Copyright

Ila Nagar

Published On

2026-04-29

Language

  • English

Print Length

6 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

Lost and Found

On being an Average Immigrant Academic

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

In this chapter, I speak to finding a place to be an average person and an average academic as an immigrant. I reflect on how I believe that my entry into the United States academia allowed me to flourish in ways I would not have in my country of origin.

Contributors

Ila Nagar

(author)
Associate Professor at Ohio State University
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6434-3331

Ila Nagar (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at The Ohio State University, USA. Nagar is a sociolinguist and studies language, power, and meaning. She is interested in understanding how social hierarchies are represented in language use. Her current project studies the causal relationship between words and legislative and judicial action. She has written two books: “Being Janana: Language and Sexuality in Contemporary India” (Routledge, 2019) and “Weaponizing Language: Legislating a Hindu India” (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and published research papers in several academic journals and anthologies.