ABSTRACT
The immiseration of work inside the University is an ongoing process, immanent to the loss of autonomy over the conditions of that work. Inside the University, work is re-engineered through competition, performance management and rankings. The demand that academic work becomes valuable leads to cycles of innovation in the technical make-up of academic work and the time allotted to it. Speed-up and proletarization follow, with an increase in precarious employment, casualization, intersectional injustice, chronic overwork and so on. The struggle against immiseration is for self-actualization, as a movement of dignity and for humane values. Here, the struggle against immiserating work is a struggle for an autonomous life.
