Politics in Africa: Representation and Activism (with
M. Klemenčič and J. O. Jowi; African Minds, 2016) and Reflections of
South African Student Leaders, 1994 to 2017 (with D. Webbstock and N.
Bhengu; African Minds, 2020).
Nkululeko Makhubu is a Master’s Research Intern at the Human
Sciences Research Council, Inclusive Development and Education
program. He is also an M.Com. Information Systems student at the
University of Cape Town. His current research on Information and
Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) is a case study
on the #FeesMustFall student movement to describe the “soft power”
influence that Twitter had on the movement online and offline in South
Africa’s higher education climate. He curated the social media accounts
from the University of the Western Cape during #FMF in 2015 and 2016.
Seipati Mokhema studies toward a master’s degree in Sociology
at North-West University (NWU) Mafikeng campus and works as a
Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in the
Inclusive Economic Development Division. She attained a B.Soc.Sc. in
Development Studies and B.Soc.Sc. (Hons) in Sociology and completed
two exchange programs during the first year of her master’s degree, as a
DAAD and Erasmus Plus fellow, respectively, in Germany at Justus-Liebig
Universität, Giessen. Her interests lie in projects that contribute to the
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
xvii
xviii LIST OF FIGURES
xxi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Since 2008, the world has witnessed an unprecedented global wave of
student mobilizations. Episodes of massive social unrest in which students
have played leading roles have occurred in several regions: Quebec, Chile,
Hong Kong, South Africa, England, and Italy to cite just a few exam-
ples. This phenomenon can be observed in both advanced and developing
economies. Students have mobilized around a variety of issues, ranging
offered to their people. The origins of the welfare state are closely related
to the expansion of mass education and the increase in minimum levels
of compulsory instruction. From a historical perspective, the granting of
access to higher education to the lower classes (through the so-called
massification of HE) was the culmination of a process by which many
states recognized university education as a social right. Indeed, by the
1960s, most industrial economies had granted free access to university
to their citizens (Garritzmann, 2016). Moreover, student protests in
the 1960s and 1970s addressed some contradictions of mass university
enrolment, calling for more public resources to be invested in order to
implement a “right to study” as well as more critical thinking and teaching
(Guzman-Concha & Cini, forthcoming).
At the beginning of the 1980s, the rise of the neoliberal conception of
the relationship between the state and the market also had a significant
impact on the educational system, challenging the idea of free univer-
sity education. The assumption was that as higher education substantially
increases the future economic returns of students, it follows that the
state can legitimately withdraw from the area and charge the families or
direct beneficiaries. Drawing on the assumption of a higher efficiency of
the private sector in comparison with the public sector, the new higher
education approach has promoted the discipline of the marketplace, the
power of the consumer, and the engine of the competition (McGet-
tingan, 2013). In fact, in the neoliberal conception, universities are in
competition with each other for tuition fees, research funding, and private
endowments.
The neoliberal model brought about changes in the following areas:
(a) the commodification of services, with the introduction of tuition
fees and loans, or the abrupt increase in their rates, (b) privatization,
with an opening up to new, profit-oriented, providers of educational
certificates, (c) managerialization, with mechanisms of competition and
funding allocation conditional on the performance of externally defined
criteria and the introduction of cost–benefit and efficiency principles; (d)
the marketization of curricula; (e) the precarizationof labor relations. In
fact, common trends in the reform of HE started from an increase in
commodification, “with the search for private investment and increasing
tuition fees” (Klemenčič, 2014, 398). As Smelzer and Hearn (2015, 353)
noted, as public funds are drastically reduced, “universities are increas-
ingly operating like businesses and are perpetually in search of monies via
increased tuition fees and private investments.” In order to do this, they
6 L. CINI ET AL.
It must be said that university policies are, however, still very differ-
entiated, with high cross-national divergences (Brooks, 2016). Drawing
on the notion of commodification and the making of modern markets
(Polanyi, 1944 [2001]) applied to the higher education sector (Agasisti
and Catalano, 2006; Willemse & de Beer, 2012), two broad ideal types
can be identified: “state-dependent” and “market-dependent” university
systems (see Table 1.1, from della Porta, Cini & Guzman-Concha, 2020:
13).
While these trends toward a neoliberal model have affected all univer-
sity systems, the degree of de-commodification—defined as “the extent to
which commodities are not exclusively exchanged on market principles”
(Willemse & de Beer, 2012, 107)—varies across countries, being lower in
liberal welfare regimes and higher in universal welfare regimes. In liberal,
market-oriented models, “HE institutions (like real companies) set their
own prices for their teaching and research services without public inter-
vention.” In welfare regimes, on the other hand, “the state finances and
centrally controls education production, and regulates university activities
by determining the prices (tuition) and admission to academic courses”
(Agasisti & Catalano, 2006, 248).
