The Generation of the Future. COVID-19 and University Students.

The International Labour Organization noted in an early study on the effects of the pandemic on the universe of young people and work, that the most profound impacts were focused in those service areas such as tourism, hospitality, and the care chain. This UN agency coined the term “Lockdown Generation” to refer to the segment that reached productive age in the middle of COVID-19.

A generation formed in adversity

Many things change with the pandemic, the world of work, and the higher education subsystem are different. Mobility programs experience restrictions, new protocols, and a demanding interinstitutional coordination to strengthen the protection agenda of students abroad.

Graduating from college in times of pandemic can be the worst of all possible worlds: with historic drops in the product and temporary or permanent closure of businesses, the margins of labor insertion narrow for newcomers to the labor world; however, it also results in an unprecedented space of opportunities: adapting to new circumstances, taking advantage of digital tools, collaborative and team work are inherent to the generation that was formed in the midst of COVID-19 and knows how to deal with risk and overcome challenges.

Young people currently graduating from universities are the talent wanted by employers. It may be useful to keep in mind a couple of circumstances that have been generalized in work environments: remote work and the mastery of digital instrumentalities. The young people who graduate right now are better prepared to successfully face a challenging context of life and not only of work. If the sanitary crisis did not stop them, nothing will.

Surviving the current version of capitalism

In a world with many shortcomings and lags of all types, university graduates turn out to be a group with trained capabilities and a profile to successfully overcome the challenges posed by the social and economic dynamics in constant transformation.

If we consider that in this group there are young people with experience of having taken in a program abroad, of having faced adaptation and problem solving in a personal way, then we are talking about a group of human beings with the most distinguished abilities and skills to be able to get ahead in always difficult circumstances such as those that now distinguish the new world of work.

The universe of work now seems like a great leap into the void. If there is a space in which conditions today do not exceed the standards we had before the pandemic, that space is the one of the conditions prevailing the labor world today. In other words, we are witnessing a return to the working conditions that seemed to belong to the past.” (Taibo, 2020: 32).

Currently, people who are employed usually work subject to a precarious occupation: low wages and unfortunate working conditions. The genera sense of work as a liberating factor has been lost.

That is to say, work does not liberate, on the contrary, it binds, it subdues in a sort of modern slavery. And the fact is that the dominant version of capitalism works with very few people. Vivian Forrester (1997) noted that it did so with 20 percent of the people on the planet. Jeremy Rikfin (2000) says that it does so with only five percent. It is “… the limitless irrationality of the dominant version of contemporary capitalism. The madness…that accompanies this version…that is throwing out of the economy a considerable part of the planetary population”. (Taibo, 2020:34).





University students: the construction of their own account of the crisis

As if the above were not enough to rule out the current pattern of economic accumulation as an option for life and civilization, the few who are inserted in the labor market have a job with increasingly lower salaries. The depth of the problem clearly presents a reality that is faced today by young people reaching productive age, and, within these, those with university education. What is there for the new generations? Beyond the institutional of institutions, study centers and the governments, there does not seem to be much room for optimism. What is the outlook for those who are now moving from the classrooms to the world of work? Perhaps their own narratives will help build the story that is needed.

I would like to begin by sharing how I experienced the beginning of the SARS CoV-2 pandemic. In a normal day of March 2020, I heard on the news that the pandemic that had started in China was spreading. I was on my way to my swimming training, on the UNAM representative team. At that time, I could not imagine the seriousness of the situation. In addition to stopping training due to the closure of university facilities, I missed an important competition: the Mexican authorities decided to quarantine the entire country, which led to the cancellation of that event. I consider it appropriate to tell this, because swimming is a pillar on which my life stands. When this inspiration was cut off, I entered a sedentary lifestyle, I felt very sad. I consider that if the pandemic had not crossed my life, I would have liked to take the exam for the degree in sports training at the National School of Sports Training (ENED, for its Spanish acronym). I decided not to apply to that exam because it is a career that requires a lot of practice and a face-to-face modality. The pandemic came to change the way of living education and, from what I see, also the world of work. I feel that I am missing out on the whole experience of a university life behind a camara and a computer (Martínez Laguna, 2021).

There are many feelings that come to the surface: loneliness, longing for conditions that will soon lead to a return to face-to-face activities. Young people seek personal interactions with their peers. Although there is recognition of online learning, there is also a certain exhaustion of virtuality.

When I finished high school, I joined a government program: Jóvenes construyendo el futuro. This program offers the possibility to choose a place to work; however, it is limited to the establishments affiliated to the program. I chose a preschool and elementary school institution. They interviewed me. One of the questions was: why do you want to work here? I must confess that at first it was purely for convenience. It was close to where I live, the schedule was convenient, but shortly after I found my vocation: to be a teacher. But soon we entered the dreaded pandemic. Unfortunately, COVID-19 affected my workplace. Many parents withdrew their children and the school closed. The health
crisis also affected my parents’ job. (Reyes Silva, 2021).

The pandemic led university students to the construction of their own narrative. A story that tells the social contrast of the country in which they live; of the institutional shortcomings that the pandemic exhibited, and of the need to invest more in public and education public systems. University students share a very clear notion about the major national problems and the need for greater participation in the formulation and decision-making processes.

Mexico, like the rest of the world, was shaken by the crisis caused by SARS CoV-2 and its variants. We went from being incredulous witnesses to the tragedies of other countries, to living them in our own flesh, while the do mino effect of the pandemic impacted all sectors: health, economic, social, and educational. Young people face many doubts in the middle of a chaotic, uncertain, and increasingly difficult world.

Even before the pandemic, there had been in the world centuries of inequality, injustice, and uncertainty. So, two years after the health crisis began, I decided that I was no longer going to illustrate admirable women, but that I would rather become one of them. In this way, technological limitations, in addition to unresolved issues such as gender violence, have deepened the inequality gaps.

On the other hand, I feel fortunate to witness how the university community has come together, despite ideological differences, locations, tastes, and contexts, to support one another, to stand in solidarity with others. Loss, faith, and determination have united us; the sisterhood and fraternity forged in adversity will persist after this pandemic.

In conclusion, Mexico lacked only a small blow to make evident the lamentable state of things. Instead of that blow, a hurricane came that shook the entire system. The health tornado revealed out weaknesses but, above all, our strength as a country and as a university community. I am proud of the generations that have been part of this difficult period. Personally, I am confident that I will successfully meet the challenges of transitioning from university to the world of work. I am sure I am in the right place at the right time. (Silva Cervantes, 2021).

Stories about experiences beyond the commonplaces; a narrative construction of young people, in the face of a pandemic that took everyone by surprise. They are, in more than one sense, a part of that generation that graduate from the universities or who do their studies amid this pandemic. Young people who decide their future paths between forced or voluntary confinement; between restrictions of mobility and new strains of the virus. Naturally, students and graduates show great concern for the future. They do not know what their transition from university to the world of work will be like. Internet connection gaps also come to the light and, even more so, the enormous asymmetries in access to digital devices. There is poverty in many households. If to this you add unemployment problems that the pandemic exacerbated, the combination is not good.

In September 2020 there was a serious contagion in my family, my dad got sick and without realizing it, he infected all of us. We almost did not make it. It was a difficult time. So far, I have sacrificed a lot of things to stay in college. I truly hope that in a couple of years this effort will have been worth it. (Velasco, Salomé, 2021).

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