Neoliberal Hegemony, Neoliberal Reforms of Education in Italy, Student Organizations and their Protests: A Case Study

This paper is aimed at assessing the nexus between the neoliberalization of education policies in Italy and the opposition to them of student groups and organizations, in the aftermath of the global economic crises. This theoretical and empirical study aims to show the main characteristics of the neoliberal education policies, starting from an overview of the literature on neoliberalism and analyzing then the main features of the New Public Management reforms developed within the processes of neoliberalization. Thus, the empirical case-study focuses on three student organizations and their protests against the neoliberal reforms of education, in the context of an “ecology” of policies constituted by the implementation of workfare and austerity programs and the transformations of the Welfare. The empirical observations of these student organizations mobilizations, along with the analysis of the interviews conducted in the fieldwork, and of the documents they have produced, support the findings of this research.