Abstract
This article reconceptualizes student status as a form of institutional and existential suspension in post-transitional societies. Drawing on critical analyses by Ivan Illich, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michel Foucault, it argues that universities do more than produce cultural capital: they generate a subjectivity structured by deferred responsibility and prolonged anticipation. In contexts of structural uncertainty, especially in post-socialist Balkan societies, student suspension emerges as a rational strategy rather than a moral failure. Engaging with Ulrich Beck’s risk society and debates on youth precarity, the article shifts the analysis of student disengagement from moral critique to structural explanation. The Balkan case illustrates how institutional frameworks extend “waithood,” legitimizing a liminal period between dependence and full societal integration. This framework highlights the university not only as a site of knowledge production but also as an architect of social time, where postponement and anticipation are normalized. The study thus provides a lens to understand how late-modern higher education institutionalizes suspension and shapes student subjectivity.
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