How the general trends and varieties in the models of HE impact on
student politics is one of the central questions addressed in this volume.
One of the main consequences of the paradigm shift in the concept of
the university system is the growth in distributional conflicts, currently
taking place in the field of higher education. Policy changes in student
funding, including tuition fees, loans, and the myriad of student aid
programs (ranging from dormitories, meals, and other services) have
direct effects on the disposable income of households and the students
8 L. CINI ET AL.
themselves. It is especially where this shift has been more extreme, that
commodification has represented a significant trigger for student unrest
(e.g., Chile, England, South Africa). More broadly, the announcement
of reforms justified by ideologies of the rationalization of public services
or carried out in the context of broader austerity measures usually leads
to protests in which students often join ranks with public-sector unions.
Protests organized by student unions in Germany and the United States in
recent years have shown that even in the context of advanced economies
and consolidated democracies, students play important roles as carriers
of broader political discontent with governmental policies. Therefore,
economic issues are still central to the dynamics of claim-making and
protests by college students and young people more broadly, which would
seem to contradict the picture provided by the “new social movement”
theories of the 1970s and 1980s (Cini et al., 2017).
However, the economy is clearly not the only source of discontent,
nor is it the only mobilizing trigger. Students have also engaged in
national politics because of the polarizing effect of military coups or
authoritarian turns, as can be seen in the case of recent waves of campus
unrest in Turkey or Hungary, or in the wake of deep-rooted claims for
national sovereignty as in Catalonia of Hong Kong (Macfarlane, 2017),
demanding or resisting changes in the curricula and freedom in teaching
and learning. Furthermore, demands for greater inclusion have prolifer-
ated in campuses in recent years. This can be seen, for example, in the
involvement of students in broader social movements, such as Black Lives
Matter or the Ni una menos movements and more broadly, in antiracist,
pro-gender equality and minorities rights campaigns. The Rhodes Must
Fall student campaign in South Africa, aimed at freeing South African
universities from their colonial legacies (Cini, 2019b), soon resonated in
England and the US, where local campaigns to remove the statues of colo-
nizers or slavers from campuses quickly emerged (Luescher & Klemencis,
2017). The connections between these campaigns and the protests of
black communities in the US, in the context of the killing of George
Floyd by police officers, are apparent in both movements, with protesters
targeting statues of controversial historical figures linked to racism and
oppression. Undoubtedly, struggles for recognition have been significant
in the history of contemporary universities. Women and ethnic minori-
ties have long demanded that their historical exclusion from campuses
be redressed, in a mobilization in which cultural and economic aspects
intertwine. These conflicts can also be observed within the academic
1 STUDENT MOVEMENTS IN LATE NEOLIBERALISM 9
social time necessary to articulate the protest and, at the same time, to
break with the faculty daily routine and visualize the conflict inside the
institution” (Fernandez, 2014, 207).
While universities have often been considered as dense spaces, with
students endowed with both free time and critical thinking, which facil-
itate mobilization, neoliberal shifts have challenged this availability, by
forcing many students to work in order to pay their fees as well as
pushing them toward conformist thinking (della Porta et al., 2020). This
notwithstanding, students tend to organize themselves along lines that
include ideology, common interests, shared causes, and various sources
of affinities.
In sum, student participation can take the forms of union politics and
movement politics. While the former refers to the institutions of student
(self) government and the ways they relate to universities and the state,
the latter describes the modes and strength of student activism. As has
been argued elsewhere, “exploring the interplay of these activities helps
to better understand and assess the type of power that students exert to
halt or encourage institutional and systemic transformations in HE across
time and space” (Cini, 2020, 1467).
Associated with this is the choice between different organizational
models: from decentralized, campus-centered ones to models that are
centrally and nationally oriented and/or exhibit a nationwide scope of
intervention by claiming, for instance, to represent the entire student
body. In a coordinated field of student politics (della Porta et al., 2020),
student governments (federations, unions, associations) become arenas
in which groups of students, organized along with ideological, political,
or other common features, attempt to represent and/or mobilize the
student body, exerting attraction over a significant portion of activists,
thus shaping the whole field of student politics. In coordinated fields, an
overlap between formal (federations, unions) and informalorganizations
(politico-ideological groups, affinity groups, even branches of political
parties) is noticeable. Activists often participate in both formal and
informal groups simultaneously, as ideological or affinity groups consider
formal organizations as tools and platforms to pursue their agenda. Partic-
ipation in various organizations sometimes amplifies the effect of activism.
