Copyright

Xin Pan

Published On

2026-04-29

Language

  • English

Print Length

14 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

Four Seasons of being a Migrant Academic

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

Depicting events happened respectively in Autumn, Summer, Winter, Spring, the chapter collects and narrates fragments of the experiences of a queer of colour migrant academic living in Europe (Belgium and United Kingdom). The fragments reflect on how the racialised and marginalised body navigates everyday life through all seasons of a year and by connecting one’s memories in the past and happenstances at present, these fragments make the epiphany of one’s situating and self-understanding possible.

Contributors

Xin Pan

(author)
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9612-7767

Xin Pan (she/they) is a PhD researcher in Human Geography. Originally trained in Anthropology, she has conducted research at the border of Myanmar and China on ethnic tourism and migration, in China on HIV/AIDS and sexual politics, and in Belgium on heteronormativity in youth work. For her PhD in Human Geography, she was funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ITN, to undertake fieldwork in Leicester (United Kingdom). The research translates into an (auto)ethnographic doctoral thesis on queer of colour solidarities and sexual (geo)politics in transnational migration context. Xin Pan engages in queer activism and organising in both China and Western Europe, which moves her to constantly reflect on the possibilities, entanglements and ethics of conducting research and activism.