The authors of The Anthropological Career in Europe(Fotta, Ivancheva and Pernes 2020) have made
visible the inequality and hierarchy that has become increasingly normalized in
higher education in Europe. The impact of the report lies far beyond
anthropology, and my reflections here build on the report’s key findings and
consider the impact of precaritization on the university and academia as a
whole.
The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the biggest, most visible public higher education systems in the world, the UK is ahead of the curve in a global process of commercialization of higher education. The main academic workers’ trade union, University College Union (UCU), has been on strike for 22 days in total over two periods since November 2019 with demands to end casualization, increase pay, and abolish gender and minority pay gaps. Yet, the strike also coincided with the outbreak of coronavirus, which has pushed universities around the world into online teaching. In light of these unfolding development, this article reviews increasingly established injustices in UK higher education and shows the links between casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour.
