We are one, but we’re not the same: explaining the emergence of hybrid national student unions (original) (raw)
Related papers
National student governance in Germany: the case of fzs
2012
This article analyzes the organizational development of freier zusammenschluss von studentInnenschaften (fzs), the national union of students in Germany from its foundation until 2010. It situates it within the variety of student organizations acting on behalf of students within the multi-level system of higher education governance in Germany. Starting out as a rather small, ideologically driven and a more network-oriented association fzs developed into a national-level umbrella organization with a more professional working structure. This institutionalization and professionalization – especially during the 2000s – can be explained by several important developments in the domestic environment in which fzs is embedded. The current diversification in German higher education governance, leading to the loss of influence of the federal level and growing diversity between the Bundesländer, together with increasing influence of commodification in the context of the Bologna Process, coincide with the decrease of impact and members of fzs after 2005.
Putting organizations at the center of student movements: a Central-Easter European exceptionalism
We use a neo-institutionalist framework for understanding the dynamics of student organizations in Central Eastern Europe, which we argue that explains also the “neo-corporatist – pluralist” tension in the Romanian case, but also the configuration of the organizational field and the repertoires of collective action. For the Romanian case we identified four arenas of competition between student entrepreneurs and other actors, more or less connected to the campus, especially from the professoriate: (1) the patrimony of the former communist associations, (2) the services traditionally offered by the former communist associations, complemented by the market opportunities, (3) national representation, where competition manifested in terms of coalition, cleavages on one hand, and on the other hand in terms of representation towards the government, including disruptive action, such as protests, strikes a.o. These arenas opened for competition due to the ‘structural holes’ left by the sweeping of the communist arrangements regarding student organization and representation. We argue that such an account explains not only Central Eastern Europe’s exceptionalism in terms of the major role played by organizations in student movements, but also the major organizational types and their dynamic.
In the past decades the New Public Management based higher education reforms have fostered universities to become more corporate and managerial organizations (Leisyte and Dee, 2012; Krücken and Meier, 2006, Braun and Merrien, 1999). In such universities academics lose their status as key actors in collegial university governance. In response to these changes, academics in Europe started creating and collectively participating in crossdisciplinary social movements against the reform initiatives. This study seeks to understand what new forms of collective responses academics undertake in order to reclaim their position as influential actors within the higher education governance systems. More specifically, we address the following questions: To what extent does the collective response bear the characteristics of a movement? And what has prompted its creation? Based on higher education and social movements’ studies the academics’ resistance organizations are addressed in the UK, the Netherlands and the Flanders region of Belgium. The findings show that these organizations emerge as new political actors in the system of higher education governance in all three countries, whereas the extent of disciplinary variety in joining such movements varies across policy contexts.
David versus Goliath: The Past, Present and Future of Students' Unions in the UK. HEPI Report 111
2018
organisations on a global level. He has a long association with the student movement stretching back 30 years as an elected officer, students' union manager and NUS staff member. He has also worked in the third sector, most recently as a Learning and Development Consultant with Barnardos. He has published a history of the National Union of Students since its foundation in 1922 (Regal Press, 2012) and regularly contributes articles and runs sessions on the history of the student movement in the UK and internationally. He writes here in a personal capacity. Jim Dickinson is Editor of changesu.org, a website for senior managers in students' unions. He has had a career in students' unions, most recently acting as the Chief of Staff at the University of East Anglia Students' Union, where he provided strategic leadership and direction for charitable and commercial activities. Jim was previously a long-standing Director at the National Union of Students, where he led on Students' Union Development, Campaigns and Political Strategy and Student Engagement and Governance. Jim has served as a governor in further and higher education and the voluntary sector and is a regular contributor to the Leadership Foundation's Governor Development Programme.
A Career in Activism: A Reflective Narrative of University Governance and Unionism
The Australian Universities' review, 2017
to do activist work in the contemporary university. It takes as its context the big picture trends of neoliberalism in Australian and international higher education over the last three decades: globalisation, massification and marketisation. The extent to which these factors are causes or consequences of each other is arguable, but makes little difference to their observable impact on what is now the ‘business’ of higher education. Massification refers to the global phenomenon of increasing participation in higher education. Australian higher education is now a mass participation system (30-50 per cent of the school-leaver age cohort enrolled in higher education) and may move into high participation status (>50 per cent enrolled) in the near future (Marginson, 2015). On its own, massification should lead to greater demand for academic staff and opportunities for continuing employment. But at the same time, governments have systematically withdrawn per-student public funding from ...
