PRECARIOUSNESS, DISORIENTATION, (DIS)BELONGINGS. Migrant academic subjectivities in Covid-19 Europe

In this article, we examine the impact of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic on a particularly precarious subset of the academic workforce: young researchers at the beginning of their careers (between the completion of their PhDs and their first research and/or teaching contracts), who are Italian citizens but live abroad. We employ a qualitative research approach, using semi-structured interviews as our primary data collection method. The article is divided into four sections. The Methodological Introduction provides an overview of the rationale and of the methodological choices underlying our research. The second section offers a reasoned critique of the notion of “expat,” which is key to study the subjectivities at the centre of our article. The third section contains a detailed analysis of five, long qualitative interviews conducted between September and October 2021. The Conclusions summarise our main findings and formulate further research questions for the near future