How do field-specific research practices affect mobility decisions of early career researchers?

Abstract

Although organisational mobility has become a crucial part of a researcher’s early career phase, its causes and functions in the early career are not yet sufficiently explained. In particular, the field-specific nature of patterns of national and international mobility has been noted but not systematically analysed. Based on case studies and CV data of German early career researchers in plant biology, experimental AMO physics and early modern history we explain differences in mobility patterns by the embeddedness of career decisions in field-specific research practices. In those fields, early career researchers have to develop their first individual research programmes, and enact scripts for their cognitive and organisational careers in order to arrive at such programmes. Enacting the scripts involves utilising organisational positions for specific purposes, which informs the selection of positions and thus shapes patterns of mobility.