La actividad económica como imbricada en lo social

Many of our movers had a past of studying or working abroad before applying for a job at the University of Iceland. Jarl, now a professional researcher with a governmental ins8tute, did parts of his PhD abroad at a very pres8gious university where demands were high. He lived abroad with his partner, who was also doing a PhD at the 8me. The couple were devo8ng themselves to their academic career. They did not have any children. Time was spent at the university or hanging at a local bar with friends. As Jarl said, “it’s absolutely fine just living the job for a few years and doing it 24/7.”

Several par8cipants reported this experience of having spent their PhD years “living academia”. Rikard had finished his PhD abroad while living with his partner, who was also in academia. He moved to yet another country to start an academic career at a pres8gious university before he started longing to move back to Iceland. This story is mirrored in Ronja’s trajectory. She also stayed abroad with her partner for many years while nurturing the founda8on of a budding academic career. So did Sabína, who lived abroad for 10 years with her partner before finishing her PhD and deciding to return to Iceland. Pálína has a very similar trajectory as she also finished a PhD abroad before returning to Iceland.

Interes8ngly, some of these movers do not just have a common past of finishing their PhDs abroad, while dedica8ng their lives to their budding academic career. They all did it with a partner, who was also on an academic trajectory and some of them, apart from Sabína and Pálína, did it before having children. Sabína had two of her children while living abroad and did not men8on any par8cular difficul8es in this regard, despite the fact that she was doing her PhD. Pálína, on the other hand, experienced a considerable delay in her educa8on when becoming a mother because she and her then boyfriend decided he should finish his PhD first. Once he was done, Pálína could take the 8me to catch up. Jarl, Rikard and Ronja did not have children un8l they arrived back in Iceland.

This group of movers all came back to Iceland to start an academic career with varying degrees of success. Jarl started working at the University of Iceland as a sessional teacher while s8ll finishing his PhD. At this point in 8me, he also became a father for the first 8me. Upon returning home, Sabína simply called the university to check for available posi8ons and got offered an assistant professor posi8on almost immediately because the department desperately needed people to teach. Another par8cipant, Gerður, came back to Iceland aVer finishing her PhD abroad and started filling in a teaching posi8on for a colleague. Ronja and Rikard also had similar stories to tell. Other par8cipants, however, rather than coming directly from abroad to start a career at the University of Iceland, had already been working at other research ins8tu8ons, both at home and abroad.

Pálína started her career working for a different Icelandic university, which took up a lot of her 8me. Combined with the fact that she had recently become a parent, this was a very difficult period of her life. Another par8cipant, Kristofer, also started his career working as an assistant professor at a different university before landing a managing posi8on at the UI and Magga, had a shining academic career abroad where she had made associate professor before returning to Iceland.

Geiri had a very different experience from the other movers. He was working professionally and hands-on within his field for many years before applying for a posi8on at the UI as an assistant professor. He got the job despite the fact that he had never completed a PhD, largely due to the fact that it was a rela8vely new academic field in Iceland at the 8me. As he said, “today I probably wouldn’t even be considered eligible.” He s8ll does not hold a PhD in his field.

Other par8cipants with experiences that differed considerably from others include Iðunn, who has been at the University of Iceland for many years without ever considering applying for an assistant professor posi8on. In this sense, she is not so much a mover as she is a person with in8mate knowledge of how the system works, for which reason she has decided to never become part of it in the first place. Finally, Mjölnir is not Icelandic, but came from abroad for a job as a professor at the University of Iceland aVer having already cemented a career in his home country.

In this way our movers from the University of Iceland can be divided into roughly three groups based on their trajectory experience: Those who studied abroad with their partners before semling in Iceland, those who had already started an academic career elsewhere, and those with en8rely unique experiences. Across the board, however, the most reported reason contribu8ng to a move from the University of Iceland was the workload experienced by newly hired academics.

For Jarl, the workload at the University of Iceland was incompa8ble with his new role as a father. As he put it: “You can’t really work 12 hour days if you have children. The limle one was picking up on it … she started objec8ng to me opening up the laptop because once you open it up you’re not there.” Jarl had actually wrimen his applica8on for the job as assistant professor and even gomen his former supervisor to go over it when three colleagues, who had already gomen assistant professor posi8ons, told him independently of one another to not take the job: “[They said that] the workload was horrific [and] one of them specifically called me to say ‘I heard you applied, and you don’t. Want. This. Job.’ I found this very striking.” Jarl ended up leaving the University of Iceland for a job in the public sector that “paid bemer, [is] a bemer job – and the working hours are much, much,

much nicer.” Privately, he lives with a partner and children and feels his new job is bemer suited for his familial obliga8ons.

