Precarity, citizenship, and the “traditional” student

Abstract

Precarity, or the condition of continual wage insecurity, is shaping a generation of U.S. college students that suffer continually under poor material conditions, exploitative work schedules, and institutions that do not recognize their precarity. I ground the latter point-that higher education does not recognize the needs of its student precariat-in the argument that such institutions are oriented toward the specter of the traditional student, a concept suffused with citizenship rhetorics. In this paper, I examine the discursive construct of the traditional student, and how it deploys rhetorics of citizenship that deepen exclusions and contribute to student precarity in U.S. higher education. National survey data reveal that college students in the U.S. are experiencing acute precarities on multiple fronts. A startling 60% were food-insecure in 2019, with more students of color, students in 2-year colleges, and LGBTQ+ students reporting food insecurity (AAC&U News, 2019). Over two-thirds of all U.S. students graduate with an average of $30,000 in debt (Dynarski, 2015) at a time when an undergraduate degree has all but become a requirement for an entry-level job. Additionally, a quarter of all university students work full-time to put themselves through college, while 40% work at least 30 h a week (Deruy & National Journal, 2015). Similarly, faculty experience parallel precarities as tenure-track opportunities shrink (Harris, 2019), research expectations balloon (Kafka, 2018), and contingent labor becomes the new majority of faculty labor in the U.S. (Murray, 2019). College students then experience the pressures of faculty contingency secondhand when they are unable to develop relationships or request recommendations from instructors whose labor is stretched across multiple campuses. This carries costs for student learning, which becomes shaped by what McConnell (2019) calls a pedagogy of the transitory, which identifies contingency as a communicative phenomenon and a culturally thick experience that shapes the college learning environment (2019). Students and their faculty imbibe what Rifenburg, Johnston, Ng, and Carney (2019) call the labor casualization of the expanding neoliberal university, which expects faculty and students to labor beyond the classroom through scholarly and civic engagement, public intellectual work, and unpaid internships, with little thought to material compensation and domestic burdens. Given these documented precarities, it is important to ask how institutions discursively orient away from the student precariat and their needs, which in turn reproduces these cycles of precarity. In this essay, I reflect on the notion of the student-citizen to consider

The student urban leisure sector: Towards commercial studentification?

“…However, as this study shows, the role of students in such restructuring goes beyond their consumption. Indeed, for many premises that constitute the student urban leisure sector in Lodz, students are even more relevant as workers than as customers; thus, this finding confirms the prior comments on the changing nature of studenthood towards regular participation in the labour market (Bahrainwala, 2020;Curtis and Lucas, 2001;Dubet, 2006;Munro et al, 2009;Platje et al, 2016;Robotham, 2012;Rokita-Poskart, 2016). Moreover, it has a twofold relevance for the ongoing debate on students and the leisure economy in cities.…”

“…Consequently, the leisure industry in Lodz utilises students as flexible but rather low-paid workers, as suggested earlier by Curtis and Lucas (2001) and Munro et al (2009). Therefore, it raises concerns about the precarity of student labour (Bahrainwala, 2020).…”

“…More precisely, the topic of students as workers within the student urban service sector is marginalised. This cognitive gap seems somewhat surprising since it has been already commented, although not always with a specific urban focus, that students nowadays often combine their educational duties with paid employment (Bahrainwala, 2020;Dubet, 2006;Robotham, 2012;Rokita-Poskart, 2016). In the words of Curtis and Lucas (2001: 39), 'it is no longer appropriate to assume that being a student is a full-time occupation, except perhaps for a privileged few from high-income families'.…”

“…For instance, some authors have demonstrated that they are the consumer group that is fuelling the growth of the leisure industry in cities (Malet Calvo, 2018;Chatterton, 2010;Collins, 2010;Gant and Terry, 2017). Others, although not always with a specific urban focus, have implied that they are active participants of job markets, especially in relation to the service industry (Bahrainwala, 2020;Curtis and Lucas, 2001;Munro et al, 2009;Robotham, 2012;Rokita-Poskart, 2016).…”

When your students are hungry and homeless: the crucial role of faculty

“…This rate of homelessness is somewhat higher than rates reported by most other 4-year universities (Goldrick-Rab, Richardson, et al, 2018). It is noteworthy, as well, that we found nontraditional students, as described by Bahrainwala (2020) were at particularly high risk for food and housing insecurity. That is, students who were older, those who self-identified as Hispanic/Latino, and students who identified outside of the traditional gender binary were overrepresented in the group of participants who had experienced food insecurity and/or homelessness.…”