Katharina Bodirsky, Universität Konstanz
katharina.bodirsky(at)uni-konstanz.de

Based on a discussion of the Turkish case, the presentation explores the potentials and limits of responses from within the national and international academia to the precariousness produced for academics by increasingly authoritarian politics. It examines here, first, an oppositional “politics of voice” that is directed at the state elite in forms such as petitions and protests in view of its role in a context where there is no political will for compromise and negotiation; second, a “politics of connectivity” that seeks to set up networks of solidarity both within and across state borders within contexts, however, that are characterized by structures of precarity of different sorts; and third, a “politics of knowledge” that operates within an increasingly anti-intellectual and illiberal climate. The presentation aims primarily at opening up informed questions for comparative discussion of political strategy rather than presenting conclusive results.

Deniz Yonucu, Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation, Post-Doctoral Fellow
deniz.yonucu(at)gmail.com

Within the space opened up by feminist critique and critical race studies, today more and more scholars, reflecting on their own experiences, elaborate on various forms of structural racism, gender and class bias (re)produced in an ever-precarious academia. Building on the literature on the experiences of women of color, who are in the most precarious condition in academia, and focusing on the experiences of the female academics of peace from Turkey, who found a temporary refuge in German universities, this paper elaborates on the racialized and gendered encounters between German academics and academics of peace from Turkey. Questioning the feelings triggered in the context of this uneasy encounter and pointing out possible forms of exclusionary practices these feelings may give rise to, the paper sheds light into the interpellative force of German academia that bestows the female academics from Turkey a new identity—being women of color. To put it differently, by elaborating on the power relations that manifest itself in the encounters between German academia’s new female refugee seekers and German academics, this paper attempts to shed lightinto the racialized and gendered relations reproduced in German academia.

Aimilia Voulvouli, Post-doctoral Fellow, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
a.voulvouli(at)uclmail.net

During the last 7 years, Greek Academia has been subjected to severe austerity measures, as a result of the austerity packages also known as MOUs (Memoranda of Understanding) between Greece and its creditors. As a result a big percentage of adjunct faculty were laid off, salaries in academia were cut by almost 40% and research funding was minimized. The harsh reality, forced many of the country’s academics, researchers and aspiring Ph.D holders to migrate abroad in search for a job within academia. One of the receiving countries was Turkey which, despite its competitive authoritarian system, with its until recently booming higher education sector and the incentives to foreign faculty, attracted not only Greek but many international faculty. This came to a halt last year after the attempted coup when political insecurity discouraged foreign faculty to apply but also forced many academics out of the country. The proposed presentation attempts to shed light to an often-overlooked group of academics affected by policies such as the ones addressed by the seminar: that of foreign faculty who even though they are considered expats in reality they are economic immigrants living in precarity. To support this claim, the presentation will discuss the trajectory of three Greek scholars who sought academic refuge in Turkey escaping the precarity that neoliberal policies created in their own country and who after July 15 2016, were forced off their jobs and consequently Turkey, due to their alleged ties to the Gülen Movement (GM) because they had been working to so called Gülenist Universities; that is Universities established by followers of GM.

Inayat Ali, PhD Student, University of Vienna, Austria
inayat_qau(at)yahoo.com

Although, the global and geo politics affects, every, individual, but differently. It intensifies the precarity, according to the identity the individual belongs to, such as geographical, national, religious, academic, economic, and so forth. Here, I would like to present myself as a case to share the experiences of and exposures to. My visa was deferred to attend the anthropological conferences by the United Kingdom in 2015, and Canada in 2017. The deferment raised various questions into my mind, that despite doing a PhD in Vienna, and having EASA travel grant for UK, what are the responsible reasons, perhaps because my national identity is Pakistani. Moreover, the situation at home country is also challenging to be an ‘anthropologist’. During my graduation in anthropology, most of fellow colleagues from other departments used to say that ‘anthropologists are atheists’ and ‘anthropological research is like farming and cutting the grass’. In this regard, one professor of anthropology was ‘forced’ to resign and end the contract from two universities. The ‘blasphemy’ sword in Pakistan always hangs over your head, especially if you are an anthropologist and ‘label of Pakistani’ hampers you in abroad. Both perspectives push you in the precarious situations.