Internal elections, congresses, caucuses, and assemblies set the clock of
internal competitions for the control of these bodies. The institutions
of student government—student associations, federations, or unions—are
important as they offer resources and legitimacy that allow the leading
1 STUDENT MOVEMENTS IN LATE NEOLIBERALISM 11
groups within the bodies to implement their agenda. When these insti-
tutions are well established, they can become the vehicles through which
students attempt to influence higher education or university policies, or
even intervene in national politics or transnational campaigns.
On the other hand, however, when no organization can successfully
claim to represent a significant part of the student body, we refer to frag-
mented fields of student politics. In this variation, there are no established
arenas of political competition, no group can voice student demands
in a coherent, structured manner, and national authorities (university
leaders, politicians, governmental actors) can easily disregard students.
In most cases, this scenario depicts the case of locally based networks of
organizations connecting different subnational geographical areas and/or
university campuses, which sometimes can be accompanied by the pres-
ence of a nationwide organization, which has, however, a low degree of
autonomy vis-à-vis state authorities and with secondary roles in protest
activities. Formal and informal organizations do not overlap, as they tend
to work with different agendas and often pursue divergent goals, and
activists must choose one of them to invest their time and efforts into.
The existence of institutions of student government recognized by
the student base provides incentives for coordinated collective action
among affinity or politico-ideological groups. They tend to facilitate the
building of coalitions within the heterogeneous landscape of campuses.
In contrast to this, in fragmented fields of student politics, the weak-
ness or lack of student governments makes it more difficult for coalitions
to emerge from among the variety of groups. If they are legitimized by
their bases, student governments can become a facilitating factor for the
coordination of the various groups that populate university campuses.
Large protest campaigns are more politically successful when competi-
tion among groups (for leadership, internal resources, support among the
student base) is suspended and movements can voice a relatively coherent
set of demands (these ideas have been further elaborated on in della Porta
et al., 2020).
Finally, the action repertories and organizational models in the
contested field of HE are linked to the collective identities the student
activists develop that shape their mission in society (or goals). Identities
are formed in the interplay between their own actions and those of their
adversaries, during critical junctures or transformative events. The tradi-
tional sociological interpretation of the student uprisings of the 1960s sees
them as a manifestation of generational conflict (Rootes, 2013) in which
12 L. CINI ET AL.
make strategic decisions. The findings show that the formation of move-
ment leadership and their decision-making capacity can be both adversely
and positively affected by digitally networked activism.
Chapter 7, by Gianni Piazza, is entitled “From the Classrooms to the
Roofs: The 2010 University Researchers’ Movement in Italy,” and focuses
on the 2010 researcher movement in Italy and on its main collective
actor, the Rete29Aprile (April29Network). Along with student move-
ments and precarious researchers, they had a decisive role in the protest
campaign against the Gelmini Bill, a neoliberal and private sector-oriented
university reform. This movement of permanent researchers undoubtedly
represented a novelty for Italian academia, because they chose to mobilize
according to a model of “unconventional movement politics” as opposed
to that of “conventional union politics.” Indeed, most researchers who
took part in the protests opted for setting up an informal, networked
participatory organization based on direct and participatory democracy,
and chose mainly unconventional tactics, which were sometimes disrup-
tive, such as “unavailability for teaching” and “climbing on roofs.”
Despite the approval of the Gelmini Bill and the consequent demobiliza-
tion of movement against it, the researcher protest left its mark and the
R29A continues to play an important monitoring and observation role in
Italian academia.
Chapter 8 sees Francesco Pontarelli address “Worker-Student Unity
Against Outsourcing at the University of Johannesburg: Disrupting the
Neoliberal Paradigm Through Direct Action and Alternative Relations.”
In 2015, #FeesMustFall, the largest student movementsince the end of
the apartheid regime, united with outsourced university workers, in reac-
tion to the neoliberal trajectory of the South African higher education
system. Based on data collected through extended participant observa-
tion and interviews, the author explores the process of solidarity that
emerged between students and workers at the University of Johannesburg
and investigates how their unity in action achieved the partial removal
of outsourced labor relations. The processes of solidarity that emerged,
drawing on the progressive aspects of the historical senso comune, had
the potential to question the whole post-apartheid societal structure,
obliging the state and the university management to make remarkable
concessions in order to disarticulate it. This analysis contributes to the
debate about the limits and potential of student and worker movements
and their capacity to question the status quo and imagine de-colonialized
alternatives.
