Fragmented Life: Being a Precarious Academic between Two Continents

Abstract

A concatenation of short autobiographic fragments vividly portrays the experience of contemporary precarious academic life led between different continents. While the author’s relentless journey enables her to learn, research, write, publish, give talks and network with colleagues from different parts of the world, she also experiences the distress that comes with precarity, financial insecurity and the impossibility of planning a future, either in terms of career or personal relationships. One of the main obstacles is finding stable housing to facilitate work and improve personal morale. The fragments illustrate how dependency on people with more resources can create humiliating situations and subservience. The everyday life of a precarious academic is characterised by complexities derived from a lack of the institutional anchorage and material support with which universities provide their permanent staff. As a floating affiliate of academic institutions, the author struggles to secure the interest of permanent staff members and to be treated with professional respect and recognition. The fragments presented demonstrate how little academic institutions and their bureaucracies are prepared to accommodate and support precarious academics appropriately.