As early as 1919, Max Weber stated that academic trajectories are highly hazardous. Since then, little has changed: contracts in academia are often short-term, job perspectives are uncertain, and it's difficult to predict whether and when one can achieve a permanent appointment in an academic organization. These insecurities may especially arise during (and at the same time affect) transitions in academic trajectories, such as the transition from being a student to working as a researcher at a university or a non-university research organization. With Bourdieu, such forms of a “[c]asualization of employment” can be described as “part of a mode of domination of a new kind, based on the creation of a generalized and permanent state of insecurity” (1998: 85). However, the particular meaning of institutionalized patterns of the production of insecurity and the way they structure academic trajectories can only be understood when we take into account how actors perceive and handle insecurity: What do they perceive as (in)secure, what unsettles them, which strategies do they develop to handle with or avoid insecurity? These (in)security-related patterns of perception, thinking and acting can be analyzed as habitualized social structures and it can be assumed that they vary according to social origin of the actors (e.g. El Mafaalani 2012: 212). The contribution we propose is based on an empirical study of trajectories of emerging researchers. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, these trajectories are examined as a product of the interplay of institutional constellations and the researchers’ ‘habitus’. In our contribution, we will firstly outline a practice-theoretical perspective on (in)security in academic trajectories. Secondly, we will reconstruct different (in)security-related patterns of perception, thinking and acting, based on interview material collected in the project. We thereby put a special focus on questions of (in)security in transitions in or between organizations.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1998): Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time. Cambridge: Polity. El-Mafaalani, Aladin (2012): BildungsaufsteigerInnen aus benachteiligten Milieus. Habitustransformation und soziale Mobilität bei Einheimischen und Türkeistämmigen. Wiesbaden: Springer VS.