Transnational Academic Mobility Research Articles

Careering and academic mobility: George B. Cressey's China, 1923–1963

George B. Cressey attempted to write a new geography of China, and served the United States and China as a missionary, geographer, and sinologist from the 1920s–1960s. Drawing on the archival materials of Cressey housed in the United States and China, this article examines academic mobility as a form of careering to focus on the international endeavors of a rarely recognized American geographer. I argue that the rejection of Cressey began with the Chinese Nationalist and the U.S. governments in the 1940s, and culminated in Communist China in the 1950s, entangled in political turmoil and debates over environmental determinism. This article diversifies the writing of the history of geography by breaking the dualism of centre and periphery following Cressey's career trajectory. The work also demonstrates the complexity of transnational academic mobility and its entanglements with politics.

Narratives of ‘stuckness’ among North–South academic migrants in Thailand: interrogating normative logics and global power asymmetries of transnational academic migration

Higher education (HE) researchers have become increasingly interested in transnational academic mobility as a field of inquiry. A phenomenon frequently associated with ‘progress’ and ‘development’, research accounts are written about academic migrants who harness career momentum and experience upward social mobility resulting from their travels. In contrast to scholarly accounts which link mobility with progress of many kinds, this article foregrounds under-considered accounts of migrant academics who describe themselves as moving ‘backwards’ and feeling ‘stuck’. Drawing on an empirical study with 25 migrant academics employed in Thailand, we investigate ‘stuckness’ via two narratives of Global North academics. These narrative portraits reveal how migration may be prompted by career immobilities and that migrant academics in Thailand may perceive that they lack opportunities for career progression. We also examine how Thailand is configured as a ‘weird’ mobility destination, one that may struggle for recognition as a site for international academic career progress. The key contribution we make to critical academic mobilities scholarship is to weave in decolonial analyses of the geopolitics of knowledge production, examining ‘South’ and ‘stuckness’ as potentially linked categories for North-to-South academic migrants. We argue that narratives of stuckness among Northern academic migrants in Thailand are deeply interwoven with assumptions made about desirable directions of global travel, assumptions which are born from the profound inequalities which characterise global HE’s core/periphery structure.

Transnational Academic Mobility: A Case Study of Fifteen Academics

Academics around the world face many pressures to engage in transnational mobility (TNM) as a part of their scholarly work. This includes travelling abroad for conferences and symposia, teaching abroad, supervising graduate students abroad and participating in international research partnerships/collaborations. This is a case study of 15 academics at different stages of their academic careers, located in 12 different countries and representing a wide range of academic disciplines. The findings confirm the widespread and regular international travel that higher education academics participate in; and that while largely valuing their experiences abroad, most feel pressured to engage in TNM and those pressures are exacerbated for faculty in precarious and early-career positions.

What Does Academic Mobility Mean in the 21st Century? International Experience of Young Russian Scholars and the Idea of University

The paper investigates interviews from the archive of Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITI) which were conducted in 2010s with Russian scholars and professors. The data from these interviews is used to study transnational academic mobility experience in the post-Soviet years (2000s–2010s) by young Russian scholars – the respondents of the interviews who entered higher education institutions in the post-Soviet period. The paper examines how they described academic mobility experience, its impact on their idea of university, concept of excellence, and the significance of academic mobility itself.

The making and transforming of a transnational in dialog: Confronting dichotomous thinking in knowledge production, identity formation, and pedagogy

This article, through autoethnographic narrative and reflection, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions, explores how the transnational academic mobility experiences of a Muslim scholar of Islam based in Brunei may influence his identity, research, and teaching. It pinpoints how transnational academic mobilities could (re)produce, sustain and endorse East/West, local/global, and religious/secular dichotomies and binary thinking. Likewise, it shows that transnational academic mobilities often generate ambiguous and divided spaces concerning knowledge production, pedagogy, and identity formation. The article also maintains that contextualizing and engaging (with) the specificity and particularity of place and academic discipline are pivotal in studying transnational academic mobilities. Methodologically, it highlights the role of autoethnographic reflection in bringing out complex experiences and accounts that academics undergo but rarely acknowledge and conceptualize in scholarly work. Such accounts and experiences serve as reminders of the importance of humility, trust, ethics, and reflexivity in academia. Transnational academic mobilities, after all, must not be privileged.

