How Neoliberalism Shapes the Future of Indonesian Youth
By Auliya Rayyan
In many international development reports, youth is one of the groups in the society that's being described as agents of change, citizens and leaders, activists, the state's most important assets, and the best hope for future development and prosperity. Paradoxically, these definitions seem to be connected to a negative, fearful, and violent portrayal of the youth. When youth stand outside the system, the global neoliberalism economic system that we live in today, they will be framed as global society’s worst nightmare. Or otherwise, they will be welcomed and celebrated. Youth has become the center of concern for international development organizations, as Youth Employment Network was formed in 2001 as a global alliance between the World Bank, the United Nations, and the International Labor Organization. The project focused on employment creation, employability, entrepreneurship, and equal opportunities for youth. Something new, progressive, empowering, and driven are some words that used to portray this project. Some argued that it was about serving the interests of neoliberalism instead of fulfilling the needs of youth.
Neoliberalism is a system that sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.[i] Throughout capitalism’s history, youth have been constructed and reconstructed as both a social concept and a social group in service of the changing needs and interests of the wealthy and powerful.[ii] Capitalism has faced the challenge of recruiting new labor to its sites of production, where in the early nineteenth century in the United States, the adult was not interested in work in the industrial sector. The capitalist targeted youth, framing them into factory work with the benefit of bringing in a little extra wealth for their families. This strategy has been a great success ever since. More youth labor was engaged in the capitalist' production; a steady supply of cheap, consenting, controllable, and disposable workers.
Each time capital uses youth to further its interests, it promotes a series of representations about the youth—their nature, their current state, their relations to the social and economic system—that tend to consider the needs and interests of political and business elites more than they do of youth. Besides being presented as assets and agents of change, youth also presented as a ticking time bomb that threatens the social and economic well-being worldwide. These contradictory representations indirectly urge the international community to take action before the bomb explodes and harms the social and economic life. In this context, we must question what kind of action, or to be specific what kind of policy that the elites will implement. The World Bank and allied development organizations identified youth as workers first, and as a family and community members second. It is not concerned with the lives of youth, but with growing human capital as youth will become a neoliberal subject; the standard-bearers of a new market society. The youth-friendly policies are pretty much just the agendas of neoliberal for economic and social policy: lower the minimum wage, eliminate restrictive labor market institutions and employment protections that limit market flexibility, tackle any barriers to competition, open up free trade to create a good investment climate. This can’t be denied as every country will likely follow the agendas.
In Indonesia, President Joko Widodo has a penchant for millennials and all things millennials supposedly like: startups, innovation, and technology.[iii] He ended up choosing seven young people, aged 23 to 36, as the experts that would advise the President on subjects including education, entrepreneurship, creative industry, disabled rights, and religious tolerance. These young people that serve as presidential expert staff members are receiving praises and considerable media attention, and they are said to be the faces of Indonesian millennials: successful, creative, and working for or even having established companies. But, they are just the faces that show how neoliberalism's values have taken root in the political and economic system in Indonesia.
Two of the seven young staff are the founder of technology companies, and all of them are university graduates, mostly from institutions abroad. Even one of them is the daughter of an entrepreneur and former coordinating economic minister. Two things that can be underlined from their background and current position are: first, they are privileged. Second, with the privileges, they become the symbol of neoliberalism's success on the youth employment program. What about the other millennials? The unprivileged ones? There is only 14.4 percent of millennials in Indonesia that have any post-secondary education in 2020, while just 0.38 percent have graduate degrees. This is such an irony as the government always glorifies the importance of entrepreneurship and skill training for the youth where on the other side they launched the Pre-Employment Card program that perpetuates the values of neoliberalism. Indonesian youth are expected to learn any skills from online training, or in the other words, the youth have to help themselves, to invest in themselves to develop their employability, to meet the needs of an ever-changing labor market. With this program, the Indonesian youth are also expected to be individually independent to get a job. If they can’t get a job, if they can’t get themselves into the market, it means that they lack the skills of employability and they have to work harder on themselves to make it in the system. If they can't get a job, it's their fault that they can't compete. When in reality, it could be the state or the business elites' fault that doesn't respect, fulfill, and protect their citizens’ rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
In conclusion, the neoliberalism will shape the future of Indonesian youth with youth employment programs that force them to support themselves to get into the labor market. If they can’t access the way to develop their employability, or if they are simply underprivileged, it’s their fault. When the youth in Indonesia can get themselves the employability skills, they will probably be trapped in neoliberalism’s agendas: privatization, deregulation, liberalization, fiscal austerity, the marketization, and commodification of everything. The collective youth voice and action and the labor law are something that missing in these agendas, even considered as threats that will ruin the political, social, and economic stability that it worries so much. After all, the neoliberalism perceives the youth—all of us—as their workers.
[i] Monbiot, G. (2016, April 15). Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems. Retrieved May 11, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot. [ii] Sukarieh, M., & Tannock, S. (2008, June). In the best interests of youth or neoliberalism? The World Bank and the New Global Youth Empowerment Project. Journal of Youth Studies, 11(3), 301–312. DOI: 10.1080/13676260801946431. [iii] Mariani, Evi. (2020, April 22). Jokowi must give underprivileged millennials more attention. They deserve it. Retrieved May 12, 2020, from https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/04/21/govt-must-give-underprivileged-millennials-more-attention-they-deserve-it.html.
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