Navigating Precarity in Educational Contexts

Reflection, Pedagogy, and Activism for Change

Karen Monkman, Ann Frkovich, Amira Proweller, Karen Monkman, Ann Frkovich, Amira Proweller

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000620733
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Pedagogía
• Thema: Teoría y práctica de la educación

This volume offers a timely collection of research-based studies that engage with contemporary conditions of precarity across an array of locations, exploring how it is understood, experienced, and acted upon by educators in schools, universities, and nonformal educational spaces. Precarity presents as layered, unpredictable, destabilizing, and rapidly shifting sociopolitical and economic dynamics, shown here in various forms, including the global pandemic, divisive populist politics, displacement of refugees and the landless, race and gender injustices, and neoliberal policies that constrain educational and social possibilities. Grouped around reflection, educational practice, and social activism, the authors show how educators engage these precarious conditions as they work toward a more interconnected, humane, and just society.

This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in social foundations of education, multicultural and social justice education, educational policy, and international and comparative education, sociology and anthropology of education, and cultural studies within education, among other fields.

1 Navigating Education in Precarious Times

Ann Frkovich, Amira Proweller & Karen Monkman

DOI: 10.4324/9781003258223-1

Introduction

One morning early in 2021, we abruptly stopped a meeting in which we were conceptualizing this book because, as Americans, we were shocked by the news flash that right-wing insurrectionists had suddenly stormed the US Capitol. The truth is, by then we had become used to living with much of the unpredictability of our times, we were used to disruption and the onslaught of media messages, to living in an increased state of instability and fragility, and to the never-ending feeling of despair. Working on a book related to precarity in education was something we took up while simultaneously experiencing precariousness ourselves. Together, as white women, we processed how we were dealing with a global pandemic and the rise of political extremism (Rogers et al. 2017), our country’s racial reckoning (Jones & Hagopian 2020) overlapping with the #MeToo movement (Williams, Singh, & Mezey 2019), along with the irreversible environmental change related to global warming, all while institutions around us downsized and restructured to avoid or delay further demise.

Those of us working in universities with students who are also teachers and school leaders not only kept track of our own unpredictable circumstances but also watched an uptick in the stress of our students. We engaged with those who were sick or caring for the sick, who lost loved ones, or were grieving the dead. Many expressed a resigned sadness and confusion, as they found themselves in a state of perpetual destabilization as the schools in which they taught, and the schools of their children, shut down for in-person teaching and learning and shifted suddenly to online platforms (Pressley & Ha 2021). Similarly, students who worked in grocery stores, restaurants, and other spaces providing essential services that required public contact worried about their own well-being and that of their families as they found themselves on the front line (USDOE 2021). Furthermore, the conditions that existed prior to COVID-19 – the tensions related to school leadership in a neoliberal world (Scott & Holme 2016), challenges of balancing work and home life (Hochschild 2012; Gerstel 2000), the instability of many jobs and the inadequacy of earnings, the inequity of access to resources for quality schools and healthcare (Lipman 2011) – were only brought into sharper focus because of the pandemic. While some of these realities were not brought on by the global pandemic, they were accelerated and magnified by it, adding to the layers of precarity.

Our collective experiences with the global pandemic, wide-ranging and diverse, offer us a lens for seeing more clearly the various layered and entangled dimensions of precariousness (Butler 2009; Fine, Greene, & Sanchez 2016; Ahmed 2020; Perry, Aronson, & Pescosolido 2021). Precariousness, in a generic sense, connotes a state of being characterized by uncertainty, unpredictability, and anxiety, along with instability and disruption. Our shared precariousness becomes a gateway for a new understanding of and commitment to equity, a vision for human care and responsibility toward others. In this book, the chapter authors examine how those engaged in education experience precarity in a wide variety of settings and times. They take up the pandemic; exclusionary politics; involuntary mobility; neoliberal policies; social injustices related to race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and language; and contested dynamics of identity construction. Examining these kinds of manifestations of precarity situates educators to also identify spaces for possibility.