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

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).

Transnational Mobility of Academics: Some Academic Impacts

This paper deals with the short- and long-term transnational mobility of academics and some of its impacts, an issue not well addressed in the literature. Through a qualitative literature review, the paper aims to answer the question: What are some of the academic impacts of the transnational mobility of academics? Transnational academic mobility is academic travel across borders of states and is one aspect of the new internationalisation of higher education. It is presented in terms of the roles of academics in teaching-learning experiences as well as knowledge production and transfer. The discussion extends to unpacking the impacts of the transnational mobility of academics in relation to institutional affiliation and academic status and profile. These issues are emphasised because they are major academic issues of transnational academics. From these perspectives, mobile academics have gained benefits but sometimes also faced challenges.

Transnational academic mobility in universities: the impact on a departmental and an interpersonal level

This article deals with internationalization in the field of higher education, focusing on the impact of transnational academic mobility on the university communities. Drawing on the results of a qualitative research study at different departments in a Norwegian university, this article explores the interaction between transnational academics and their Norwegian counterparts in an academic professional community. The key questions are the impact of internationalization on the working day at the departmental level, and how academics themselves experience working together with colleagues from all over the world. The topics are presented in the following four themes: informal interaction, cooperation, language practices, and internationalization. In the light of data gained through observation and informal dialogs in two departments that collectively consisted of 108 academic staff members, and formal interviews with 34 of them, both transnational and national, the paper concludes that the academics regard internationalization as a great source of professional knowledge. However, considerable institutional and personal adjustment is required to fully exploit the professional potential of diversity among the academic staff.

Comparative education as cultural critique

ABSTRACTRelating my experience of becoming a ‘foreign’ comparativist, I offer a vision of comparative education that both extends and challenges the field. It continues the work of Bereday and Lauwerys who sought to make visible the ‘contrasting colours of the world’ in order to affect deep self-reflection and imagine alternatives. But it also challenges that earlier iteration: calling for a drastic widening of the imaginative kosmos, an exorcising of our enduring Hegelian worldview, and more skilled work in bringing differences ‘home’. It underscores the need for new modes of engagement: earnestness, humility, self-overcoming. Our time of heightened transnational academic mobility makes this sort of work practically possible for the first time, but the field's full potential to affect intellectual paradigms will occur only when we become immigrants of being.

Analyzing Work from Graduates of the Marie Curie Alumni Association as a Tool for EU Collaboration with National Scientific Expatriate Communities

Introduction. One of the key distinctive features of modern science is its global nature, which has resulted in high levels of transnational academic mobility and international competition for talent among countries and universities. Programs that support academic mobility and alumni associations play an important role among the primary engines of that competitiveness. The study reviews the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) as instruments of the European Union for cooperation with national scientific expatriate communities. Methods. The study uses the historical method and analyzes trends in the development of the MSCA program and the MCAA. The study includes systematic and functional analyses of the MSCA and MCAA. The analysis is based on official reports of the European Commission on the results of the MSCA program as well as information from the official websites of the MSCA and the European Commission. Results and Discussion. The study reviews the structure of the MSCA program, the key tasks, and objectives of its subprograms as well as their effectiveness. The study analyzes the structure and functions of the MSCA and determines the role of MSCA and MSAA in the international research system. The program’s increased levels of funding and supported projects, the emergence of subprograms aimed at various groups of scientists and industry representatives, the decline in canceled projects, and positive reviews from program participants are all proof of the MSCA’s strong results and positive dynamics. MCAA has also proven itself as a useful tool for international scientific cooperation, the establishment of international research networks, and dialog between the scientific community, universities, and national governments. Conclusion. The study concludes that Russia would highly benefit from an organization similar to the MCAA. These establishments present key opportunities to attract leading scientists into university positions and jobs at innovative companies throughout the country. The association can be utilized as a social elevator for young and talented scientists to create international research networks and contribute to the development of international scientific cooperation. At the same time, MCAA is autonomous and does not require national funding.

