The article interrogates the 'mobility imperative' and its impact on precarious academics. Drawing on 40 biographic interviews with academics with experience of long-term precarity in Irish higher education, and using a Bourdieusian framework, we identify the specific conditions, uses and impacts of international mobility for these workers. This…

Despite challenging and uncertain circumstances and the perception of being tokenized symbols in Japanese universities, the majority of international academics are more inclined to remain in their affiliations. The study intends to elucidate how international academics make sense of their decision to remain in Japanese universities. The data are…

Academic mobility has been predominantly investigated as a resource for career development and progression of individuals or as a contributor to national economic growth and advancement (brain-drain/gain). Yet, despite its significance, the temporal dimensions of academic immobility/mobility remain undertheorized in academic mobility studies. By…

This study takes a novel perspective on mobility as career script compliance to explore the factors that might influence how mobile academics in a country perceive the impact of international mobility on their overall academic career progression and job options. We conduct a country-level qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 24 European…

In recent years, university research in Cambodia has seen new developments and potential transformations although many challenges remain. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 22 Cambodian academics, this study shows that the development of university research in Cambodia is constrained by various challenges and barriers to research,…

While there is increasing awareness of the contributing effect of the academic mobility imperative on gendered inequalities in the academic profession at large, there is a missing link in current research on this topic. Namely, while 'care' is often named as the explanatory factor for why women, and to an extent professionals of any gender at peak…

Higher education (HE) researchers have become increasingly interested in transnational academic mobility as a field of inquiry. A phenomenon frequently associated with 'progress' and 'development', research accounts are written about academic migrants who harness career momentum and experience upward social mobility resulting from their travels.…

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…

Over the last four decades, the number of universities in Chile has increased dramatically (from eight to more than 50), along with the total enrollment of students (from 100,000 to 670,000 approximately). University presidents have played an increasingly important and complex role in this process. Meanwhile, understanding what happens at the very…

This article seeks to contribute to the existing scholarship on academic mobility in two ways. First, it brings together insights on academic mobility (aspirations, desperations) and higher education internationalisation to show how we may analytically organise these insights to shed light on the shifting global higher education landscape from an…

The study focuses on academic career attrition in the context of neoliberal academia and science policies emphasizing the need for excellence and social responsibility in academic production. The goal is to understand the relation between the development of academic identity and attrition among those who have left the academic path up to five…

This article uses a context of increasing institutional demand to be geographically mobile to examine how early-career researchers move across borders. I explore the case of Swiss academia, a particularly competitive and attractive environment with the highest levels of inbound and outbound mobility in Europe. In line with the aims of the European…

This article deals with internationalization in the field of higher education, focusing on the impact of transnational academic mobility on the university communities. Drawing on the results of a qualitative research study at different departments in a Norwegian university, this article explores the interaction between transnational academics and…

International scientific mobility and research careers are two concepts that are intimately related. Yet, it has been very difficult for scholarship to pinpoint exactly how international mobility impacts on research careers. This paper contributes to this question by investigating links between international mobility, research career stage…

Academic and policy discourse has idealised academic mobility despite studies showing that it can have adverse effects on individuals' experiences and contribute towards exacerbating existing inequalities. This article focuses on career (im)mobility stories of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) early career researchers that…