IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/mgmchp/978-3-658-51813-4_4.html

From Campus Resistance to Workplace Rebellion: The Legacy of #FeesMustFall in Shaping South African Gen Z’s Expectations, Intergenerational Dynamics, and Digital Adaptation in the Contemporary Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Ronald H. Irwin

    (University of Cape Town, The Centre for Film and Media Studies)

Abstract

South African Generation Z, known locally as the Born Frees, enters the workplace amid persistent structural precarity, high youth unemployment (approximately 43.8–57% for ages 15–34 in late 2025, per Stats SA Q4 2025 QLFS), and the enduring legacy of the #FeesMustFall movement (2015–2016). This activism, rooted in demands for equitable, decolonized education, shaped a generational ethos of resistance against inherited inequalities from apartheid’s end and Washington Consensus-era liberalization. Drawing on frameworks from Haidt (digital-induced anxiety), Gordon (economic headwinds), Wittgenstein (language games in collective identity formation), and Goffman (stigma management), this chapter examines how Born Frees translate protest-era linguistic practices—hashtags, memes, ironic discourse—into contemporary workplace strategies. These include prioritizing flexibility, purpose alignment, authenticity, and work-life balance over traditional loyalty or hierarchical advancement.

Suggested Citation

  • Ronald H. Irwin, 2026. "From Campus Resistance to Workplace Rebellion: The Legacy of #FeesMustFall in Shaping South African Gen Z’s Expectations, Intergenerational Dynamics, and Digital Adaptation in the Contemporary Labor Market," Management for Professionals,, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:mgmchp:978-3-658-51813-4_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-51813-4_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:mgmchp:978-3-658-51813-4_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.