Toward Transnational Communities of Practice: An Inquiry Into the Experiences of Transnational Academic Mobility

Transnational mobility characterized by multiple and circular movement of people and their simultaneous interconnections across transnational borders pose challenges to the conception of a closed boundary of community of practice (CoP). This study aims to explore the changing dynamics of CoP in transnational space by examining experiences of transnational academic mobility and connectivity. Through a qualitative case study of internationally educated Chinese transnational academics, who maintained academic and professional connections with their host countries of doctoral studies, this article demonstrates the building of transnational CoPs through their sociocultural learning in transnational space. It underscores tensions, negotiation of power relations, identity trans/formation, and potentials for change in transnational social space. It overshadows the significance of physical boundaries in organizing work, learning, and identities. The study highlights conceptualization of transnational communities of practice for understanding the experiences and identities of transnational academics.

Free movement of people and capital and the standard of transnational academic mobility: Principles of governance in the European Research Area

The project of establishing a European community since World War II has been further advanced by adding - besides the four freedoms of free movement of goods, persons, services and capital - a fifth freedom – the free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology – that intends to promote community building at the level of higher education and research and by creating of a European Research Area (ERA). Based on a study of academic careers of postdocs in Switzerland and secondary data, the paper aims to analyse the key governing principles implied in the standard of transnational academic mobility of ‘human capital’ as well as the experiences of individual researchers in coordinating their interests and lives in this context. We refer to the theoretical framework of the economics of conventions and regimes of engagements by Boltanski and Thévenot. We show that the policies, values and norms of the ERA and the standard of geographic mobility are, at their core, based on four conventions – industry, market, project and fame. This arrangement forces researchers to establish themselves as academic self-entrepreneurs in the knowledge market. In consequence, the mobility requirement of the ERA governance regime makes it difficult for individuals to engage in an individual plan, in familiarity and in exploration.

Globalization and Transnational Academic Mobility: The Experiences of Chinese Academic Returnees by Qiongqiong Chen; Return Migration Decisions: A Study on Highly Skilled Chinese in Japan by Ruth Achenbach

Globalization and Transnational Academic Mobility: The Experiences of Chinese Academic Returnees by Qiongqiong Chen; Return Migration Decisions: A Study on Highly Skilled Chinese in Japan by Ruth Achenbach

Vulnerability, gender and resistance in transnational academic mobility

Focusing on Tanzanian and Mozambican PhD students funded by Swedish development aid, this article investigates how everyday academic work life is gendered in Sweden and in the students’ home academic departments. In particular, it focuses on the role of ‘important others’, such as international donors, universities, colleagues and family, in enhancing or alleviating vulnerability and how this shifts across spatial contexts. Integral to this is exploring how obstacles are managed and negotiated by PhD students, and how they articulate capability and therefore resist a position as a victim. The results indicate the glonacality of vulnerability as something that stretches over institutional and national boundaries, and how vulnerability can be (re)produced at local university level despite the good intentions of donors and universities operating ata global level. In addition,a translocational and intersectional perspective highlights how situations of vulnerability are gendered and radicalised differently in different academic contexts.

Nomadic political ontology and transnational academic mobility

ABSTRACTTransnational academic mobility is often characterized in relation to terms such as ‘brain drain’, ‘brain gain’, or ‘brain circulation’ – terms that isolate researchers’ minds from their bodies, while saying nothing about their political identities as foreign nationals. In this paper, I explore the possibilities of a more ‘nomadic political ontology’, where the body is ‘multifunctional and complex, a transformer of flows and energies, affects, desires and imaginings’ (p. 25). In this sense, academic mobility is not only the outcome of national innovation and economic competitiveness strategies, but also sets the conditions for epistemic and ontological change at the level of the individual. In this paper, I explore a personal account of the nomadic political ontology of academic mobility to exemplify the interrelationships between nationalism, academic belonging and transnationalism. My experiences as a transnational subject affect the stability and scope of my work as a policy-oriented researcher who studies the academic profession and the internationalization of higher education. My positionality in relation to my research focus is likely not unique to the field of higher education studies or educational research more broadly, which permits a wider applicability of this exploration beyond personal narrative and a particular national context. This personal reflection, guided by nomadic theory and post-structural possibilities, offers a viewpoint of the academic profession beyond the standard mobility discourse.

