Abstract
This paper considers the positioning of student campus activism within a discourse of student engagement to explore how student engagement becomes framed as legitimate/ illegitimate. Using pivotal points within the 2012-14 Sussex Against Privatisation/Occupy Sussex campaigns at the University of Sussex; we compare how student activists construct themselves with how they are constructed by the university administration. Our focus is on how student activists are positioned as troublemakers, lacking valid critical capacity and incapable of independent, mature, reasoned political positioning. We argue that the construction of student activist identities as immature and dangerous both devalues the agency of the protestors but also demonstrates how student engagement is shaped by normative discourses of what constitutes a legitimately engaged student in higher education. Positioning students as being problematic and misguided is potentially incongruous with discourses of students as consumers, as partners and as producers. We propose that in many cases, student engagement is simply a mirage for other organisational practices and that the concept is limited and can be limiting. The relationship between student engagement and activism is explored using Ahmed’s (2012) work on non-performative concepts and what it means to speak in and about higher education.
Highlights
What does it mean to speak and be heard as students in higher education? Words like student engagement and student voice proliferate institutional discourses but as doctoral students working at a campus alive with student activism but alive with neoliberal managerial practices, we recognised the gulf between speaking and being heard
This led us to consider where student activism fits within institutional discourses of engagement, as well as what and whom might constitute a legitimate student voice in the academy
We consider whether discourses of student voice create a normative and potentially de-politicised voice that is incongruous with student activism
Summary
What does it mean to speak and be heard as students in higher education? Words like student engagement and student voice proliferate institutional discourses but as doctoral students working at a campus alive with student activism but alive with neoliberal managerial practices, we recognised the gulf between speaking and being heard. As Trowler notes, while conceptually rich research does exist, the field is dominated by work that tends not to trouble the concept as much as it should, resulting in reductionist understandings of students as a unified and homogenous group and of engagement as a celebratory practice, that propagates a ‘normative agenda, characterised by discussions of gains and benefits while ignoring possible downsides’ (5) That these discourses are not thoroughly scrutinised may contribute to why students are misrecognised when enacting, what we argue, are nonhegemonic forms of engagement such as student activism. Neary’s (2014) research into students as producers goes further than seeing students as representatives of and for engagement, to argue that students have an active role to play in creating knowledge in and about the university through academic research projects Though this may not typically be seen as student engagement work, staff and students doing collaborative research potentially represents a ‘productive’ form of engagement with the university, resulting in positive outcomes for students and the institution. The questions we are left with as we approach our analyses are – what does it mean to be legitimately engaged in higher education and what consequences arise if these student activists are constructed as illegitimate?
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
