Student Politics and Protest

Rachel Brooks is Professor of Sociology at the University of Surrey in the UK.

In many parts of the world it has become a commonplace to decry young people’s lack of political engagement, and especially to lament the decline of student-led political and social movements. Student Politics and Protest offers a most welcome insight into the presence, vibrancy and impact of contemporary student politics around the globe, and shows how higher education participation, policy and associational life profoundly shape young people as political actors today. Brooks’ outstanding collection is just the conversation changer we need in the debate about youth politics.Professor Anita Harris, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, AustraliaStudent Politics and Protest brings together research from 19 countries to provide an extraordinarily rich reflection of how politics is enacted by students across the globe today. Each contribution is rooted in original empirical research – covering participation in formal organisations such as students’ unions through to informal activism in mass campaigns and protest movements – while the editor’s illuminating concluding reflections provide fresh insight into the commonalities and differences in student activism across both space and time. Professor Hilary Pilkington, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, UKStudent Politics and Protest provides a much-needed analysis of the ways in which higher education students have engaged politically over the past few years. By drawing on a wide variety of empirical examples from across the world, it explores the different ways in which students have mobilised, the causes they have championed and how wider society has responded to their actions. It is an important and engaging text for scholars of contemporary higher education.Professor Claire Callender, Birkbeck and UCL-Institute of Education, University of London, UKWhile most important in providing activists as well as ideas for contentious politics, student movements have rarely been studied. Proposing innovative theoretical frameworks and covering a broad range of empirical cases of contemporary protests in institutions of higher education, this important volume contributes to our knowledge on politics and policies in times of austerity. Professor Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence

• 1. Student Politics and Protest: an Introduction. 2. Campaigning for a Movement 3. Student Struggles and Power Relations in Contemporary Universities. 4. Neoliberal Discourses and the Emergence of an Agentic Field: the Chilean Student Movement 5. Affinities and Barricades. 6. Student Politics and the Value(s) of Public Welfare 7. The Politics of Higher Education Funding in the UK Student Movement 1996-2010 8. Student Power in 21st Century Africa 9. Students’ Associations 10. ‘If Not Now, Then When? If Not Us, Who?’ Understanding the Student Protest Movement in Hong Kong 11. Student Mobilization during Turkey’s Gezi Resistance: From the Politics of Change to the Politics of Lifestyle 12. Network Formation in Student Political Worlds 13. Conclusion