A Comparative Study Examining Academic Cohorts with Transnational Migratory Intentions Towards Canada and Australia

AbstractThis research examines the issue of transnational academic mobility of academic staff, those choosing to migrate to higher education institutions in different countries as part of their career development, and performs a comparative study between the characteristics of academics examining Australia as a possible migratory destination with those considering Canada. A combination of Google Analytics and two online questionnaires, running in parallel for a period of 12 months, were employed in capturing a range of rich primary quantitative and qualitative research data. Quantitative web analytics data is analysed to locate the geographic origins of migratory interest, with qualitative survey data providing further insight into the academics' background, qualifications, disciplines and reasons for wanting to migrate. When combined, this mixed‐method approach is able to utilise the merged data to develop a detailed profile of academics with migratory intentions towards Australia and Canada, enabling comparisons between the two cohorts to be made.

Mobility, formation and development of the academic profession in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in East and South East Asia

ABSTRACTThe academic profession contributes to shaping the capacity and identity of higher education systems. In East and Southeast Asia, there is a need for further discussion on the regional identity characteristics of the academic profession to account for its multiple origins and national and international dimensions. Data from two large-scale comparative surveys and secondary sources are used to investigate the role of international mobility in the formation and development of East and Southeast Asian academics in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Based on Kim and Locke's [2010. “Transnational Academic Mobility and the Academic Profession.” In Higher Education and Society: A Research Report. London: CHERI, Open University] framework, patterns of academic mobility are examined in relation to the formation and development of higher education systems. The analysis shows mixed trends in the international flow of academics and the formation of the region's academic profession in relation to more or less independent or colonial historical backgrounds. Recent globalisation and regionalisation initiatives seem likely to transform the heterogeneous identities of the region's academic profession.

Talent Mobility and the Shifting Geographies of Latourian Knowledge Hubs

AbstractThis paper outlines how the mobility of academic talent as a significant dimension of highly skilled migration has impacted on the formation and shifting of global knowledge centres. By conceptualising talent mobility as an integral part of multifold mobilisation processes in Latourian centres of calculation, the paper aims to contribute to an ongoing development of the theoretical resources underpinning migration studies. Using Latour's concept, it examines two case studies on the global circulation of researchers and academics in the 20th century to discuss what their insights imply for future geographies of knowledge production. The analysis shows how academic mobility from and to Europe has contributed to the emergence and reinforcement of an Anglo‐American hegemony in science and higher education since the early 20th century. Based on these historical experiences, it is argued that the recent increase in transnational academic mobility from and to Asia‐Pacific indicates future changes in the global geographies of knowledge production by shifting the emphasis from transatlantic to transpacific knowledge flows. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Cultural diversity and the imagined community of the global academy

Transnational academic mobility and the ongoing push towards “internationalization” together raise challenges for the cultural climate of today's universities. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of supervisors of research degrees in an Australian university in which “internationalization” and “academic mobility” apply to supervisors as much as to students. The concepts of the imagined community and cosmopolitanism are employed to interpret a series of one-on-one and group interviews conducted with international academic staff, conversations which reported surprisingly untroubled negotiation of cultural difference. Using the insights provided by the concepts of “imagined community” and “cosmopolitanism”, we investigate the mechanisms mobilized by these supervisors in apparently backgrounding cultural diversity in the workplace, and consider the implications of the academic subjectivities they perform.

Mobilising the elective diaspora: US–German academic exchanges since 1945

This article responds to recent calls by geographers for more critical, non‐essentialist and flexible conceptualisations of diaspora by developing the notion of an ‘elective diaspora’. This concept is elaborated using the case study of a specific knowledge diaspora, namely visiting researchers from the USA in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), who were funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a research agency re‐established by the FRG in 1953. The analysis shows how the Humboldt programmes for transnational academic mobility and collaboration drew disproportionately on US‐based academics with biographical ties to German‐speaking central Europe, which has contributed to the proliferation of US–German knowledge networks in the post‐war period and prompts us to reconsider existing notions of diaspora in two ways. First, we emphasise the nuances of the researchers' emotional attachment to German language and culture. We point out that this cannot only be caused by biographical ties through birth and ancestry but also by other family relations, partnerships, friendships, work/living experiences, language skills and cultural knowledge. Second, we stress the elective nature of diasporic identities and belonging by emphasising that individuals can choose whether they wish to support diasporic networks of one or more communities and cultures they feel connected to. We suggest that this civic rather than ‘ethno’‐territorial understanding of diasporic networks has wider relevance for theorisations of diaspora, for studies of transnational mobility and knowledge transfer, and for university and public policies seeking to attract talent from abroad.