Student workers as proto-workers: ‘Experience’, quitting and the production of consent

Work undertaken by students is widespread, but largely overlooked, with this employment dismissed as a precursor to ‘real work’. The designation of student work as not real, ‘proto-work’, is central to the production of consent. Drawing on original analysis of focus group interviews with 83 students undertaking paid work and Burawoy’s text, Manufacturing Consent, the article identifies two ways in which hegemonic legitimation of and consent to extremely poor-quality work is produced: (1) the role of ‘experience’ and (2) labour mobility as resistance. The article points to how student workers’ discussions of ‘experience’ echoes government and education policy on employability and demonstrates that the widespread reframing of work as experience facilitates employers’ ability to exploit these workers and treat them disposably – paying them less than ‘real workers’ and entrenching poor working conditions. Additionally, this article demonstrates that ‘experience’ primarily serves to signal student workers’ work-discipline and exploitability. The article finds that student worker resistance primarily takes the form of quitting, or ‘labour mobility power’. Contrary to existing conceptualisations and drawing on Burawoy’s analysis of ‘the game’, the article shows that quitting reproduces the hegemonic framing of these workers as disposable, retrenching the overarching rules of the game which position workers as a hyper-exploitable proto-workforce.