ILPC 2027

The international migration of professional workers represents a substantial component of current migration flows and is the priority of migration management policies in a number of countries including the UK. This paper focuses on the international migration of academics, which is a prominent yet relatively underexplored area of research. While international academic mobility is not a new phenomenon, the current numbers of academics employed in a country different from that of their birth are unprecedented (Welch, 1997; Altbach, 2007). In the UK, their proportion progressively grew over the last 40 years, and in 2014/15 reached 28% of the total academic workforce (HESA, 2016).

The knowledge economy narrative puts forth the optimistic view that the numbers of migrant academics grow because academics can shop around countries “selling” their knowledge as a marketable commodity in a global labour market (Castells, 1996; Mahroum, 2000). By contrast, the more critical perspectives highlight that although migrant academics are not a group of powerless migrant workers, they are also far from the image of the empowered members of a global knowledge elite (Loacker & Sliwa, 2015). These scholars explain that some academics may be expected to leave their countries of origin because international mobility is embedded in the local career structure, that the international work experience may not be beneficial for the future employability in academia, whereas the work of others is devalued in the migration process (Richardson & Zikic, 2007; Oliver, 2012; Bauder, 2012). However, this research tends to remain focused on the transition from one job to another. Migrant academics are conceptualised as work migrants, not taking into account those who moved abroad for their studies and then remained. Moreover, this literature emphasises the role of individual action in navigating the tensions embedded in the social contexts that migrant academics encounter as they pursue international careers (Duberley et al, 2006; Richardson, 2009; Al Ariss, 2010).

This paper argues that the preference to remain within careers literatures ultimately limits the understanding of that same international academic career. It proposes to address this limitation by looking more closely into the relationship between migration and the labour process in academia. Drawing on the sociology of professions literatures, the paper specifically looks at how the academic labour process is influenced by the existing professional structures and cultures. Then, the paper examines what implications this has for the employment of foreign-born academics. Data for this paper is drawn from 62 semi-structured interviews with foreign-born academics from a number of disciplinary backgrounds and at various stages of their careers, all employed in Scottish, English and Welsh universities. Preliminary findings indicate that although migrant academics working in the UK are subject to the same pressures as the non-migrant academics, they also face additional challenges. These are linked to the adaptation to a different academic culture or to the use of a different language at work among other factors. Further differences in how employment is experienced emerge along the lines of scholars’ countries of origin, their academic disciplines and in particular their academic nationalities. On the whole, findings show instances of foreign-born academics’ integration, exclusion and commodification. Nonetheless, migrant academics continue to be strongly committed to their profession and draw on cross-country comparisons to enhance their employment experiences in the UK.