Living and Working Research Policies: The Case of International Scholars in Latvia

Abstract

The article examines the incorporation of international scholars into the Latvian higher education and research system from the perspective of labour. Whilst recent research policies in the country are aimed at increasing international cooperation to situate Latvia within the global regimes of knowledge production, the number of international researchers in Latvia remains low. Based on ethnographic research, I suggest that this is at least partially because of the largely invisible work that both international researchers in the country and their local counterparts have to perform to bridge the gap between policy dreams and structural realities. In conversation with scholarship on academic precarity and through the lens of interpretive and infrastructural labour, this article shows how the task of ‘internationalising’ knowledge production in Latvia is entrusted to individual local researchers, whilst international scholars face a multitude of uncertainties regarding their work lives and their presence in the country in general.