Winner of the 2024 SAANZ Student Blog Writing Competition
Weaponizing Precarity: Governmental Precarisation and the Struggles of Indonesian Tertiary Student Activists
Tertiary education students face global challenges that include environmental degradation, insufficient access to essential public services like healthcare, and the erosion of democratic values. These issues are exacerbated by the neoliberalisation of education, which commodifies and privatizes higher education, limiting accessibility and increasing hardships (Davies & Bansel, 2007). Neoliberal labour policies further intensify uncertainties by lacking benefits and job security (Standing, 2016).
The cumulative effect of these pressures constructs a prevailing sense of insecurity and apprehension about the future among youth, creating conditions of precarity. While precarity is not a new phenomenon in human existence, my ethnography of Indonesian tertiary student activists highlights a critical issue: the weaponization of precarity by the state. Framed through Isabell Lorey’s (2015) concept of governmental precarisation, conditions of precarity are systematically maintained and weaponized by the state. Precarity becomes a method of governance that uses the constant threat of marginalization, harm, suffering, violence and even death to control and subjugate the population. This reveals the darker mechanisms of power at play in contemporary society.
To understand the practical manifestations of governmental precarisation, it is essential to examine the state constructed vulnerable and precarious living conditions that give rise to environments underpinned by precariousness. In this exploration, I focus on one of my research participants, Santuko*, and his experiences of precarity manifested in the precarious living conditions of his daily life as a university student activist in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and how it has impacted his activism. Santuko’s experiences are a result of neoliberalised state policies, manifested in educational institutions and labour conditions.
Santuko, 23, originally from the port town of Bima, is a university student activist. Santuko is the head of Yogyakarta Student Organisation* and studies law at Yogyakarta Sultanate University*, a university as the ‘sultan’s university’ amongst local activists is known, due to it being founded by Yogyakarta’s sultan in the early 1980s. This title is also often used pejoratively due to the university’s rather intimate relationship with the local government and Yogyakarta’s reigning sultan (field notes, 2023). When I mentioned this to Santuko, he gave a nod and a smirk but defended his choice. He explained that attending this university was his means of leaving his hometown to gain exposure to new experiences and knowledge that were unavailable in his hometown, while also hoping to later get a job in the city and provide for himself and his family.
Santuko’s aspiration to attain tertiary education mirrors the dreams of many Indonesians, even those unable to attend their preferred universities. Tertiary education is often viewed as a pathway out of the cycle of poverty, an instrument for social mobility, or, at the very least, a means to maintain one’s family’s middle-class or upper-class status (Breen & Karlson, 2014). Universities in Indonesia frequently emphasize the promise of lucrative white-collar jobs in metropolitan areas, offering individuals the prospect of livelihoods vastly different from the arduous, low-wage labour typically associated with rural life. However, only a small fraction of the Indonesian population has the opportunity to realize this dream. Recent data from Indonesia’s Central Statistics Body (BPS) indicates that merely 6% of the country’s 295 million citizens have accessed tertiary education, with most obtaining undergraduate degrees (Kusnandar, 2022). Furthermore, recent statistics cast doubt on the assurance of high-paying jobs for university graduates, as a significant portion of these educated youth remains unemployed, with 1 million out of 1.4 million annual graduates still seeking employment (Pusparisa, 2021). Those fortunate enough to secure employment often discover that their salaries barely exceed the minimum wage, particularly in regions such as Yogyakarta, where the minimum wage for 2023 is NZ$230 per month and the average rent hovers between NZ$50-60 per month. Coupled with a lack of reliable public transportation and the region’s steadily increasing cost of living, the dream of a comfortable, high-paying job for university graduates often remains elusive in an employment landscape oversaturated with degree holders.
In addition to this, Santuko highlights the ongoing struggles his family faces in covering his university tuition fees each semester. Santuko’s family must also provide him with the necessary monthly financial support for expenses such as food, rent, transportation, and more, which amounts to approximately NZ$60. Santuko woefully recalls that these funds are frequently insufficient, noting, “we were told that Yogyakarta is an affordable city, and while that may be true at times, often it is not. There are occasions when we cannot even afford to buy rice…and job opportunities are scarce these days or if you have one, you’re overly exploited.” University students fortunate enough to secure employment often find themselves in low-paying and exploitative positions, with wages falling below the minimum wage standard, forcing them to make the difficult choice of prioritizing their jobs over their university studies (Syambudi, 2023). Santuko himself recently underwent such an experience, working at a small kebab stall that draws on until late hours for nearly six days a week. The demands of Santuko’s work ultimately led to sacrifices not only in his academic pursuits but also in his activism efforts (field notes, 2023).
