Inoltro l'appello della Rete dei ricercatori precari per la costruzione di
un forum europeo su formazione, saperi e ricerca. Verrà presentato e
distribuito all'Esf di Londra, ma soprattutto facciamolo circolare il più
ampiamente possibile in rete e ragioniamoci insieme.
Globalisation, academic flexibility and the right to research:
A call for a European network of precarious/temporary researchers and for
the free circulation of knowledge
The last few months have seen the rise of a new collective actor in Italian
universities: the movement of precarious researchers. Mobilisations and
struggles of the precarious/temporary researchers have followed in the wake
of the presentation to the Italian Parliament of a law project aiming to
revise the status of university teaching and research personnel. The law has
been presented by the currently ruling centre-right coalition, but has also
been (covertly) sustained by moderate sectors within the centre-left
parties. Its main purpose, in brief, is to abolish permanent positions at
the level of university researcher/lecturer and to replace them with
fixed-term tenures (based on a four-year contract renewable only one time).
Furthermore, it advances a number of typically neo-liberal reforms including
the cancellation of any distinction between full-time and part-time
professors (which allows academic staff to pursue their own private
interests without this will afflict their public salary) and the
strengthening of the role played by private capitals in financing the higher
education system.
This (counter-) reform project couples with the one about the school system,
both presented to the Italian Parliament by the Minister of Education,
University and Research (led by Mrs. Moratti), which has also been fiercely
contested by school teachers and pupils for its tendency to dismantle the
role of public sector in the education system. While the latter has been
already approved by the Parliament, albeit contestations are still going on,
the university reform is now under discussion in Italian Parliament and it
is likely (unfortunately) to be approved in the coming weeks, despite a
widespread and heterogeneous movement composed by all sectors of the
academic community (from precarious researchers to chancellors) that is
still active in Italian universities.
Temporary researchers have thus given rise, in the last months, to a number
of local committees within the framework of a National Network of
Precarious Researchers (the Rete Nazionale Ricercatori Precari),
communicating through a web mailing-list and periodical meetings. The
movement has made claims regarding essentially:
- a critique of academic flexibility as a strategy of disciplinisation and
fragmentation of public research: flexibility is used today by ruling powers
within government and the academia in order to exert a firm control over
emerging scientific subjectivities and to reduce them to a condition as mere
research/teaching labour-force;
- the reassertion of the centrality of public sector and interest within the
higher education system, against the neo-liberal imperative that affirms a
strategic role for the market forces in the universities governance system;
- the right to independent, long-term and market-free research at university
as well as in all public research institutions: a flexible job regime
imposes short-term research schedules and the development of research
subjects that are identified as relevant by those financing the projects,
limiting the autonomy and the creativity of scholars and researchers.
While the nation-state retains a central role in the politics of research,
the last two decades have also witnessed a process of increasing
internationalisation in this field. This process takes place at two levels:
one level is that regarding the production of scientific knowledge; the
other is that regarding the shaping of a multi-level governance of the
higher education system.
First, since the late 1980s demands for an internationalisation of research
activities have been advanced in the form of an emerging academic capitalism
which has profoundly transformed the way in which scholars undertake
research activities: market-like behaviour, the principle of performativity
and the power of management in the administration of research funds have
become crucial in this regard. What has been considered by the dominant
forces and elites as the challenge of the market-economy to the university
system has led to greater resource concentrations and, as a result, to the
development of a range of centres of excellence and corporate
universities capable of attracting these resources to the detriment of
ordinary (public) universities. These developments have produced
increasingly deeper inequalities at an international scale between the more
prosperous countries and regions, where allegedly high-quality
universities are mostly concentrated, and those that are lagging behind.
