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Working Within the Aspiring Center: Professional Status and Mobilities Among Migrant Faculty in Singapore

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Abstract

This paper investigates the migration of Asia-born academics from traditional centers in the West to Singapore, a rapidly developing education hub in Southeast Asia. We argue that such movement can be seen as a form of quasi-return, where migrant faculty look for places where they can be “close enough” to aging parents and family, while working in an institution that is “good enough” to continue research work. This position leads to conflicting notions of social mobility, when defined in terms of professional prestige and status. While interviewees perceived their move to Singapore as a form of upward mobility when compared to colleagues within their home countries, they simultaneously worried about their downward mobility compared to peers who had remained in the West. Such perceptions shape their decision to leave Singapore in the future, reinforcing current university hierarchies, where institutions in the USA and Europe continue to dominate notions of academic prestige.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore, under Grant SRIE 023. Any opinions, findings, conclusions and/or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Singapore National Research Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Alice and Peter Tan, National University of Singapore, 8 College Avenue East, #B1-50, Singapore, 138615, Singapore

    Yasmin Y. Ortiga

  2. Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive, Singapore, 637332, Singapore

    Meng-Hsuan Chou & Jue Wang

  3. Faculty of the Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Gunjan Sondhi

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  1. Yasmin Y. Ortiga
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  2. Meng-Hsuan Chou
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  3. Gunjan Sondhi
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  4. Jue Wang
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Correspondence to Yasmin Y. Ortiga.

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Ortiga, Y.Y., Chou, MH., Sondhi, G. et al. Working Within the Aspiring Center: Professional Status and Mobilities Among Migrant Faculty in Singapore. High Educ Policy 32, 149–166 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-017-0078-0

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