Doubly precarious immigrant academics: professional identities and work integration of a highly skilled precariat in Canadian higher education

Abstract

Purpose Educational institutions are investing heavily in the internationalization of their campuses to attract global talent. Yet, highly skilled immigrants face persistent labor market challenges. We investigate how immigrant academics experience and mitigate their double precarity (migrant and academic) as they seek employment in higher education in Canada.Design/methodology/approach We take a phenomenological approach and draw on reflective interviews with nine immigrant academics, encouraging participants to elaborate on symbols and metaphors to describe their experiences.Findings We found that immigrant academics constitute a unique highly skilled precariat: a group of professionals with strong professional identities and attachments who face the dilemma of securing highly precarious employment (temporary, part-time and insecure) in a new academic environment or forgoing their professional attachment to seek stable employment in an alternate occupational sector. Long-term, stable and commensurate employment in Canadian higher education is out of reach due to credentialism. Those who stay the course risk deepening their precarity through multiple temporary engagements. Purposeful deskilling toward more stable employment that is disconnected from their previous educational and career accomplishments is a costly alternative in a situation of limited information and high uncertainty.Originality/value We bring into the conversation discussions of migrant precarity and academic precarity and draw on immigrant academics’ unique experiences and strategies to understand how this double precarization shapes their professional identities, mobility and work integration in Canadian higher education.