On "Hopping and Hustling" in Higher Education: An Autoethnography of an Asian/American Academic's Experiences With Contingency, Belonging, and Shifting Transnational Identity

• In Event: Moving Beyond the Forever Foreigner–Honorary White Binary: Asian/American Education Scholars on Re/Claiming Diasporic and Transnational Lived Experiences

Abstract

With the ongoing neoliberal restructuring of higher education, the growth of temporary, contingent, and non-tenure track faculty positions raises serious concerns for higher education. Along with the longstanding tenets of tenure, shared governance, and academic freedom, as well as these tenets’ relationship to high-quality scholarship, stability, and program-development, there is increasing attention towards: roadblocks to collective organizing; depression, stress, and anxiety among contingent faculty; feelings of disposability due to large supply of Ph.Ds on the academic market; uneven access to pay and health care; and further marginalization for faculty of color. There is a body of work that not only responds to these concerns, but also their effect on faculty of color. Patton’s “Dear White Academics” (2014) and Gutierrez y Muhs et al’s Presumed Incompetent (2012), give insight into the intersections of race, gender, and class, with the latter focusing on women of color faculty. Strangers of the Academy (2005), looks at the nexus of language, culture, academia, race, class, and gender through the personal narratives of Asian women faculty. This autoethnographic paper adds to these conversations through offering a transnational perspective of an Asian/American contingent academic, hopping and hustling within false dichotomies of expat/immigrant, forever foreign/honorary white, Asian/not-Asian-enough, and underpaid/overqualified.

Drawing on critical pedagogy and transnational scholarship, this autoethnography examines how the author has sought to “make it” in an era of corporate school reform (Saltman 2012). First, the paper explores conditions of contingency to situate the author’s positionality, spanning the author’s various contracted positions in Ireland and the US over 5 years. Second, the paper discusses the role of subjectivity, with specific attention to how guilt, self-doubt, fear of speaking one’s mind, exhaustion, and feelings of disposability affect teaching and service to the institution. Third, the author analyzes fluctuating between multiple and competing dichotomies, handling bullying and microaggressions from students and fellow faculty, making sense of her transnational affiliations, and ongoing anxiety regarding feeling underpaid yet “overqualified” with looming student loans.

This autoethnography adds to the diversity of experiences within higher education. Corporate school reform not only proliferates bodies of contingent labor, but also has serious implications for those already on the margins. Juggling many contracts in multiple environments, many of which come without security or protection, undeniably affects morale and produces a work environment that feels unsafe for contribution or collaboration. As the working conditions of faculty become the learning conditions of students, the paper urges for more opportunities and frameworks for engagement and solidarity.

Author

• Diane Sabenacio Nititham, Murray State University