Paper short abstract:

PhD studies graduates usually face necessity to become mobile and apply on many post-doc positions. I would like to present how this forced mobility is valorized, how young academics approach and negotiate its spatial and temporal aspects and how it influences their perceived sense of stability

Paper long abstract:

Modern academia had undergone transformations that pushed it towards neoliberal model of management, which affected mostly ones at the beginning of an academic career. Young academics usually face necessity to apply on post-doc position to many universities and research institutes. Low number of opened positions virtually precludes applying only to home university or within one country. Perspective of such forced mobility and awareness of short-term contracts are major decision factors when choosing one's career path. While changing place is being perceived as a chance to gain experience, professional development or improving one's social status, such huge change in life also may lead to disturbance of sense of stability - not only in economic sense, but also connected with social relations and academic freedom within neoliberal academia. Moreover young academics live under constant pressure of being evaluated and getting enough points for future applications, in fear of being stuck in a state of constant rejections. This leads to negotiations of ways in which they wish to experience being in academia, especially in context of mobility - influencing decisions relating places they apply or how many years are to be spent in a state of academic precarity., Even if in neoliberal understanding academic mobility is positively valorized, some choose to become immobile, which allows to maintain relations not mediated digitally. I would like to present how this perspective of forced mobility is valorised and approached by young academics from physics and mathematics, based on a multi-sited research I have carried out.