A Stressed Present and a Scared Future: An Autoethnography of a Migrant Scholar in Finland
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v12iS2.4344Keywords:
academic labor market, early career researchers, autoethnography, international studentAbstract
As an international doctoral researcher with a new-born daughter by my side, I reveal, in this autoethnography, the struggles to survive in the academic labor market of a non-Anglophone country, Finland. This personal narrative combined with sociological theory of Marxism brings a bottom-up perspective of international doctoral students. The purpose is to look inward and expose my vulnerable self that has been affected, moved and refracted by the academic neoliberalism causing alienation and my resistance. Explaining academic work as labor through vignettes, I present four cases of Marxist alienation that corelates with the alienation of early career researchers from the product (research output), process (doing research), species-essence (the passion of research) and other workers (academic colleagues). The findings of this autoethnography reiterates that academic labor is indeed in crisis. I recommend as researchers we should recognize this estrangement of academic labor and bring change through personal agency and ethical accountability.
References
Aarnikoivu, M., Nokkala, T., Siekkinen, T., Kuoppala, K., & Pekkola, E. (2019). Working outside academia? Perceptions of early-career, fixed-term researchers on changing careers. European journal of higher education. 9(2), 172-189. DOI: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/21568235.2018.1548941
Alho, R. (2020). ‘You need to know someone who knows someone’: International students’ job search experiences. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 10(2), 3–22.
Alvesson, M. (2003). Methodology for Close up Studies: Struggling with Closeness and Closure. Higher Education, 46(2), 167–193. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024716513774
Bégin-Caouette, O., Jansson, J., & Beaupré-Lavallée, A. (2018). The Perceived Contribution of Early-Career Researchers to Research Production in Nordic Higher Education Systems. Higher Education Policy, 33(4), 777–. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-018-0125-5
Calikoglu, A. (2018). International Student Experiences in Non-Native-English-Speaking Countries: Postgraduate Motivations and Realities from Finland. Research in Comparative and International Education, 13(3), 439–456. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745499918791362
Coffey, A. (1999). The Ethnographic Self: Fieldwork and the Representation of Identity. SAGE Publications.
Djerasimovic, S., & Villani, M. (2020). Constructing academic identity in the European higher education space: Experiences of early career educational researchers. European Educational Research Journal, 19(3), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904119867186
Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An Overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1).
Eskelä, E. (2013). Migration Decisions of Skilled Migrants. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 3(3): 145–152. doi: https://doi.org/10.2478/njmr-2013-0004.
Farhan, B. Y. (2016). Competitive behaviour in publicly funded academic institutions. Interchange, 47(4), 357–373. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-016-9283-9
Filippou, K., Kallo, J., & Mikkilä-Erdmann, M. (2017). Students’ views on thesis supervision in international master’s degree programmes in Finnish universities. Intercultural Education, 28(3), 334-352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14675986.2017.1333713.
Fitzsimmons, R.J. (2015). Countering the neoliberal paradigm: a pedagogy of the heart from a Finnish higher learning perspective. The Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 13, 210-237.
Foster, E. (2017). Academic Labor in the Age of Anxiety: Autoethnography Matters. Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies, 17(4), 320–326. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617706124
Gill, R. (2016). Breaking the silence: The hidden injuries of neo-liberal academia. Feministische Studien, 34(1), 39-55. https://doi-org.libproxy.helsinki.fi/10.1515/fs-2016-0105" https://doi-org.libproxy.helsinki.fi/10.1515/fs-2016-0105
Griffin, R.A. (2012). I AM an Angry Black Woman: Black Feminist Autoethnography, Voice, and Resistance. Women's Studies in Communication, 35(2), 138-157, DOI: 10.1080/07491409.2012.724524
Guest, G., MacQueen, K., & Namey, E. (2012). Applied Thematic Analysis. In Applied Thematic Analysis. SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483384436
Harley, A. (2017). Alienating academic work. Education as Change, 21(3), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/3489" https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/3489
Hawthorne, L. (2008). The Growing Global Demand for Students as Skilled Migrants. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute.