Precarity Beyond Education

Historically, the concept of precarity had its inception in the field of labor studies examining the implications of economic change stemming from neoliberal economic and social policies which emerged over the past three to four decades (Sassen 2013). Labor studies scholarship has mined how such economic shifts, globally and locally, have directly impacted work and people’s livelihoods, rendering both unstable, unpredictable, and temporary (Kasmir 2018; Means 2019; Standing 2016). Other studies prioritize a broader engagement of focus on neoliberalism as a force that creates experiences of precarity – both economically and also politically, socially, and culturally (Harvey 2003; Means 2018). Political science examines the relationship of democracy and precarity (Schapp et al. 2020; Goodson & Schostak 2021). Another realm of scholarship examines forms of violence such as war, torture, and kidnapping, with a focus on the affective experience of precarity (Butler 2008; Kasmir 2018). And yet another area of research focuses on precarity’s relationship to social movements (Casas-Cortés 2021; Kasmir 2018). In this sense, precarity can give rise to the emergence of a new politicized awareness, along with changes in one’s sense of self, using the term “precarity pride” to emphasize how precarity evokes conditions for action that are positive (Casas-Cortés 2021, p. 511). What is important in these instances is developing an understanding of precarity that is grounded in a deep knowledge of the underlying conditions.

In turning to what precarity is, Lorey (2015) argues: “precarization means living with the unforeseeable, with contingency…. The conceptual composition of ‘precarious’ can be described in the broadest sense of insecurity and vulnerability, destabilization and endangerment” (p. 10). It is about how people experience displacement, vulnerability, and hopelessness (Kasmir 2018; Mason & Megoran 2021), which is where the fragility of life becomes evident.

While the conditions of precarity can affect all lives, they take shape and unfold in varied ways and to different degrees. Ultimately, the underlying conditions of precarity are differentially distributed and experienced (Butler 2004, 2009; Standing 2016). Butler (2009) argues that precarity is a politically induced condition, in which:

certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death. Such populations are at a heightened risk of disease, poverty, starvation, displacement, and of exposure to violence without protection.

(p. 25)

Those on the social margins are impacted the most (Perry, Aronson, & Pescosolido 2021). When intersections of multiple types of disorientation, insecurity, vulnerability, and destabilization are present, the experience of precariousness is layered and amplified.

Although we are not using Judith Butler’s (2009, 2004) notion of precarity in its full sense, her contributions are important to recognize. Precariousness, in her work, refers to a generalized human condition, grounded in the interdependence among all humans, making all vulnerable. Butler (2009) emphasizes that “If we take the precarious life as a point of departure, then there is no life without the need for shelter and food, no life without dependency on wider networks of sociality and labor, no life that transcends injurability and mortality” (p. 25). She distinguishes precariousness from precarity.¹ Precarity refers to the unequally distributed conditions of vulnerability, positioning some populations and individuals as more vulnerable than others.

Butler recognizes that some people are seen as having greater value and others are rendered invisible. She calls this idea “grievability,” meaning that we recognize some lives as worthwhile and therefore, if lost, grievable, while others are not seen or recognized and therefore not grievable (Butler 2009). She explains, “… we respond with outrage to lives that are injured or killed and which we already perceive as lives” (Butler 2008, para. 20). In pondering how lives are understood as grievable or not, she argues: “We do not ourselves manufacture the norms through which we come to perceive a life as a worthy life” (Butler 2008, para. 20); our understandings are framed by media and other social forces. She argues that we must recognize our universal egalitarian precariousness in order to figure out our moral imperative to respond to the injustices. Kasmir (2018) explains:

Butler sees the potential for emancipation in embracing the common circumstance of precariousness, as against the unequal fate of precarity. She renounces politics that aim at achieving stability for select groups and instead favors an egalitarian precariousness for all as a liberating moment.

