Transnational mobility networks and academic social capital among early‐career academics: beyond common‐sense assumptions

Abstract

Academic mobility is increasingly presented as indispensable for a successful academic career. This imperative is rooted in the assumption that mobility contributes to academic excellence because it allows academics to build transnational academic networks. Based on biographical interviews and an analysis of the mobility networks of early‐career academics at three universities (Zurich, Cambridge, and UCLA), we examine the composition of these academics’ networks at different times and discuss the role of transnational ties within them. We find that increased mobility does indeed result in more transnational networks, but it does not increase academic social capital. The additional transnational ties mainly consist of transnational kinship and friendship relations. Furthermore, the mobility of early‐career academics triggers various forms of mobility among their family members. Finally, early‐career academics can build transnational academic ties without necessarily becoming mobile themselves, thanks to the mobility of higher‐ranked academics.

Digital and computational demography

“…There is a long history of studies using different sources of data to study scholars as a population, including surveys of scholars (Cañibano et al, 2020;Franzoni et al, 2014), interviews (Cole & Zuckerman, 1987;Schaer et al, 2020), administrative and census data (Fenton et al, 2000;Shauman & Xie, 1996), and, more recently, online sources (e.g., LinkedIn data or website of universities) (Park et al, 2019;Yuret, 2017). With the widespread digitization of scholarly databases, bibliometric data are increasingly used as a new source (Alburez-Gutierrez et al, 2019).…”

“…Some research has focused on the performance and impact of mobile scientists or the so called "mover's advantage", while others have looked at these scholars' contribution to the specific fields or national contexts and the knowledge transfer that is facilitated through the experience of academic mobility (Aman, 2020;Bernstein et al, 2018). There is also research on the downsides of scholarly mobility and costs that academics bear by leaving an academic context for another (Ackers & Gill, 2005;Schaer et al, 2020) or the potentials for (in)stability of scientific collaborations or difficulties of finding a job during or after mobility (Baruffaldi & Landoni, 2012;Z. Zhao et al, 2020).…”

Disentangling entangled mobilities: reflections on forms of knowledge production within migration studies

“…The literature on marriage migration (Beck-Gernsheim, 2011;Scheel & Gutekunst, 2019) reveals another example of how individuals' mobilities depend on and shape each other, and how they are embedded in mobility regimes. Such entanglements also concern forms of mobilities that are not commonly subsumed under 'migration studies'; for instance, Schaer, Jacot and Dahinden (2021) show that in the case of mobile early-career academics, other family members sometimes become mobile themselves to support their children or spouses with childcare or other practical and emotional needs-a phenomenon they refer to as 'satellite mobility' . Similarly, Bal and colleagues (2017) demonstrate how highly skilled professionals from India returned to their country of origin from abroad and convinced their parents (from other regions in India) to move into gated estates to live near their children and grandchildren.…”

“Isn't it ironic…!?!” Mobility researchers go sedentary: A group auto‐ethnography on collective coping and care in pandemic times

“…During the initial year we had to learn about a new professional environment, experiencing academia as “early stage researchers” in different national settings, institutions and within a multidisciplinary project environment. Several scholars have observed the general complexity of international Ph.D. journeys and transnational academic careers in the past (Acker & Haque, 2015; Elliot et al., 2016) and most recently Schaer and colleagues (Schaer et al., 2021) investigated transnational ties and networks in this context. As Elliot et al.…”