Esra Dabağcı, Ankara Academy of Solidarity. Department of Sociology, Ankara University, Turkey
esradabagci(at)gmail.com

This presentation aims to connect an autobiographical account as a dismissed junior academic to wider political environment in Turkey. The coup attempt on July 15, 2016 was seen as an “opportunity” by Erdoğan to declare state of emergency and to expel many left-wing academics against the human right violations in Kurdish cities. The academics were purged by statutory decrees, forced to resign/to retire and their contacts were terminated. Although “academic”, as an umbrella term, is perhaps capable of defining many forms of positions within universities; it also overshadows the inequalities within the academy and among the academics, and how AKP government appropriate and recreate these inequalities. Besides endangering autonomy of universities, the state of emergency also functions directly as a machine of precarity and neoliberalization by reorganizing the working conditions and contracts through decrees and oppressing the opposition arising against them. As one of the people lost her job by a decree, which became an ordinary incident in Turkey, I intend to depict what being a junior academic, namely a research assistant, means within Turkish academia before and after the coup attempt, through my own experience.

Vinicius Kauê Ferreira, PhD Student at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris, France)
vinikaue(at)gmail.com

As “academic mobility” becomes one of the watchwords of contemporary scientific policies, universities and research institutions in the global North adopt new strategies to attract “talented” foreign scholars. In this context, in which historical intellectual circulations between Europe and its ancient colonies are strengthened and resiginified, a growing number of South Asian researchers are recruited as postdoctoral fellows at European institutions. At the same time, European institutions are reshaped by pervasive managerial practices based on the notions of “flexibility” and “accountability”, which are translated into the proliferation of short-term contracts as the dominant model for the recruiting of their academic staff. Those “academic workers” are often postdoctoral fellows. Drawing on an ongoing PhD research on South Asian social scientists trying to build an academic career in Europe, with a special focus on the German context career, this paper explores the experience of continuous and indefinite mobility amongst South Asian social scientists who seeks to build not only a career, but also a life on the road. We ask how lives can be lived in a context of proliferation of short-term contracts engendering indefinite mobility. In sum, it argues that the growing precarization of academic jobs in conjugation with contemporary scientific policies of mobility has meant a particular kind of precarization of life to these scholars who are part of historical circulations between Europe and South Asia.

Mariya Ivancheva, University of Leeds
mariya.ivancheva(at)gmail.com

This paper, co-authored with Prof Kathleen Lynch and Kathryn Keating(UCD) examines the rise in precarious academic employment in Ireland as an outcome of the higher education restructuring following OECD (2004) and government initiatives (HEA, 2011a), and post-crisis austerity. Presenting the narratives of academic women at different career stages, we claim that a focus on care sheds new light on the debate on precarity. A more complete understanding of precarity should take into account not only the contractual security but also the affective lives of employees. The intersectionality of work and care lives was a dominant theme in our interviews among academic women. In a globalised academic market, premised on the care-free masculinised ideals of competitive performance, 24/7 work and geographical mobility, women who opt out of these norms, suffer labour-led contractual precarity and are over-represented in part-time and fixed-term positions. Women who comply with these organisational commands need to peripheralise their relational lives and experience care-led affective precarity.

Lorena Anton, Marie Curie CIG Fellow in Social Anthropology (2013-2017) University of Bucharest, Romania

lorena.anton@g.unibuc.ro

Drawing on my own experience for ‘becoming an anthropologist’, as a PhD candidate in cotutelle (2005-2010, University of Bucharest – University of Bordeaux), and the ups and downs of my involvement with anthropological research ever since, in this paper I show how the history of European anthropology/ethnology during communism created a ‘boomerang effect’ for all researchers involved in this field. Still in place in some post-communist countries, this effect can dramatically affect early career scholars who have to battle yearly with the constraints of ‘academic excellence’ vs. ‘academic nomadism’, imposed by availability of jobs, funding and even fieldwork. This helps creating and reinforcing precarity as normalcy in academia. I argue that even if these mix of causes and effects can be nation-based, they become more and more transnational. Sometimes they are supported by research and funding policies, as I have noticed during my recent Marie Curie Career Integration Grant. Unfortunately the consequences of precarity, even those related to physical and mental health, are generally silenced down, even if better work and research practices can exist.