Struggling to unite: the rise and fall of one university movement in Poland
2012
The recent wave of student protests in Europe, which gained momentum in 2008, has had some impact on appearance of a number of Polish student movements, such as one movement in Gdańsk, called OKUPÉ – Open Committee for Liberation of the Educational Space. Using international student networks as background for our analysis, we focus on OKUPÉ, which we were participants of. The movement had an active beginning and managed to gather a considerable number of people demanding changes at the university, including relations of power, surveillance policy, equality issues, participation in decision-making processes and spatial planing at the new campus. However, the promising beginning has not yet led to a continuous mobilisation and the movement had to face internal conflicts, burning out of the members, fragmentation of interest and problems with decision-making and communication. The methods of decision-making brought from other European movements have not worked properly in the local context. In this paper we are going to describe the rise and fall of OKUPÉ, giving special emphasis to the possible reasons for the latter. We are arguing that in the specific context of academia, where conflicts may be perceived as beneficial for its members, balance – that is, avoiding opponents and meeting friends – is often not sought, which suggests that balance theory may not have an explanatory power in this particular case.
The research focuses on active personal and community citizenship, political participation, self-organisation by generations and patterns of public and community activity in the interpretive communities of higher education, as well as on new forms of public activity and the development of student organisations in the new millennium. The empirical source of this article is the database resulting from the study “Active Youth in Hungary” (Aktív fiatalok Magyarországon) (2013, N=1300). This article presents the characteristics of the different phases in the life-cycle of higher education students’ unions as organisations (in terms of performance, creativity, risk-taking, administration and integration). The author analyses the institution system of students’ unions, and the underlying causes of shifts in functions and values and their consequences by using a sociology-of-youth approach to higher educations’ historical milestones between 2000 and 2013. The reforms introduced in Hungarian higher education in the new millennium, in particular the introduction of the credit system, led to the transformation of the students’ collective interests which caused a shift in values, a decline of advocating function and the loss of the mass base in the students’ union movement.
How institutionalisation of a movement fosters protest: The case of student protests in France
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, 2024
This paper explains how institutionalisation can go hand in hand with the use of more disruptive tactics by social actors. Inspired by a feminist conceptualisation of the social movement institutionalisation process, we adopt a fluid definition of the state-society division and attend to show how institutional actors and groups negotiate their relationships at different scales of protest. To illustrate our argument, we take a closer look at the student movement in France. Based on the analysis of higher education policies between 2005 and 2016, and 16 semi-structured interviews conducted with key actors, we identify a process of partial institutionalisation whereby student organisations are regulated by different material conditions depending on the scale of protest. These material conditions, translated trough institutional arrangements, shape the ways in which student organisations build identity boundaries among them, thereby leading to the use of different tactics of protest.
STUDENTS’ UNION GOVERNMENT, A TOOL FOR DEMONSTRATING TRUE DEMOCRATIC VALUES
A students' union government is a student organization present in many tertiary institutions which protects and defends the right of students on campus. Depending on the country: the purpose, assembly, method and implementation of the group might vary. Universally the purpose of students' union or student government is to represent fellow students in some fashion. In some cases students' unions are run by students, independent of the educational facility. The purpose of these organizations is to represent students both within the institution and externally, including on local and national issues. Students' unions are also responsible for providing a variety of services to students. Depending on the organization's makeup students can get involved in the union by becoming active in a committee, by attending councils and general meetings, or by becoming an elected officer. Some students' unions are politicized bodies, and often serve as a training ground for aspiring politicians. The combination of the youthful enthusiasm of the various members, a general lack of serious consequences for decisions, and a student media(if any) that is itself often partisan, inexperienced, and under no financial pressure to slant coverage to please a broad readership encourages very vigorous campaigning, debate, and political gamesmanship. Students' unions generally have similar aims irrespective of the extent of politicization, usually focusing on providing students with facilities, support, and services.This reviews how the students union governments (SUG) can be deployed as a training ground for youths an upcoming politicians in order to entrench true democratic values lacking in our society today.