Liberation Labour: Creating An Inclusive Institution Off The Backs Of The Students We Are Trying To Include
By Mx Ashley Storer-Smith, Student Engagement Manager, Anglia Ruskin University
If we look back across the history of creating inclusion and encouraging diversity across the history of UK Higher Education; it has been pushed, fighted, and pioneered by student leaders who are a part of these communities. Now that student EDI has been established within Faculties & Schools, Professional Services Departments, and even have departments of their own; we are still overlooking a fundamental flaw in our approach that is universal across Universities & Students' Unions in the UK - how we effectively compensate the labour of these students.
Defining Liberation Labour
The term liberation Labour' was a concept that I established within my Masters Thesis about Student Activism within HE throughout the 2010s in 2022 but is actually a combination of a range of theories around underrepresented student leaders and their experiences that has been discussed by many academics before me.
Liberation Labour is the emotional, wellbeing, and sometimes physical toll that underrepresented students have to take to create the support & social acceptance they need to be students. This toll is made up from a range of factors:
Overcommitment: Taking on too many responsibilities without adequate rest or boundaries
Trauma Exposure: Constant engagement with distressing issues such as injustice and inequality as well as having to recite personal trauma to show the gravity of the issue
Lack of Escape: Feelings of being trapped or the inability to escape the issue due to the exclusionary landscape outside of University life
Lack of Tangible Progress: Feeling that efforts are not producing the desired outcomes, especially if promises from University staff are not followed in the outlined timeframe
Isolation: A sense of loneliness or lack of community support in the activist space due to the difficulty of these students in finding community with peers
Institutional Resistance: Facing significant opposition or systemic barriers that hinder progress
Retreat of Institutional Allies: Staff from similar backgrounds or staff allies having to take a step back from supporting a student campaign due to institutional resistance.
The reason for utilising the term 'Liberation' rather than any other synonym for underrepresented is due to these students using their physical and emotional labour to be liberated from the institutional injustice.
What makes Liberation Labour even more unique is that due to institutionalised structures and socioeconomic policies, these students often have financial difficulties before and/or throughout their time at University. This means they are having to make the decision between fighting for their rights to inclusion or having enough money to survive.
Where We Exploit Liberation Labour (and its not just Universities)
We have groups of students that are utilising their free physical and emotional labour to create their own inclusion and spaces on campus but in recent decades, we as a sector have been more inclusive. We have invited these students into these spaces; created roles for them with staff support; involved them in achieving charter marks for the institution; and even ensured that they are celebrated for their input. This seems like progress but there is one fundamental thing missing, we are still exploiting this physical and emotional labour for free. Just because we have invited them into these spaces, underrepresented students are still having to choose between their own inclusion and financially surviving University.
What makes this situation even more difficult is that now the Institution is directly benefitting from this free labour; celebrating sector mark awards, policy developments, and events to show their inclusion whilst the students responsible are burnout and feel exploited. When I have conducted direct research around student activists, these issues of Activist Burnout and Liberation Labour comes up consistently.
Higher Education Institutions are not the only group that is conducting this across the University. The historically inclusive and forward-thinking Students' Unions are also exploiting and benefitting from Liberation Labour. The main area of this is Part-Time Officers where students are given a position of power and a budget to create change within the University & the Students' Union but are expected to work for free and sit on a range of University committees which in turn perpetuate this problem. This is a structural issue where the Higher Education Act 1994 cannot allow an election for a major SU Officer role from just students within a specific diversity group if the role is paid. Also, if the role is paid, they are then restricted to only two years in any paid elected role in that Students' Union. This reason as well as the small finances of a Students' Union is often cited as the reason these roles are voluntary. The issue of Liberation Labour is also seen within managed liberation campaign groups and societies within Students' Unions also.
Due to the decline of volunteering engagement due to the general financial pressures of Higher Education at this time (as well as the lasting impacts of COVID on student volunteering engagement), we are seeing these roles being left empty by students across the sector. From my research into this issue, students are actively rejecting these roles and would rather organise independently from their University & Students' Union due to the issues of Liberation Labour
If you want to read more about the experiences of Part-Time Officers, there is some great research from Martha Roberts which was supported by myself at University of Nottingham Students' Union which can be found here.
How Do We Correct This Issue?
The short answer is pay underrepresented students for their time. We have seen this starting to happen due to the traditional volunteering roles being unfilled. Where this has worked is where students still have a cocreative or leadership role within the change making. This ensures that the output is still student-led and designed by the people who are being directly affected by the systems. Key examples of this are:
Students As Change Agents (and other paid student/staff partnership opportunities) created salaried or bursary based roles where students are still taking a leadership position in this change.
Paid Part-Time Officer Roles within Students' Unions that find a way around the restrictions put upon them so that these students can take these opportunities
Paid EDI Roles within Representation Structures which integrate into these structures
Even though these are great examples, these are exceptions to the rule. The structural change that needs to be made is for Universities & Students' Unions creating Liberation Labour Policies which need to include the following:
Students that are taking time as part of a University/Union activity, focus group or meeting where they are utiising their physical or emotional labour around a part of their identity should be compensated
The compensation should be representative of the ask (preferably paid by the hour)
The compensation needs to be financial (not a gift card or something this is only tangibly financial)
The activity is putting students as at least co-creators (preferably leaders) within the space
This is a significant step change in how we develop and deliver EDI activities within this sector but this is how we ensure that we still do the great work around giving spaces for underrepresented students to create change, feel included, and give spaces for them to succeed as students.
