Academic Activism in the Wake of a Pandemic

Abstract

Abstract. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified anxieties among temporary workers in New Zealand tertiary education, particularly those affiliated with universities reliant on the lucrative market for international fee-paying students. As national borders closed and states started looking inward, these same learning institutions began to more visibly express the language of market logics for which they had been remodeled in recent decades, adapting to declining revenue through austerity-like budget cuts. The communication of these cuts to the academic precariat has been mixed, with some institutions resorting to cold, forceful determinations delivered as matter-of-fact restructurings, while others have preferred an oblique recasting of the pandemic's disruption as an opportunity for social responsibility. This paper is a collective self-reflection on the activism undertaken by the newly formed Tertiary Education Action Group Aotearoa during the COVID-19 pandemic. It begins by contextualizing the reforms rolled out in response to the pandemic in relation to the “neoliberal turn” of higher education and examines how career pathways for early career academics have transformed into a continuous cycle of precarious employment. We argue that the idealized “early career” identity has been lost and that through a process of mourning we can regather ourselves and embrace our lived realities as members of the academic precariat. We detail how the pandemic acted as a catalyst for this “productive mourning” and enabled us to begin mobilizing discontent among the academic precariat. Finally, we reflect on the extent to which we were able to challenge existing structures that are responsible for the exploitative nature of precarious academic work.

Less talk, more action

“…Our initial activist efforts as the Tertiary Education Action Group Aotearoa (TEAGA) were limited by structural, legal and situational constraints. Not only is lawful strike action difficult in Aotearoa but striking over casualisation curtails the already limited incomes of the people who rely on this work (see Oldfield et al 2021) and would likely jeopardise already tenuous employment opportunities going forward. Additionally, as a small group, we lacked the resources (e.g., time, money, critical mass) to make significant inroads politically and legislatively without the support of established groups such as unions and academic networks.…”

“…For the academic precariat, increased casualisation within a two-tiered system has translated to them spending years -sometimes entire careers (Stringer et al 2018) -cycling through contracts that leave them with little autonomy and vulnerable to changes in work (Oldfield et al 2021;Thomas et al 2020), with little hope of ever rising to the top tier. And since 2020, the conditions for precarious staff in Aotearoa's universities have further worsened through increased workloads and job cuts, as universities scramble to recoup financial losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (Oldfield et al 2021).…”

“…Additionally, this approach meant that the qualitative data we collected could be used in ways that amplified its strengths as a tool in our (re)organisational efforts: as a form of independent feedback to the national union, the basis for a call to action with our collaborators and co-researchers, and as a contribution to academic discourse. Although we have not had the space to discuss it here, it should be noted that scholarship is an important avenue for (re)organising exploited academics, because it can work to reawaken a collective conscience around the more political academic precariat identity and inspire productive mourning of the depoliticised 'early career' researcher (see Oldfield et al 2021). The decision to present the free-text findings separately to the national union had the added benefit of maintaining a cordial relationship with them and meant that we could approach this interaction both as union members and as provocateurs of change.…”

Ngā Manu ā Tāne – the stories of Māori doctoral students in Aotearoa: An ethnographic study

“…Neoliberal ideologies exacerbate systemic inequities and existing marginalising structures by placing the onus on individuals to excel in a competition for resources, favouring those who already have resources. Those who do not meet these competitive standards or metrics are often relegated to the pool of casual labour and struggle to get secure jobs (Oldfield et al, 2021). In this respect, increasing competition for permanent employment becomes a 'game' (Thwaites & Pressland, 2017, p. 24) which leaves some who can play the game, and others pushed to the margins (Caretta et al, 2018).…”

“…Neoliberal management regimes in Aotearoa academia have replaced many tenured jobs with a precarious labour force (Oldfield et al, 2021). The academic precariat is a fragmented, hyperflexible group clustered largely at the junior levels of the academic workforce that cycles between being unemployed, underemployed, and overworked but always underpaid (Natalier et al, 2016).…”