How do career scripts shape the mobility of early career researchers?

• In Event: How Does Mobility Change Researchers, Research Groups And Scientific Communities?

Abstract

In many countries, early career researchers frequently move between organisations. This seems to be due to two conditions which are remarkably uniform across many research systems and research fields, namely the short duration of postdoctoral positions and the strong political expectation of early career researcher mobility. Thus, much of the early career mobility we observe is “forced mobility” (Ackers 2008). And yet, researchers in some fields are more mobile than others, as our empirical data show. We draw on interview-based case studies and CV data of German researchers in three fields (experimental AMO physics, plant biology, early modern history). The field-specific mobility patterns can be explained by the observation that researchers not just make isolated decisions on organisational positions but enact career scripts (Barley 1989). Career scripts are collectively shared interpretive schemes that represent typical successful careers. We show that these career scripts are not only field-specific but also refer to the different social contexts a researcher simultaneously works in. Researchers enact a script of their cognitive career which describes the development of an individual research programme (IRP), a community career script of gaining sufficient reputation for being hired on the next position, and an organisational career script describing the sequence of positions best suited for developing an IRP. These scripts are strongly shaped by epistemic practices of the field, which make organisational mobility a necessary, facilitating or indifferent condition. This is why the standardisation of science policy’s mobility expectations is likely to be detrimental to careers in some fields.

Author

• Grit Laudel, TU Berlin