The Making of the Academic Precariat: Labour Activism and Collective Identity-Formation among Precarious Researchers in Germany

Abstract

This article investigates the political potency of ‘precarity’ as an organising axiom in contingent workers’ grassroots organisations. It studies a nationwide network of precarious researchers in Germany and deploys Frame Analysis to illuminate how the Network articulates diverse criticisms as parts of a coherent struggle against precarious academic work. Empirically, the article substantiates the postulate of ‘precarity as a mobilising source’ by depicting the construction of precarity on strategic, organisational and individual levels, drawing on protest campaigns, coordinative work and in-depth interviews, respectively. On a theoretical level, it contributes to the literature by proposing a refinement of the concept of ‘master frame’. Arguing that ‘precarity’ creates a broader class actor with branches in different sectors, to which the contingent academics link their struggle by derivatively describing themselves as the ‘academic precariat’, the article proposes the novel category of ‘class-formative frame’ in difference to operational (diagnostic/prognostic) or relational (supportive/oppositional) frames.

Keywords

academic precariat collective action Frame Analysis labour activism precarity

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