Just because you are staying does not mean you are ‘stuck’: Conceptualisations of academic mobility for precarious academics

Discourses of the ‘wandering scholar’ privilege the notion of academic mobility, with career benefits for those who are mobile. Universities employ ever-increasing numbers of people on short term contracts, and it is important to consider how precarity influences an individual’s im/mobility. Drawing on interviews with precariously employed academics, we highlight how the concept of mobility privileges those without the ‘stickiness’ of affective ties. These ties might include family, medical care needs, preferences for location, and institutional connections. We argue that precarious academics experience a range of ties that may ‘stick’ them to a place, through choice or circumstance. For some, there may be an active decision to stay rather than a passive experience of becoming stuck in place by forces beyond their control. To appreciate the difference in experiences of agency in academic mobility, we provide a conceptualisation of ‘immobility’ that recognises that not everyone who stays is necessarily ‘stuck’.