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Locked out, locked in and stuck: exploring migrant academics’ experiences of moving to the UK

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Abstract

Current understanding of international academic mobility tends to view migrant academics as career-oriented actors who can follow opportunities across borders with relative ease. This paper offers a more nuanced reading of international mobility in academia by analysing how the professional context influences migrant academics’ decisions to come to and remain in the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on data from 62 semi-structured interviews with foreign-born academics employed in the UK, the paper argues that the availability of (relatively) good-quality employment shapes international academic mobility more than country preferences. However, academics may become ‘stuck’ in the country of residence even when employment conditions deteriorate, not only because they are gradually tracked into country’s higher education system and culture but also because they lose the credentials, work experience and networks that may be needed to make another international move. This paper therefore shows that ‘stickiness’ in international mobility involves not only being ‘locked into’ a country but also being ‘locked out’ of another, and in so doing contributes to knowledge about the ways in which migrant academics become stuck whilst working abroad.

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Notes

  1. Literature has used the term ‘international academic mobility’ inconsistently. Some, for example, have adopted this term to discuss the migration of both students and faculty (e.g. Bilecen and Van Mol 2017; Leung 2017). This paper, however, views ‘international academic mobility’ as international migration of doctoral candidates and academics, in line with the conceptualisation in Musselin (2004), Lee and Kuzhabekova (2018) and Ortiga et al. (2018) among others.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Charikleia Tzanakou, Dr Emily Henderson, Dr Tricia Tooman and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier drafts of this paper. The author is also thankful to Dr Shiona Chillas for her intellectual contribution to, and supervision of, the doctoral project from which this article is drawn.

Funding

This work was supported by the 600th Anniversary PhD Scholarship provided by the School of Management, University of St Andrews.

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  1. School of Business, Law and Social Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee, UK

    Toma Pustelnikovaite

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Correspondence to Toma Pustelnikovaite.

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Pustelnikovaite, T. Locked out, locked in and stuck: exploring migrant academics’ experiences of moving to the UK. High Educ 82, 783–797 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00640-0

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