It is insightful that the army of casual and contract HE staff seeking to stitch together a livelihood from a patchwork of projects is of such a scale and has existed in shifting, largely invisible form for so long that the culture of the precariat is now a matter of serious research.
Kathleen Smithers from Charles Sturt University and a bevy of colleagues have produced a fascinating paper drawing the distinction between sticking and becoming stuck for the wandering and often unwatched hordes of casual, contracted and sessional staff in the sector.
While romantic notions of the ‘wandering scholar’ suggest that a staff member without ties is able to flit from campus to campus, knitting together paycheques in a seamless stream and never having to settle for an unhinged boss for too long, the authors imply that the reality, for most is somewhat different.
In 2020 casual and fixed term staff made up 66% of the HE workforce in Australia, according to NTEU estimates.
“For some, discourses of mobility in academia might conjure a romantic image of peregrinate academicus, a privileged scholar who travels in pursuit of knowledge and scholarly exchange,” the authors note.
“However, for many academics in modern, neoliberal universities the requirement to be mobile can be highly problematic.”
Key issues which reduced mobility include caring responsibilities, personal responsibilities or a lack of networks.
Staff stickiness related to ties that bound academics to places, people and institutions – such as caring responsibilities, concerns for personal safety and financial security. However, this can turn into staff being stuck – unable to move to other locations or institutions, causing issues for those in precarious employment.
The paper looks at ways to ‘unstick’ people who feel stuck, and rebuild their agency in employment seeking, through networking opportunities such as conferences.
“Academia seems to reward researchers who are willing and able to be mobile through networks or relocation to participate in a global scholarship community. However, the ability to disconnect affective ties, stretch them or establish new ties in another location, with new people and new institutions is a privilege that is not afforded equally in academia,” the paper notes.
“Contract researchers’ affective attachments to particular people, places and institutions move beyond the mobile/immobile binary and challenge narrow and negative assumptions of what it means to be ‘stuck’ in academia.”
The researchers say that some researchers choose to be sticky – to remain in one place – and so a lack of mobility should not have a negative consequence or connotation for those scholars who choose not to move and climb the pole (or perhaps be awarded an actual ongoing job). Equally, mechanisms to help those who feel stuck achieve mobility are also important.
It is interesting to note that this analysis of precarity is confined to academic staff – and worth considering whether the huge number of professional staff in precarious employment should continue to be excluded from analysis. The wandering mid-level accountant is perhaps is harder to conjure as a romantic notion than the wandering academic, but the precarity and nuances of stickiness are no less confronting for the individual involved.
