As a racialised ECR on a fixed-term contract, I found this research process often saddening & infuriating, but ultimately affirming of my belief in practising care & community-building. Massive thanks to my RA, Kris!

If anyone would like to discuss this project, please get in touch 📩

Lastly: fixed-term “career development” posts in UKHE need clarification around what exactly CD activities look like in practice. Too often we’re too overwhelmed with teaching to do research, which is needed to land ever-elusive permanent post…

There is also a systematic lack of support for disabled ECRs (esp those w/ chronic illness) and those with caring responsibilities. Implicitly, institutions communicate what kind of scholars they want: unattached, always “well” to do the job as told. The ideal scholar is devoid of body & community.

I was also struck by a participant who said those who work within the ‘Western canon’ tend to do better re: promotions & retention. Those who don’t are silently pushed out of the institution. So, if you engage in such scholarship, even if you have a permanent contract, you still feel precarious.

I could spend hours discussing the interview data. Lots of overlap with existing research on experience of racialised scholars in HE. One of the most insightful findings for me was the “elite” culture of institutions like LSE - feeling out of place, a sense of “sink or swim”, not being good enough.

🛤️The ‘leaky pipeline’ issue exists at LSE. Racialised scholars (esp Black scholars) are underrepresented at senior academic roles, and overrepresented at junior, precarious roles with fixed-term contracts.

What this data shows for me is that precarity is a racial justice issue.

Reading Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism also clarified for me how racialised labour (some people who would now be called “migrants” in the nation-state system) has always been part of capitalism.

As Hein de Haas says, “being against migration is like being against the economy”.

The govt also cannot make the argument that immigration is “bad” because there’s been economic stagnation despite higher immigration levels - what are the control variables?