Aligning the market and affective self: care and student resistance to entrepreneurial subjectivities

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe paper examines the ways in which higher education students negotiate contemporary global transitions premised on improving competitiveness and opportunity in a system driven by the ideology of the market-led, knowledge-based economy (HEA. 2011. National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030. Dublin: Department of Education and Skills; OECD 2004. Review of National Policies for Education in Ireland. Paris: OECD; 2006. Higher Education in Ireland. Paris: OECD; 2013. “Education at a Glance 2013: OECD Indicators.” Accessed March 15, 2014. doi:10.1787/eag-2013-en). Using data from a large cohort of students (4265) in three very different types of higher education institutions (Public University, Public Institute of Technology and a private for-profit College), and through the analysis of recent policy developments, the paper shows that there is an explicit requirement on colleges to create entrepreneurial students in Irish higher education. However, the paper also demonstrates how this narrative is mediated and resisted by the students’ own educational and care imaginaries: they are expecting to be better cared for in colleges than they are currently; and their presumed future, and for some, current lives are not only defined in terms of occupational goals but in terms of care and nurturing (affective) relations. The data suggest that the affective domain of care or social reproductive relations (Federici 2012. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction and Feminist Struggle. PM Press/Common Notions/Autonomedia) may constitute an emerging site of gendered resistance to the globalised commercialisation of higher education.