Preparing for precarity - Preprint.pdf

<p dir="ltr"><i>Students in contemporary neoliberalised universities face mounting precarity, declining state support and increasing uncertainty about their futures. How then do university students make sense of their study and paid work in this context? Drawing on interviews (n=21), focus groups (n=3) and a survey (n=92) with undergraduate and postgraduate students at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand, we argue that many students adopt an entrepreneurial orientation, a fraught, opportunistic or ‘hustler’ identity, where competitive pressures and declining opportunities are viewed largely in individualised terms. However, this orientation has unpaid labour attached, with our analysis highlighting two key forms</i><i> – speculative and balancing. Speculative labour has a hopeful or promissory function, with little hope of pay-off, focused on </i><i>both a demoralising present and uncertain future. Balancing labour is the work associated with learning to become flexible enough to manage competing demands in a deteriorating present. We argue that the temporal demands of this labour have been so far under-theorised.</i></p>