Second, the internationalisation of the higher education system proceeds
relentlessly at the level of the European Union. This process takes place,
on the one hand, through the increasing relevance of the European research
projects and the emphasis laid on networking amongst research centres and
university departments at a supra-national level (cf. the periodical
Framework Programmes; the Research Training Networks, the European
doctorates etc.). Institutional collaboration is established among the
abovementioned centres of excellence, while those that are excluded from
these networks are considered as marginal or, simply, the Others. On the
other hand, the Europeanisation of the higher education system takes place
through a more intense co-operation amongst national governments in the
realm of higher education policies (see the inter-governmental conferences
held in Paris, Prague and Bologna since 1998 onwards) . This co-operation
has had particularly relevant effects on the standardisation of university
degrees (i.e. the 3+2 degree and the credit system). These developments
have strongly affected learning mechanisms in European universities, forcing
university students to improve their productivity and to conform their
personal attitudes and values to an increasingly competitive environment.
Such an internationalisation of the politics of research has thus consisted
in a process of globalisation from above in which ruling actors and
institutions have played a dominant role while the grassroots actors have
remained at the margins of the process. Today, the less powerful sectors
within the academia are not only excluded from the governance of the
internationalisation process but are also affected by the outcomes of the
process itself in terms of increasing competition, work flexibilisation and
shrinkage of the research autonomy. This urgently requires the formulation
of a perspective of globalisation from below which is capable of shaping an
alternative to the present scenario. This perspective calls for the
formation of a post-national public space of research and cultural exchange
in which internationalisation would be perceived as a process aiming to
develop practices of mutual recognition and encounter amongst equals rather
than strategies of competition and selectivity amongst unequally empowered
actors.
The last months have seen the development of movements asserting the right
to public research in many European countries. The movement of precarious
researchers in Italy and the sauvons la recherche movement in France have
been the most visible in Europe, but there has been some form of
mobilisation also in other European countries such as Britain and Spain.
What is new and especially noteworthy in all these mobilisations is the
central role played in them by the younger generations of researchers.
However, what is still missing in such movements is the formulation of a
supra-national, European perspective on the issue of scientific research.
Europe appears to be viewed as a space of constrictions and limitations, a
perception that can be explained in light of the developments described
above, rather than as a space of self-organisation and collective
mobilisation for the less powerful actors within the scholarly and academic
community.
For all these reasons, we particularly feel the urgency of creating a
European Network of Precarious/Temporary Researchers. A network of this kind
would be committed:
- to coordinating movements, committees and actors that are mobilising in
Europe against the neo-liberalisation of the education system, and against
copyright and intellectual property system;
- to developing a post-national space of action, cooperation and debate over
issues related to research, education systems and access to scientific
knowledge;
- to defending and asserting the rights of temporary researchers, students
and, generally, of knowledge workers at European level.
The London Social Forum represents a challenging opportunity for a first
exchange of experiences and contacts, from which a future meeting (in
December or January) might arise in the form of a European Forum specially
dedicated to the issues of research and knowledge. We thus propose to set up
a web mailing-list to debate and prepare this forum. We strongly believe,
however, that the building of a post-national space of mobilisation and
debate is a goal that has to be pursued now, hic et nunc, without waiting
for the great event and starting instead from the day-to-day relationships
that have been already established amongst individuals and groups at the
European level. For this reason, we ask everybody to make these pages
circulate freely amongst all those that are or might be interested in the
accomplishment of such a project.
Rete Nazionale Ricercatori Precari (Italy)
www.ricercatoriprecari.org
________________________
We will attend the following sessions in London:
- Science and Citizenship (Friday, 4-6pm; Venue: Natfhe Bloomsbury);
- Reclaim the Commons (Sat. 11:30 1:30pm; Venue: ULU 3A)
- Another education is possible: opposition and resistance to neoliberalism
(Sat. 2-4pm; Venue Prague);
- Growing commercial control of science in Europe- a cancer? (Friday 4-6pm;
Venue ?);
- Military research, science and engineering (Sat. 4:30-6:30; Venue: Natfhe
Bloomsbury)
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