1. A Journey to the ‘Self’

In this chapter, I regard academic precarity as non-belonging and delve into personalized multi-dimensional non-belonging experiences. Reviewing my journey from home country Kazakhstan to German academia, I raise the issues of otherization and foreignness, asymmetric power relations, and an illusive diversity in Global North universities. While these issues often originate within the academic system, they are exacerbated by a perceived loss of a previous ‘self’ and difficulties in reconciling different ‘realities’ experienced by migrant scholars throughout their lives on the move.