Copyright

Diana Zacca Thomaz

Published On

2026-04-29

Language

  • English

Print Length

8 pages

THEMA

  • JBFH
  • JHB
  • JHBA
  • JN
  • JBFA

BISAC

  • SOC007000
  • SOC026000
  • SOC026040
  • SOC008000
  • EDU015000

Keywords

  • migrant academics
  • academic precarity
  • academic mobility
  • autoethnography
  • postcolonial academia
  • global higher education

Tango Partners

A Migrant Academic’s Fusion of Privilege and Precarity

Chapter of: From the Margins: Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity

We tend to think of “migrant” and “academic” as opposite categories: one stands for precarity and prejudice and the other for privilege and prestige. Going over about ten years of my migrant academic journey across five countries in less than five pages, I try to show in this essay that precarity and privilege are not necessarily opponents locked in a duel. Rather, on the dance floor of a migrant academic’s life, they’re more like tightly embracing tango partners, so entangled that, if you look closely, you may have a hard time telling them apart.

Contributors

Diana Zacca Thomaz

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6298-4100

Diana Zacca Thomaz (PhD) is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her transdisciplinary work looks at the interplay of housing, migration, and citizenship in cities. She explores the disenfranchisement and stigmatization of citizens and noncitizens living at the urban margins as well as their visions for social change. Her PhD research ethnographically studied the lived experiences and claims to rights of Brazilian and migrant squatters forming a fragile coalition in São Paulo, Brazil. She is currently working on an oral history of a bilingual (English and Spanish) tenant organizing initiative in the Southwest Bronx called CASA (Community Action for Safe Apartments).