The Burden of Labour in Emerging Student Habitations and Decolonial Options of Life

Neo-liberalism and structural adjustments have commercialized the public university and made it prioritize revenue efficiencies. From this, it has outsourced two of its key services to the private market: student accommodation and social services. The inhabiting and sharing of urban housing by off-campus commuting students integrates them to the ongoing urban austerity crisis. Social services in urban areas are near collapse under neo-liberal city governments who mis/treat residents as consumers. In this environment, students undergo the burden of labour to survive whilst studying: petitioning, protesting, organizing, and challenging urban neo-liberalism alongside higher education structural adjustements they equally encounter daily. This is an overlooked community exploited under the myth of modernity. I provide three theoretical interventions: new forms of labour that emerge under coloniality; new forms of organizing under austerity; and hyper neo-liberalization of the public university