Turkey is a Paradise for Foreign Academics Who Have No Better Place to Go’: The structure of transnational academic mobility towards Turkey

Abstract

Transnational academic mobilities are on the rise globally. While most of these mobilities are directed towards developed countries, it is seen in the recent years that the number of academics who have moved to developing countries increased also. One of these countries is Turkey. This study discusses the socio-spatial outlook of transnational academic mobility in Turkey. This discussion is divided into these four themes which were put forward by Terri Kim (2009) in order to understand the pattern of transnational academic mobility: Who moves (1), what kind of information they act on (2), where they move (3) and what influences these mobilities (4). Information obtained from CoHE (the Council of Higher Education in Turkey), curriculum vitae of academics and in-depth interviews with academics were used within the scope of the study. The findings of the study showed that in most universities, nationality, religion and gender are taken into consideration before the qualification processes of foreign academics. In general, those who come from developed countries are employed by private universities whereas those who come from countries that are less developed than Turkey are employed by public universities. Most of the academics are employed in temporary positions and the academic expectation from them are limited to the lectures which they give frequently. This situation decreases the transnationalization of higher education by employing foreign academics (macro level); increases the attractiveness of Turkey for the academics who are under the stress of academic performance (meso level) and causes it to become ethnic clustering in many cities (micro level).