Another par8cipant for whom the long hours culture in academia interfered significantly with family life was Geiri. When working at the University of Iceland, Geiri’s domicile was very far away, and as a result he was travelling a lot back and forth from the capital, where he would some8mes be for many days at a 8me without seeing his family:

“When I was staQoned in Reykjavik I was working from 8 in the morning to 10 in the evening every day, because —- my white lie was that I needed to finish up the work and I’d get home earlier. Then when I lek for home I took the work with me and started working from home every Saturday and Sunday. Going through papers and preparing work — under the noQon that now you are — staying at home, doing what you wanna do ... but you’re working. So — and my wife oken said ‘Why don’t you just stay in Reykjavik, you’re not here anyway. Mentally you are not localised here.”

Ul8mately, this situa8on was unacceptable to Geiri who ended up moving to a different Icelandic research ins8tu8on closer to his family, with bemer pay and bemer hours. He now lives outside Reykjavík with his wife and children.

The academic workload was also a concern to women par8cipants, but interes8ngly they never cited a disconnec8on from their families as a reason for moving the way Jarl and Geiri did. Pálína was accustomed to long hours long before she came to the University of Iceland. Even so, she was taken aback by the immense workload that met her when she started out. She was constantly charged with new tasks of improving teaching and following through on new ini8a8ves to make the academic programme for which she was working “more sexy” and appealing to students. Even when she experienced serious illness in the family or when her children got sick, she was s8ll “whipped into full teaching responsibili8es.” S8ll, she also pointed out that “the work is my passion” and that she believes she has oVen made choices that favoured her work over her family. Pálína ul8mately decided to leave the university for a bemer posi8on at a university abroad where she now resides with her new partner.

Sabína explained that she ul8mately moved from the university because “teaching is bad for my health”. From the moment she got her job at the University of Iceland, Sabína was in charge of several big courses, having to spend many hours preparing. However, she also pointed out that this was largely due to a “small deadlines”-structure of teaching; the process of having to always prepare for the next day rather than having a deadline many months away that allows for in-depth contempla8on and reflec8on. The “small- deadlines” structure did not sit well with her propensity for procras8na8on. She explained that when she knew she could do a minimally good job at preparing a lecture in six hours, she would some8mes wait un8l late the night before to start preparing the lecture, and as a result she would end up spending the night comple8ng it. In the long run this resulted in stress and a general feeling of despair that ul8mately made her switch to a very well paid 9-to-5 job in the private sector where she got to work more project-oriented. She now lives with her husband and children in Reykjavík, having exchanged the academic lifestyle for a well-paid day job.

Another reason cited was everyday sexism as well as ins8tu8onal sexism. Pálína men8oned a par8cular atmosphere at her STEM department where an older male academic would oVen comment on the way she dressed in a way that “bordered on the

uncomfortable.” When the university was carrying out a sexual harassment survey she decided to confront him directly with his behaviour. He became very embarrassed and Pálína described this as a posi8ve experience in which they both came to mutual understanding of what had happened. She also experienced sexism from women in the department. One female secretary made a virtue of oVen commen8ng on the way Pálína dressed and even gave her a derogatory nickname. When a new secretary was hired at the department, the sexism con8nued, but in a different way: The new female secretary was very dismissive of the women in the department, yet seemed very eager to please when it came to male employees.

But sexism was also described in more ins8tu8onalized terms by some of our female movers. Magga did not even get to start a career at the University of Iceland before she was turned down for a man with fewer qualifica8ons than her. As she said: “I was a bit of a rebel, I wanted to change things”, which did not sit well with department leaders at the 8 m e . When Gerður came back to Iceland aVer finishing her studies abroad, she experienced (on more than one occasion) that male academics with much less experience and less publica8ons were preferred over her for posi8ons for which she applied:

“I was passed over when the person, who was put above me to supervise the classes --- he's a male with less educaQon … I have a PhD and he doesn't have a PhD [so] I experienced it as a gendered thing … When I came back in [year] I was so opQmisQc and I really did believe that I had the same opportuniQes as my male colleagues but the reality has been completely different … three Qmes I've been passed over for males that had less educaQon than I had.”

