Producing un/professional academics: category boundary work among migrant academics in Thai higher education

ABSTRACT

This article explores the process of constituting ‘professionalism’ as a discursive category amongst migrant academics working in Thailand. We animate the conceptual resource of ‘category boundary work’ to examine the inclusionary and exclusionary practices by which ‘un/professionalism’ is produced in the talk of 25 aa-jaan dtàang châat or migrant academics working in Thailand. Throughout our data, the discourse of professionalism was constructed in opposition to three key storylines which constituted the ‘unprofessional migrant academic’ as morally questionable; underqualified; and uncommitted. We argue that the constitution of unprofessionalism matters, producing tangible effects for higher education institutions and academic workers alike.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic mobility
• academic work
• category boundary work
• migration
• professionalism
• Thailand

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by Thammasat University under the TU New Scholar Research Grant, No. 7/2560. The authors also acknowledge the Faculty of Learning Sciences and Education at Thammasat University for an academic mobility grant that was used to prepare this manuscript. The authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers, as well as Adisorn Juntrasook and Emily Henderson for their helpful advice in the preparation of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We use the word ‘migrant academics’ to describe non-Thai migrants who work in the Thai HE sector. The wider international literature on academic mobility speaks of this population as ‘international academics’, ‘foreign faculty’ and ‘expatriate academics’ (Trembath 2016). In Thailand, the term aa-jaan dtàang châat is used to describe non-Thai academics who work in the country.

2 This category was broadly defined to include ‘traditional’ research and teaching roles, as well as roles that were more or less research/teaching intensive. Three participants were employed in academic roles at universities which also involved teaching at the secondary education level.

Additional information

Funding

The financial support for this work was provided by Thammasat University under the TU New Scholar Research Grant No. 7/2560. The Faculty of Learning Sciences and Education at Thammasat University provided an academic mobility grant that was used to prepare this manuscript.