Helena, A. (2017). Doctoral education reform in Finland – institutionalized and individualized doctoral studies within European framework. European Journal of Higher Education, 7(3), 309-321, DOI: 10.1080/21568235.2017.1290883
Hoffman, D., Sama, T. B., Habti, D., Cools, C., Pöyhönen, S., Siekkinen, T., & Stikhin, A. (2015). Aspiration, Achievement and Abandonment in “The World”s Best Country’: Merit and Equity or Smoke and Mirrors? Coolabah, 17, 1–75.
Kallio, K.-M., Kallio, T. J., Tienari, J., & Hyvönen, T. (2016). Ethos at stake: Performance management and academic work in universities. Human Relations, 69(3), 685–709. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726715596802
Katz, C. (2004). Growing up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Khan, J. (2021). European academic brain drain: A meta-synthesis. European Journal of Education. 56(2). DOI: 10.1111/ejed.12449
Marx, K. (1959). Economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844. (trans. M. Milligan). Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Marx, K. (1992[1867]). Capital, Vol. I (trans. B. Fowkes & E. Mandel). London, UK: Penguin Classics.
Mathies, C., & Karhunen, H. (2021). Do they stay or go? Analysis of international students in Finland. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(3), 298-310, DOI: 10.1080/14767724.2020.1816926
Mathies, C., Kivistö, J. & Birnbaum, M. (2020). Following the money? Performance-based funding and the changing publication patterns of Finnish academics. High Education, 79, 21–37 https://doi-org.libproxy.helsinki.fi/10.1007/s10734-019-00394-4
Maury, O. (2021). Ambivalent strategies: Student-migrant-workers’ efforts at challenging administrative bordering. Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385211033174
Méndez, M. G. (2013). Autoethnography as a research method: Advantages, limitations and criticisms. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 15(2), 279–287. https://doi-org.libproxy.helsinki.fi/10.14483/udistrital.jour.calj.2013.2.a09
Nikkola, T. & Tervasmäki, T. (2020). Experiences of arbitrary management among Finnish academics in an era of academic capitalism. Journal of Education Policy, 1-21. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2020.1854350
Oleksiyenko, A. (2018). Zones of alienation in global higher education: corporate abuse and leadership failures. Tertiary Education and Management, 24(3), 193–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/13583883.2018.1439095
Pyhältö, K., Toom, A., Stubb, J., & Lonka, K. (2012). Challenges of Becoming a Scholar: A Study of Doctoral Students' Problems and Well-Being. International Scholarly Research Network ISRN Education, 1-12. doi:10.5402/2012/934941
Shumilova, Y, Cai, Y & Pekkola, E (2012). Employability of International Graduates Educated in Finnish Higher Education Institutions. VALOA-project. University of Helsinki. University of Helsinki.http://www.helsinki.fi/urapalvelut/valoasurvey/#/1/
Slaughter, Sh., and Leslie, L. (1997). Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Szadkowski, K. (2016). Towards an orthodox Marxian reading of subsumption (s) of academic labour under capital. Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, (28).
Trifuljesko, S. (2021). Weeds of Sociality: Reforms and Dynamics of Social Relations at the University of Helsinki. Helsingin yliopisto, Valtiotieteellinen tiedekunta. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-51-7658-5
Välimaa, J. (2012). The Corporatization of National Universities in Finland. In Universities and the Public Sphere (pp. 115–134). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203847848-12
van Doorn, N. (2014). The Neoliberal Subject of Value, Measuring Human Capital in Information Economies. Cultural Politics, 10(3), 354-375. DOI: 10.1215/17432197-2795729
Wall, S. (2008). Easier said than done: Writing an autoethnography. International journal of qualitative methods, 7(1), 38-53.
Watermeyer, R., & Olssen, M. (2016). ‘Excellence’ and exclusion: The individual costs of institutional competitiveness. Minerva, 54, 201–218.
Ylijoki, O.-H., & Henriksson, L. (2017). Tribal, proletarian and entrepreneurial career stories: junior academics as a case in point. Studies in Higher Education (Dorchester-on-Thames), 42(7), 1292–1308. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1092129
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of International Students
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
All published articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License.