For some movers, the lure of bemer pay in the private sector was oVen cited as a reason for leaving the University of Iceland. However, this reason never stood alone, but seemed to func8on as the last “push” towards a different career. Rikard, a former assistant professor in a STEM department, was simply not interested in his own work anymore, mainly because he was the only one in his department doing the kind of research he was doing. He started feeling lonely and the only 8mes he enjoyed himself was when he was able to amend conferences where he would meet other people with his research interests. He now has a job in the banking sector, puvng his talents to good use and feeling that his work is being appreciated. However, boredom and loneliness was not quite enough for Rikard to quit his job, but when a person close to him suddenly decided to quit academia for the private sector and a much bemer pay, Rikard decided to start looking at job ads, eventually landing him his new job. He now lives in Reykjavík with his partner and children.

Sabína had a very similar experience. As men8oned, she was very overburdened with work in her department, and the thought of gevng to work for a pay that she felt matched her efforts eventually made her quit her academic job. She cau8oned:

“I’m fairly concerned for the future of [the] department because it’s coming up against the market forces … The market pay for [people in my field] is so much higher than what they can offer their [assistant professors].”

Ronja also experienced private sector salaries as being a lure away from a job where she was already dissa8sfied. Like many new academics she was charged with teaching the big classes. She would have 300 students in a class, which she said added a certain pressure to the job. She could not just be sick or stay home for whatever reason because

there would be 300 students wai8ng for her. As such, she did not experience the kind of flexibility that is supposed to be one of the perks of academia. Combined with her low pay and the promise of higher salaries in the private sector, this was the final straw that made Ronja quit her job.

Only for one par8cipant was the pay a main reason to leave. As Kristofer pointed out, when raising four children, no manner of public salary will ever cover the cost it is to have such a big family. Kristofer ended up leaving the University of Iceland for a private Icelandic university where he now works as an associate professor at a much higher salary. He lives with his wife and children in Reykjavík.

Finally, one reason also cited for leaving was simple homesickness. Mjölnir’s reason for leaving was that he wanted his children to grow up in his home country rather than in Iceland. He had landed a job as professor in a STEM department at the University of Iceland, and so the pay was very sa8sfactory. However, the small size of the university and lack of academic diversity combined with the longing for his home country ul8mately made him quit his job. The same was true for Finna, who got a very nice offer on a bigger house in her home country and so decided to move back there with her Icelandic partner.

Finally, moving trajectories were also some8mes characterised by wrongful expecta8ons. Geiri “had some expecta8ons about how people would work inside academia, and [it] was very frustra8ng”; a situa8on that ul8mate made “the first two years of [his] work in the university … a very tough 8me.” Gerður also “had high expecta8ons that [she] would be par8cipa8ng in building something and doing something for [the] field but it didn't turn out that way.” Jarl perhaps expressed it most clearly when saying:

“You become engaged in academic life and you have an idea of what the university is supposed to be, and [maybe] universiQes just need to be honest about what sort of machines they are. They are increasingly becoming intellectual sweatshops or something like that. Whereas the idea of sort of the aloof professor who thinks big thoughts and only expresses them when he has something worthwhile to say – there is no way in hell you could do that today.”

While one can have sympathy with the situa8on of this handful of academics whose expecta8ons to their profession are far from being met, one cannot help but flinch at the fact that Jarl compares academia to a “sweatshop” – a place where disenfranchised people work under inhuman condi8ons at the mercy of their employers. Needless to say that while the condi8ons of modern academia might not be perfect, they are far from being comparable to sweatshops. This might give witness to the occasional blindness that academics experience in rela8on to their own privileges and the fact that academia is not necessarily a profession above the rest. As such, for some par8cipants there was an unbridgeable chasm between what they expected academia to be like before they started a career and what the job as an early academic actually entails. In modelling a specific moving trajectory, the gradual disillusionment with the roman8c ideal of the venerable academic, who has the 8me to develop teaching and nurture their students while carefully draVing the research papers that will define the future of their field, is a possible moving factor that is well worth no8ng. This should perhaps be viewed in rela8on to the common trajectory experience of comple8ng one’s PhD abroad with your academic comrade-in-arms at a more or less pres8gious ins8tu8on long before you both decide to semle down and have children. Some movers described the 8me before

returning to Iceland to start a family as an exci8ng 8me of being emerged in one’s