Academic precarity and its Helvetic discontents: autoethnographic insights into the Swiss poetics of precarity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article interrogates the affective, discursive, and material registers of academic precarization for Swiss and international Early Career Researchers (hereafter: ECRs), specifically in a three-step initiative put forward by a larger self-organised committee of ECRs institutionally regarded as promising scholars. First, in this auto-ethnographic exercise, we focus on the inherent contradictions of Switzerland as a resource-rich, cutting-edge site of international research that marginalises and divides the academic labourers making this reputation possible. Second, we focus on affect to unpack the emotions unleashed by academic precarization, shedding light on the standpoint of ECRs of Colour, which in this context compose a notoriously fragile share of the large collectivity calling for change. Third, we expose the underlying ideological motivators for (in)action once institutions (including those of precarity activism) are confronted with direct claims for political change. Finally, we address the five themes of the suggestions presented as a basis for higher education reform in Switzerland and critically engage with their implications, illuminating how these suggestions illustrate the restricted scope of the demands of the academic precariat in Switzerland and beyond.