"I Can Quit Whenever I Want". The Academic Precariat in Italian Cinema

In recent years, a number of scholars have focused on labour precarity in the academic world. Based on concepts such as unwaged work, neoliberalism, and occupational identity, their studies have shed light on an academic context marked by dualism between those who occupy stable positions and those who are forced to accept lasting conditions of instability. Attention is drawn to a class of precarious academic workers subject to hyper-flexible, unstable conditions, whose negative effects are felt beyond the boundaries of the workplace producing a sort of precarisation of existence. The chapter explores how this academic precariat has recently become a subject of contemporary Italian cinema.