Navigating through uncertain times : a neoliberal analysis of undergraduates’ circuit breaker pursuits

• Main Author: Chew, Reiko
• Other Authors: Lim Khek Gee, Francis
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Social sciences::Sociology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/152254
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This paper seeks to understand how graduating university students cope with precarious labour markets during the Circuit Breaker summer through a neoliberal lens. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 24 final-year Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students, I illustrate how their Circuit Breaker summer free time activities and motivations were guided by neoliberal notions of productivity and technologies of the self. Beyond this, my research also attempted to explore variances across different economic backgrounds. While students of less privileged economic backgrounds were more involved with their family’s finances, their free time activities and motivations remained more or less similar to the rest.