Employment regulation as the warm house for neoliberalism? Comparing higher education in France and the UK

Abstract

In this article we consider the assumption that representative institutions within the workplace, like such as those existing in France, allow for a sustainable opposition to the employer. The article draws on data from a comparative employment relations project exploring variants of the institutionalisation of labour and the space for alternative forms of engagement with capital. We draw on data and casework in higher education institutions in France and the UK (2017–22). The article elaborates Ross and Savage’s (2021) thesis regarding the formation and trajectory of the neoliberal university, while adding to their prognosis reflections on the consequences of marketisation, especially with regard to social partner institutions and the scope and potential of collective forms of action in a neoliberal environment. Of particular note is Ross and Savage’s argument that the neoliberal university is characterised by varying patterns of work fragmentation, labour intensification and actor-internalised pressure to conform. Ironically, what seems possible is that the closer regulatory employment relations environment in the French context provides a warmer, less unstable, environment for neoliberal educational practices than is the case in the UK. In a story that also addresses labour domination and opposition, we frame the experience of labour in France as inclusionary-subordination/exclusionary-incorporation and in the UK, exclusionary-subordination/inclusionary-incorporation.