Spatial mobility and the perception of career development for social sciences and humanities doctoral candidates

ABSTRACT

The spatial mobility of students and academics as part of the internationalisation of higher education is becoming increasingly relevant in securing top-tier positions, especially within academia. While the number of doctoral candidates is rising, new positions are not created at the same rate, leading to scarcer career opportunities in academia and the need to develop alternative career paths. Previous studies have much focused on the connection between mobility and career development among junior academics in the STEM fields, but the significance of mobility for SSH PhD candidates and their career development remains unanswered. Does spatial mobility have any effects there, and if so, which? For this reason, this paper studied doctoral SSH candidates from Germany with mobility experiences in the Netherlands. The findings show that spatial mobility affects the perception of the PhD candidate's career in several, sometimes ambivalent ways. It shows that the experience of mobility narrows the planning to a career in academia, contributes to the informal learning process of the candidate, and expands the horizon for possible opportunities in academia. The perceived asset of mobility varies alongside the internationalisation of disciplines and whether the candidate plans to return to Germany or pursue an international career.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral candidates
• PhDs
• mobility
• career development
• social sciences and humanities

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Spatial mobility is the physical moving from one location to another for a defined amount of time, while in this paper the focus lies on long-term mobility, ergo the geographical relocation for an entire phase of work and/or education.

2 Rasmussen and Andreasen (2017) only covered Denmark with their study, but there is a strong indication that career opportunities for SSHs in other countries are similar (Ackers et al. 2015).

3 Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Dutch Research Council).

4 European Research Council / Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions.

5 ‘We are interested in life stories of young academics from Germany. I would like to hear now your life story with all the events that you remember. There is no limit of time, I will not interrupt you and only take notes for follow-up questions during your story.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant number 281509238].