(pp. 2–3)

Butler’s ideas, in a general sense, parallel many others in the social sciences that argue for a much more dynamic understanding of the lives of others, of context, of histories, of the ways people are socialized to believe certain things and not others, etc. These help us to develop an understanding of our moral obligations to engage conditions of precarity that may be played out very differently than in our own lived experience. Perhaps this is nowhere more important than in education.

Precarity in Educational Spaces

Research related to precarity in education covers a wide range of conditions, from neoliberal policies, entrenched poverty, populist politics, and the global pandemic, among others. The effects of neoliberal educational reforms in recent decades have played a decisive role in advancing the conditions of precariousness through limiting access to funding and other resources for some schools relative to others, and for promoting a market-based approach to education over concern for student experience and learning (Ewing 2018; Lipman 2011; Noddings 2006; Weiner 2011). The intensification of neoliberal education reforms in recent decades has also had consequential impacts on teachers, leaving them feeling de-professionalized and constrained in their curricular decision-making amid legislation mandating increased testing (Cody 2019). It has also spawned job instability and worsening conditions of work in education (Blair 2018).

Experiences of exacerbated poverty, intertwined with neoliberalism, and now the global pandemic also deepen the experiences of precariousness for not only educators but also students and their families. Since May 2020 in the US, an additional eight million people – including two and a half million children – have fallen into poverty, mostly impacting children of color (Children’s Defense Fund 2021). Globally, the number of children in poverty has soared to 1.2 billion due to COVID-19, and the proportion of children without access to education and/or health-care has increased from 47% to 56% (UNICEF 2020). Poverty impacts health, food security, shelter, and other basic human needs, which can push educational priorities to the side as families become preoccupied with daily survival.

In addition, the recent rise in political extremism and rhetorical narratives of exclusion has further undermined a social safety net and sent clear messages of who belongs and who does not, creating greater divisions that have spilled over into increases in violence and hate crimes (Rogers et al. 2017). Narratives targeting immigrants, people of color, religious minorities, women, LGBTQIA+ communities, and others dehumanize large segments of the population and send messages that there is no place for them in the society (Huber & Muoz 2021). These kinds of negative forces have taken shape in educational settings in forms such as movements to narrow curriculum and to not teach racial histories (George 2021; Goodson & Schostak 2021) while also giving rise to coalition building among schools and communities to push back toward greater equity and inclusion (Huckaby 2019; Warren 2018).

As the coronavirus pandemic of 2020–2021 has ravaged the globe, schools in many locations throughout the world have been forced to close completely or pivot to online instruction, which has magnified disparities related to the digital divide (Narodowski & Campetella 2022; Bishai 2022) and also to the ability of teachers to effectively adapt given either their knowledge and skills or the mandates of a scripted curriculum – which constrains their ability to act independently (Pressly & Ha 2021; Lizana & Vega-Fernadez 2021). In locations where teaching has continued, teachers have had to find ways to adapt their curricula and pedagogies to new modalities while keeping students engaged in the learning process from a distance, often with limited support (Goodson & Schostak 2021; Bishai 2022). The gap between families who have access to educational technology – including reliable internet connections – and those who do not has come into sharper relief. This is reflected not only in families’ socioeconomic class differences but also across whole school systems, with some countries and communities all but shutting down. Some students across the globe have missed a year or more of formal education, while others have continued undeterred, adapting relatively easily (Narodowski & Campetella 2022).

Educators have experienced increased stress related to heavier workloads, extended hours, and the absence of a clear way forward (Lizana & Vega-Fernadez 2021). In addition, many educators feel threatened by digital technologies replacing teachers and the gutting of the relational nature of teaching (Kirk 2020; Brewer & Lubienski 2019). They express a diminished sense of professional identity while students face a narrowing of the curriculum that feels less relevant to their daily lives now and into the future and often leaves them less engaged in the learning process (Fine 2018; Jones & Sheffield 2018).

The experience of education is integral to how people make sense of themselves and the changing world around them (Freire 2000; Zeichner 2013; Ladson-Billings 2021; Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen 2007),...