Dan Vesalainen Hirslund Postdoc at the Dept. of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies. University of Copenhagen, Denmark

hirslund@hum.ku.dk

Academic careers are increasingly punctuated by experiences of insecurity relating to the larger neoliberal framework which seeks to transform academic institutions into markets for commodified knowledge. This has rendered new generations of academics particularly vulnerable as ‘superfluous populations’ that must struggle precariously and compete intensely - and late into their life - for the scarcity of jobs. I contend here that the problematic of academic precarity can be expanded by reflecting on the isolation and invisibility that academic specialisation and a punitive system of expulsion together effect. Based on experiences from Denmark, which with its history of welfare provisions provides a slightly different case of academic precarity, the contribution sketches a three-pronged strategy to strengthen work conditions and liberate academic careers from the tight snare of university institutions: a standardisation/formalisation of non-tenured academic contracts; strengthening of non-tenured academic networks through existing union structures; and the creation of new academic collectives that transgress institutional and disciplinary boundaries and which can serve as ‘homes’ for non-tenured academics.

Lavinia Bertini, Doctoral Researcher, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex
L.Bertini(at)sussex.ac.uk

“Can’t your parents help?”. This is the response, either explicit or implicit, I often receive when expressing my difficulties as a self-funded, PhD student and Associate Tutor in Anthropology at an English university. Drawing on my experience, I reflect on how elitist cultures of academia entangled with neoliberal politics and conditions of precarity are detrimental to the career development of early researchers as well as to the very idea of research as a career. I identify three main issues: first, the self-funded doctorate concept is problematic and belittles the essence of doctoral research, dismissing its practical and financial aspects. Second, implying that PhD researchers should use family rather than University or research funds as their main, economic resource, reveals an elitist culture of access to academia. Finally, the silent but daily reproduction of neoliberal cultures and politics is particularly problematic in anthropology where a lack of funding, sharpens the effects of precarity. Moreover, it shows how anthropology has failed so far to critically reflect on the modes of production of anthropological knowledge in everyday contexts. Therefore, I express the need for organised and informed spaces to contrast the many inequalities produced by precarity.

Marta Pérez and Ainhoa Montoya, University of London
ainhoa.montoya(at)london.ac.uk; marta.perez(at)fulbrightmail.org

Our presentation will address the lived experiences of increasing precarious conditions among scholars and the kind of responses they are offering to them. In so doing, we will discuss one way in which we consider scholars’ precarization can become visible and facilitate more collective responses. Drawing from research among early career anthropologists from a variety of backgrounds within Europe and beyond, we will seek to bring into the discussion how, in addition to deteriorating contracts within academia, many aspects of life—from the strictly material to the affective—are becoming ever more precarious. Imposed transnational lives; the difficulties in balancing professional and personal life; the inability to make a decent living with part-time, by the hour or occasional contracts; the demand that scholars become multifaceted individuals excelling at a greater number of tasks; the uncertainties and anxieties attached to deteriorating working conditions and increasing work demands are just a few examples of what we mean by the increasing precarization of life. Ultimately, we will argue that autoethnography rather than an individualizing method has allowed those participating in our research and ourselves to reflect critically on the issue of precarity beyond our own experience.

Sonja Trifuljesko, PhD student, University of Helsinki
sonja.trifuljesko(at)helsinki.fi

Doctoral candidates in Finland are ambiguous figures: they are students and/or researchers, depending on their source of funding. If they are employed by a university, they tend to be considered as researchers. Those PhD candidates who do not receive funding for their dissertation work are regarded as students by the university administration, even if they work full-time on their PhD research. Finally, if a PhD candidate’s work is financed via grants, an in-between situation gets created. The stratification of doctoral candidates is reflected in many aspects of their lives, but for those among them who are foreigners, it gets additional significance. While the intertwining of academia and (inter-)national politics at times becomes very conspicuous, its daily consequences are usually less visible, but equally powerful. The paper focuses on the interplay between precarities generated by border regimes and by the contingent academic work through experiences of international doctoral candidates in present-day Finland. Drawing on my long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 at the University of Helsinki, I show that stratification of PhD candidates and stratification of migrants reinforce each other, creating experiences of a less or more certain (both academic and migrant) futures.