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The 'new academic precariat' 2 is in the process of cautiously developing something like class-consciousness.There is increasingly audible discontent at casualisation, job insecurity, non-permanent jobs, and rigid hierarchical structures of dependency -in short, exploitative relations of work and employment.In Germany this has notably been expressed in a number of discussion events, conferences, publications, and in particular new activist campaigns, as well as in the founding of the most diverse local, regional, and nationwide initiatives of these academics.3 These initiatives see themselves, as does the umbrella organisation Network for Decent Work in the Sciences (Netzwerk für Gute Arbeit in der Wissenschaft, NGAWiss), partly as a 'complement' 4 and in some cases as an alternative 5 to alreadyexisting trade-union activities -most notably the campaigning around the Templin Manifesto of the German Education Union.6 There are similar developments which are becoming more strongly articulated in many other countries despite their widely varying systems of higher-learning institutions and respective problems, or in international disciplinary contexts, all united in the struggle against the 'precarious mobility', which is increasingly experienced as a cause for grievance.Against the background of this immense problem it is not surprising that 'resistance is growing in German universities'.7 In recent years, journalistic reports have repeatedly illustrated this, often with moving personal tales of woe, in which, for example, university lecturers are condemned to work behind coffeehouse counters.8 But the existing organisational initiatives within the academic precariat have great difficulties in getting off the ground and bringing large numbers of people into the streets.Here we see the profundity of an axiom of the 'rationalist' approaches in protest and movement research, whose dictum Klaus Japp once summarised as follows: 'Grievances are everywhere, movements are not.' 9 In contrast to
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