20 L. CINI ET AL.
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1 STUDENT MOVEMENTS IN LATE NEOLIBERALISM 25
Rattenfalle.
Auch das Thema Dunkelkammer ist wenig erbaulich. Die
deutsche Regierung ist fürsorglich; sie baut, um Hungersnöten unter
den Eingeborenen vorzubeugen, wohl mehr aber noch, um in einem
etwaigen neuen Aufstande von der Landesbevölkerung unabhängig
zu sein, in der Boma von Massassi augenblicklich ein stolzes Haus.
Es ist der einzige Steinbau im ganzen Lande und bis zur Küste hin,
nur einstöckig zwar, aber mit starken, nur von engen,
schießschartenartigen Löchern durchbrochenen Mauern und festem,
flachem Lehmdach. In diesem Architekturwunder lagern schon jetzt
ungezählte Säcke mit Hirse neuer Ernte und Berge roher
Baumwolle. Ich habe mir beides zunutze gemacht: mit der
Baumwolle habe ich die Luftlöcher verstopft, auf den Säcken aber
sitze ich; auf ihnen ruht gleichzeitig mein Dunkelkammer-
Arbeitstisch. Dieser war bis jetzt der wesentliche Bestandteil einer
Baumwollpresse, die draußen auf dem Hofe einsam über ein
verfehltes Dasein dahintrauert. Den Türverschluß endlich habe ich
durch eine Kombination dicker, von meinen Trägern gefertigter
Strohwände und einiger meiner Schlafdecken hergestellt. Dergestalt
kann ich zur Not sogar am Tage entwickeln, nur herrscht schon jetzt,
nach so kurzer Tätigkeit, eine erstickende Atmosphäre in dem auch
sonst wenig anheimelnden Raum. Gerne entrinne ich ihm daher, um
mich neuen Taten zuzuwenden.
Diese sind denn auch wirklich von viel ansprechenderer Natur.
Bei einem meiner ersten Bummel bin ich inmitten einer Schambe auf
ein zierliches Etwas gestoßen, das mir als Tego ya ngunda, als
Taubenfalle bezeichnet wird; ein System von Stäbchen, Bügeln und
feinen Schnüren, von denen einer mit einem kräftigen,
starkgekrümmten Bügel verbunden ist. Mich interessiert von Jugend
auf alles Technische, um wieviel mehr hier, wo wir in frühere
Entwicklungsphasen des menschlichen Intellekts tiefe Einblicke zu
tun die beste Gelegenheit haben. Also daheim Appell aller meiner
Leute und möglichst zahlreicher Eingeborener, und Ansprache an
alles versammelte Volk des Inhalts, daß der Msungu ein großes
Gewicht darauf legt, alle Arten von Fallen für alle Arten von Tieren zu
sehen und zu besitzen. Versprechen recht annehmbarer Preise bei
Lieferung authentischer, guter Stücke und zum Schluß die höfliche,
aber bestimmte Aufforderung: „Nendeni na tengeneseni sasa, nun
geht los und baut eure Dinger zusammen.“
Wie sind sie geeilt an jenem Tage, und wie eifrig sind alle meine
Mannen seitdem Tag für Tag an der Arbeit! Ich habe meine Träger
bisher für lauter Wanyamwesi gehalten; jetzt ersehe ich an der Hand
der Kommentare, die mir jeder einzelne zu seinem Kunstwerk geben
muß, daß sich unter meinen 30 Mann eine ganze Reihe von
Völkerschaften verbirgt. Zwar das Gros sind Wanyamwesi, doch
daneben gibt es Wassukuma und Manyema und sogar einen echten
Mgoni von Runssewe, also einen Vertreter jenes tapfern
Kaffernvolkes, das vor einigen Jahrzehnten vom fernen Südafrika bis
ins heutige Deutsch-Ostafrika vorgedrungen ist und dabei eine
seiner Gruppen, eben diese Runssewe-Wangoni, bis weit oben an
die Südwestecke des Viktoria-Nyansa vorgeschickt hat. Und nun
meine Askari erst! Es sind zwar nur 13 Mann, aber sie gehören nicht
weniger als einem Dutzend verschiedener Völkerschaften an, vom
fernen Darfor im ägyptischen Sudan bis zu den Yao in Portugiesisch-
Ostafrika. Und alle diese Getreuen zermartern ihr Gehirn und üben
in Busch und Feld von neuem die Künste ihres Knaben- und
Jünglingsalters, und dann kommen sie heran und errichten auf dem
weiten, sonnigen Platz neben meinem Palais die Früchte ihrer
schweren Geistesarbeit.
Antilopenfalle.