The Changing Face of Academia: Analysing the Interplay Between Career Structures and Geographical Mobility

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

Abstract

My research aims at understanding the growing (Powell, 2015) yet heterogeneous (Franzoni et al, 2012) phenomenon of academic mobility and internationalisation in relation to the changing structure and de-standardisation of careers in academia (Enders & Musselin, 2008).

What impact do recent organizational changes - such as New Public Management - have on the mobility patterns of early-career researchers and, reciprocally, how does geographical mobility contribute to transforming career structures and individuals trajectories? How is mobility built into early career researchers' scripts across different institutional, disciplinary and international environments?

I examine the complex phenomenon of mobility through the life course and the work market perspectives. I focus on the cases of two contrasted academic systems: France, where the academic system has been traditionally based on local and intra-national recruitment, and Switzerland, where the academic system is highly internationalised with 50% of the overall academic workforce coming from abroad, and where local researchers perceive a ‘postdoc abroad’ as an inescapable requirement.

Based on a two-year ethnography of various institutional structures that contribute to foster and define academic norms, such as appointment committees and mentoring activities, I explore how institutional actors incorporate the themes of ‘geographical mobility’ and ‘internationalisation’ into the current discourses about ‘academic excellence.’

In addition, based on the narratives of forty researchers of various origins, disciplinary backgrounds, genders and family arrangements, I explore how geographical mobility unfolds into early-career scripts in both France and Switzerland.

Author

• Marie Sautier, University of Lausanne