Academic Brexodus? Brexit and the dynamics of mobility and immobility among the precarious research workforce

EdTech-mediated outsourcing and casualisation of academic labour

“…The imperative to care (O'Brien, 2007), increasingly extensified through technological mediation to cut costs and outsource teaching into unprotected spaces, is juxtaposed to the persistent norm of global hegemonic masculinity for 'star' academics. The norm (sometimes embodied by women) is often that of 'careless' individuals, available to work 24/7 or to outsource work to usually female partners or paid carers, and to be available to move smoothly across the globe to avail of networking or funding opportunities (Ivancheva, Lynch & Keating, 2019;Sautier, 2021;Courtois & Sautier, 2022). Those who pick up the poorly remunerated and less-recognised bits of their work are usually on precarious contracts; precarious, that is, both in terms of contractual relations (fixed-term, part-time, insecure contracts) and in experiences of 'existential and structural uncertainty' (Butler, 2009), lacking both in security of work and in fairness in the redistribution, recognition and representation of financial and symbolic capital, which their labour status also entails (Standing, 2011).…”

Academic Migration and Epistemological Value: Exploring the Experience of Migrant Academics in Portugal

“…These significantly different approaches to IoHE show that internationalisation is a multifaceted concept possessing substantially different political understandings. Research on this topic was also explored in various ways, such as from students' experiences overseas [25,26], from the influence of globalisation combined with the requirements of the knowledge society [8,19,20], from governmental and institutional perspectives [18], and by framing IoHE as a means of decolonising HE [13,19].…”

“…To better articulate the complexities and nuances of the experiences of migrant scholars within the context of fostered IoHE dynamics, it is crucial to recognise the close relationship between this topic and the current dominant marketisation and neoliberal orientations of HE systems [8,27,28].…”

“…For academics, as Courtois and Sautier [8] pointed out, this also may be a consequence of degraded employment conditions related to the neoliberal orientation of HE, which force precarious academics to hop from one short-term contract to another within and across national borders. The literature on migrant scholars reveals mixed experiences, with some studies exploring the potential of migrant academics as agents of knowledge transfer, interchange, and, ultimately, knowledge creation [2][3][4].…”

“…For instance, academic careers worldwide were affected by the marketisation of higher education (HE). Consequently, reductions in public funding forced higher education institutions (HEIs) to resort to short-term contracts and other precarious labour practices to reduce costs [8,9]. This has profound implications for academic careers, including unprecedented challenges for scholars pursuing an academic career within this environment and under these global conditions.…”