Copyright
Olga Burlyuk; Ladan Rahbari;Published On
2023-05-11ISBN
Language
- English
Print Length
280 pages (xxxii+248)Dimensions
Weight
OCLC Number
1385453015LCCN
2022361803BIC
- JFFN
- JFSJ
- MBPK
- JHBL
- JFSL1
BISAC
- SOC007000
- SOC032000
- MED102000
- EDU014000
- EDU040000
LCC
- LB1778.4.E85
Keywords
- narratives
- migrant academics
- autobiography
- autoethnography
- mobility
- precarity
- resilience
- care
- solidarity
- discrimination
- exclusion
- intersectionality
- gender
- race
Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe
This volume consists of narratives of migrant academics from the Global South within academia in the Global North. The autobiographic and autoethnographic contributions to this collection aim to decolonise the discourse around academic mobility by highlighting experiences of precarity, resilience, care and solidarity in the academic margins.
The authors use precarity to analyse the state of affairs in the academy, from hiring practices to ‘culturally’ accepted division of labour, systematic forms of discrimination, racialisation, and gendered hierarchies, etc. Building on precarity as a critical concept for challenging social exclusion or forming political collectives, the authors move away from conventional academic styles, instead adopting autobiography and autoethnography as methods of intersectional scholarly analysis. This approach creatively challenges the divisions between the system and the individual, the mind and the soul, the objective and the subjective, as well as science, theory, and art.
This volume will be of interest not only to scholars within the field of migration studies, but also to instructors and students of sociology, postcolonial studies, gender and race studies, and critical border studies. The volume’s interdisciplinary approach also seeks to address university diversity officers, managers, key decision-makers, and other readers directly or indirectly involved in contemporary academia. The format and style of its contributions are wide-ranging (including poetry and creative prose), thus making it accessible and readable for a general audience.
Endorsements
This is an important collection which asks readers to consider the diversity and complexity of individual academic migrants’ experiences as well as consistent themes across their stories which call for scholarly attention. Through their narratives, the authors illustrate the ordinary costs and brutality of borders and visa regimes and how precarity within the academic profession may be heightened for academic migrants positioned at the intersection of categories of difference. While focused on the narratives of precarity and resilience, the book also shares moments of joy, desire, pleasure, and curiosity that academics found in becoming scholars on the move.
James Burford
Department of Education Studies, Warwick University
Reviews
The book’s primary strength lies in its goal to decolonize the academic discourse on migration. While the theoretical and practical understandings of decolonial research are subject to debate, Burlyuk and Rahbari achieve their decolonial objective by employing storytelling, thereby allowing migrant academics to share their personal experiences. This approach effectively challenges the expectation of producing ‘cool’, ‘detached’, and ‘objective’ analyses of the positionality of migration academics within Global North institutions. By claiming academic space in this innovative manner, the book not only provides valuable insights for scholars specializing in organization, migration, and related disciplines but also remains accessible to students, policymakers, and a broader non-academic audience.
Dounia Bourabain
"Our stories matter: Why migrant academics’ narratives are key to organization studies". Organization, doi:10.1177/13505084241265223
Additional Resources
Contents
- Ladan Rahbari
- Olga Burlyuk
- Vera Axyonova
- Sanam Roohi
Unlearning
(pp. 21–30)- Mihnea Tănăsescu
Who Do the Dead Belong to? Considering the (In)Visibility of Death as an Outsider in France
(pp. 33–42)- Norah Kiereri
- Martina Vitáčková
Of Academia, Status, and Knowing Your Place
(pp. 51–60)- Dragana Stojmenovska
- Anonymous
- Maryna Shevtsova
- Vjosa Musliu
- Tara Asgarilaleh
Becoming White?
(pp. 105–116)- Apostolos Andrikopoulos
- Karolina Kluczewska
- Bojan Savić
Conversation with San Precario
(pp. 137–142)- Alexander Strelkov
Survival in Silence: Of Guilt and Grief at the Intersection of Precarity, Exile, and Womanhood in Neoliberal Academia
(pp. 145–154)- Asli Vatansever
- Emanuela Mangiarotti
- Olga Burlyuk
- Lydia Namatende-Sakwa
- Atamhi Cawayu
- Sama Khosravi Ooryad
‘Who Deserves a Chair?’: Performative Kinships and Microaggressions in the European Academy
(pp. 213–224)- Ladan Rahbari
Afterword
(pp. 225–230)- Umut Erel
Contributors
Olga Burlyuk
(editor)Olga Burlyuk (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Europe's external relations at the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Olga conducts research at the intersection of international relations, European politics, gender studies, migration studies and cultural policy studies, and employs critical theories and interpretive methods in social sciences. Olga has co-edited several publications, including The responsibility to remain silent? On the politics of knowledge production, expertise and (self-)reflection in Russia’s war against Ukraine (JIRD, 2023), Migrant academics’ narratives of precarity and resilience in Europe (OBP, 2023), Unintended consequences of EU external action (Routledge, 2020), and Civil society in post-Euromaidan Ukraine (CUP, 2019). Olga is affiliate at the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES), Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS), Amsterdam Research Centre for Migration (ARC-M) and Amsterdam Centre for Conflict Studies (ACCS). She holds a PhD in International Relations (University of Kent, UK) and Master’s in Law (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine) and European Studies (University of Maastricht, the Netherlands).
Ladan Rahbari
(editor)Ladan Rahbari (PhD Mult.) is a political sociologist and writer, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and a senior researcher at the International Migration Institute (IMI). She was formerly based at Ghent University, Belgium, as the recipient of an FWO postdoctoral fellowship (granted by the Research Foundation Flanders) (2019–2022). She is a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy (2021–2026). Rahbari is co-director and a board member of the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS) and a member of the board of the Amsterdam Research Centre for Migration (ARC-M). Her research interests include gender politics, migration, the body, and decoloniality, with a focus on Iran and Western Europe, within the frameworks of postcolonial, feminist, and critical theories. Between September 2019 and September 2020, Rahbari served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (DiGeSt), where she is currently a board member. In 2025, she published her first novel, Exilium.