The Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) is a charitable organisation placing refugee scholars on placements in UK universities. In 2021-22, CARA has witnessed a sharp increase in applicants, principally through the UK's Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme and the political crisis in Ukraine. This qualitative study draws on interview data with numerous multidisciplinary scholars who have been exiled and are in host UK universities and focuses on the impact of exile and placement on their transnational identities, their academic identities, as well as their use of English as a second language (L2).
Some recent literature has been published on the experiences of displaced academics in the US (Blackburn Cohen, 2018), and amongst Turkish exiled scholars in Germany (Vatansever, 2020). However, no empirical research has yet examined the identities of displaced academics in host universities in the UK. By the nature of the study design, this research will give a voice to these academics placed in host HE institutions by CARA, providing them with the opportunity to reflect on their identities and experiences of transnational migration and settlement in their host institution, as well as their experiences of researching and teaching using L2 English.
I have collected a rich qualitative dataset personifying the personal experiences and sense-making of displaced academics. This dataset illuminates the individual experience, allowing deeper insight into social phenomena, bringing to light participants' personal stories, and how the meaning-making of these stories can produce knowledge. Analysis of this data will aim to uncover the meanings behind the participants' stories and develop a deeper understanding of how their academic identity and use of L2 English has been shaped by forced migration and placement.
Preliminary findings have so far revealed issues of marginalisation in HE and precarity in the academic labour market, as well as a sense of geographical mobility aided by L2 English, as well as immobility in participants' professional status and academic identity. Displaced academics arguably experience a sense of permanent liminality, an ongoing ambiguity in their status of indeterminate duration, oscillating between refugee and academic identities in a higher education context.
Bourdieu's concepts of capital, habitus and field provide a theoretical framework to help explain the participants' experiences. The positioning of this study's participants in fields, in this case their host institutions and academic communities, is dependent on their resources and capital. Language and academic identity are in this view forms of capital production which can help people attain positions in a field and across fields (Lam & Warriner (2012). In a transnational context, the crossing of boundaries creates social fields in new domains so the concepts of field and capital are useful for examining transnationalism and language use in this context (Vertovec, 2004). The lens of 'neo-liberal governmentality' (Del Percio, 2019) will also serve as a valuable theoretical tool to consider how market reforms in UK higher education have impacted on participants' discourse in relation to language use in higher education and their positioning in the UK academic labour market.
