The romantic image of peregrinate academicus, the privileged scholar who travels in pursuit of knowledge and scholarly exchange (Henderson, 2021), has long been associated with academic life. The wandering intellectual image is built around a particular type of academic, one who can travel freely, without ties like caring responsibilities. In recent years, however, the concept of academic mobility has faced criticism with a growing body of literature exposing how the concept of peregrinate academicus is linked to conditions of inequity (e.g., Henderson, 2021).  For many academics in modern, neoliberal universities, the expectation of mobility can be highly problematic – some academics are not afforded opportunities beyond their current institution(s), and many are unable to commit to extended travel for a range of reasons, including finances, care giving responsibilities and safety concerns.  Given the increased focus on disparities between academics in insecure work and those in ongoing positions, the issue of mobility warrants further attention. 

Binary conceptualisations have previously dominated discussions of academic mobility, with academics perceived as either mobile or immobile (Henderson, 2021). Tzanakou and Henderson’s (2021) concepts of ‘sticky’ and ‘stuck’ were developed to deconstruct this im/mobility binary, with sticky representing remnants of an academic’s past as the “imprint of the previous context in [the academic’s] identity or work practices” (Tzanakou and Henderson, 2021, p. 689). Sticky can also represent mobility that might be restricted through personal circumstances, creating links that ‘stick’ the academic to their family, locality or community. Being ‘stuck’, on the other hand, is conceptualised as being unable to move from a particular location or employment type, which often experienced by those in casual or fixed-term positions.

Changes to the academic workforce, which now see up to 70% of academic staff employed on fixed-term or casual employment contracts, necessitate a reconsideration of the expectation of academic mobility. In this age of uncertainty, academics who are precariously employed often don’t have access to the types of funding, support and international networks required to meet the ideal of the ‘wandering scholar’. Furthermore, privileging the notion of academic mobility creates an inequitable playing field for those who, for myriad reasons, want to maintain specific geographical or institutional ties.

In this paper, we take up the call by Tzanakou and Henderson (2021) to use their conceptualisations and further examine the nuances within discussions of academic mobility, particularly with reference to academics employed in fixed-term or casual positions. We conceptualise ‘stickiness’ as the affective strings which metaphorically connect the mobile scholar to particular localities, including the one from which they originate. In practice, residues across the life course create stretchy strings that bind academics to places, people and institutions, even when they are mobile. These strings can influence a scholar’s short-term mobility (such as conference attendance) or long-term mobility, such as relocating overseas. We also expand on the notion of how academics become ‘stuck’, and identify how staying within one location is viewed as a positive for many academics, while for others it remains a source of frustration. 

This qualitative, inductive research draws on empirical evidence around academic mobility, collected in interviews with research academics on fixed-term or casual contracts in Australia and the United Kingdom. After institutional Human Ethics approval, participants were recruited through professional networks and a general call on social media. Two of the authors conducted semi-structured interviews (n= 26) which were either face-to-face or via videoconference, depending on the participant’s location or preference. All participants were engaged in, or had been engaged in, some form of contract research. In-depth interviews asked participants about their experiences of precarity, and how it had affected their lives and their beliefs about themselves as academics. Participants had experience working in a range of institutions in countries including Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We recruited participants who had experience with contract research; however, due to the nature of precarious employment in the university sector, many were also engaged in casual teaching. It was common for participants to be working on a range of contracts across several institutions at any one time. Most of these participants had spent between 5 and 20 years in a variety of precariously employed academic roles. Each participant has been assigned a pseudonym and we do not report on the specifics of each individual’s institutional history to ensure their identities are obscured. We have, however, found remarkable similarities across the range of countries, employment contracts and disciplinary backgrounds. Interview transcripts were read, and initially analysed using an inductive open coding format. It was noted that participants frequently talked about travel and were aware of broader institutional discourses around the importance of physical mobility as a lever for acquiring the networks and skills that are valued in Australian universities. After the first round of open coding, we returned to the data and specifically identified instances of participants discussing mobility. At this point, it became apparent that a more theoretically informed analysis was required, and data was reanalysed using the notion of sticky mobilities. We noted that some contract positions were sticky, which created ramifications and responsibilities extending beyond the life of the contract. We identified two dominant forms of how our participants found themselves ‘stuck’: first, as unable to move for ongoing positions because of stickiness to insecure contracts; and second, being ‘stuck’ to an institution.

Our analysis highlighted that sticky ties can create feelings of being stuck for contract researchers, which can have ramifications for gaining ongoing employment. Personal and professional ties included the need to be networked ‘in’, family responsibilities, personal responsibilities or previous work that stuck to them as they tried to gain future employment. In discussions of how contract researchers could gain ongoing employment, many participants referenced the ideal of the wandering scholar who should be free from the stickiness of familial and geographical ties. Yet, in their own lives, there were complex personal and professional factors that influenced mobility and that held people to institutions. The need to “sell” oneself is reminiscent of the “idealised entrepreneurial academic self’ (Loveday, 2018, p. 160), through which the individual is hypervigilant in finding and responding to opportunities. In looking to become ‘unstuck’ contract researchers may endure financial costs to improve the likelihood of mobility, whether that be in the form of an ongoing contract at another institution, or one that would continue to employ them under precarious conditions. Although previous research has suggested that networks can be useful in gaining ongoing employment (Heffernan, 2021; Spina et al., 2020), creating such networks can be challenging for precariously employed academics. Concerningly, the feeling of cultivating the ties that hold you to an institution led participants to stretch their capacity and engage in overwork (Smithers et al. 2023).

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