In 2013, the Indonesian government introduced the Uang Kuliah Tunggal (UKT) or Single Tuition Fee system, intending to ease the financial burden on university students. This system uses a cross-subsidization model, where students from wealthier backgrounds pay higher tuition fees to subsidize those from less privileged backgrounds, thereby aiming to ensure access to education regardless of financial means. However, despite its well-meaning objectives, many students have encountered challenges in its implementation, such as the inaccurate assessment of UKT tiers, which has resulted in students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds still being required to pay disproportionately high tuition fees.
I met with Santuko again a number of days after a solidarity protest that was staged outside the front gates of Yogyakarta University* (YU). This demonstration centred on issues relating to access to higher education was formed part of an extensive series of protests. It was predominantly instigated by the tragic death of a YU student named Nur Riska Fitri Aningsih, who passed away in early 2022 due to being physically and mentally burdened by not being able to pay her tuition fees. I chatted with Santuko about what he knew regarding the circumstances surrounding Riska’s untimely passing. Trying his best not to look at me in the eyes, Santuko said, almost whispering, “I don’t think the government cares about people like me…” I ask Santuko about how his activism may help him with his circumstance, but Santuko responded “due to this and a lot of other issues in the movement I became deeply demoralised…I thought maybe I should just stop with my current activism”. Our conversation ended soon after.
Santuko’s understanding of the conditions he is in, and the socio-political constructs that have been imposed upon his life made him feel that he had no agency and no control over the forces shaping his life. These circumstances resulted in pessimism towards of his student activism in general. Within this context, the process of commodifying education has reached a juncture where the economic engine propelling its commodification, namely neoliberal capitalism, perpetuates fear amongst students who venture off course. Neoliberal capitalism compels student activists like Santuko to question their alternative or counter-hegemonic ways of being, particularly their roles as activists who proactively challenge the state. This deliberate attempt at controlling dissenters illustrates Lorey’s (2015) governmental precarisation, denoting the deliberate formation, utilization, and an attempt of normalization of precarity as a means to govern, subdue, and secure compliance within the population.
Through the normalization of precarity, as Lorey (2015) aptly notes, conditions of insecurity and existential vulnerabilities has transcended mere natural and social existence, to become a systemic, pervasive, and sustained force in our societies. Additionally, what we can also see here is the self-regulating, neoliberalised pathway in trying to ameliorate precarity. This phenomenon, as Lorey (2015) aptly labels it, leads to what she terms “self-precarisation” (p.70), in which this system effectively perpetuates itself by having individuals instil a pervasive sense of anxiety and fear regarding insecurity. Self-precarisation results in students like Santuko doubting their choices. Precarisation is in essence the normalization of the erosion of security in its various forms, whether it be financial-material, emotional, relational, and essentially life. As Lorey (2015) elaborates: “self-government and the management of one’s life are fundamentally geared toward serving political governability and the profit-driven aims of capitalism—and the anxiety stemming from precariousness perpetuates this dynamic” (p. 90). Within such a state constructed precaritising system, it seems some lives must be sacrificed simply to sustain the system. The system perpetually traps some such as Santuko, in a state of existence where they are denied the full rights and privileges of a human being. Living on the margins of society, tertiary student activists daily contend with ongoing precarity, violence and exploitation.
*All names, organisations and places in this blog have been altered to pseudonyms to protect the identities and privacy of the individuals involved.
Ben K. C. Laksana is a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on young people and activism at Victoria University of Wellington.
Text: 1415 words.
References
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Davies, B., & Bansel, P. (2007). Neoliberalism and education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(3), 247–259. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390701281751
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Lorey, I. (2015). State of insecurity: Government of the precarious. Verso.
Pusparisa, Y. (2021, May 31). BPS: Sarjana yang Menganggur Hampir 1 Juta Orang pada Februari 2021. Databoks Katadata. https://databoks.katadata.co.id/datapublish/2021/05/31/bps-sarjana-yang-menganggur-hampir-1-juta-orang-pada-februari-2021
Standing, G. (2016). The precariat: The new dangerous class (Revised edition). Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Syambudi, I. (2023, August 15). Pontang-Panting Hidup Mahasiswa Bayar UKT: Jadi Admin Toko Online, Buruh Pabrik, Ojol & Kurir, hingga Pramusaji Hotel [Investigation Report]. Project Multatuli.