Managing the rules of recognition: how early career academics negotiate career scripts through identity work

ABSTRACT

Due to the changing landscapes of higher education, a large body of research has studied how scholars make sense of academic identities and careers. Yet, little is known about how academics actually ‘work’ on their identities to navigate normative demands and complex career structures. This paper explores how scholars negotiate career scripts trough identity work. Drawing upon 35 interviews with early career academics in political science and history, the analysis discerns four patterns of identity talk through which academic identities are constructed: achievement talk (signalling achievement and competitiveness), authenticity talk (signalling genuineness and being true to self), loyalty talk (signalling loyalty and willingness of helping out), and personation talk (adjustment to privileged identities). Defining what to display and how to correctly embody its corresponding values, these patterns convey different ways in which scholars manage their identities according to the perceived rules of recognition. Identifying several contrasting understandings of what it means to act and to represent worth, the study shows that successful identity management requires a certain feel for the game of recognition. Involving the symbolic struggle of ‘fitting in’ and ‘standing out,’ strategies for identity work are shaped by scholars’ social class background and gender. In demonstrating how the prevalence of project-based work accentuates the importance of identity performances on academic markets, the findings suggest that the concept of identity labour may open up new avenues of investigation.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity work
• recognition and reward
• worth
• academic work and careers
• identity labour
• early career academics

Introduction

Sparked by the profound change academia have undergone during the past few decades, existing research on academic identities has primarily focused on how scholars make sense of rapid structural changes and new framework conditions. This includes tensions between academic values and policy (Henkel 2005) as well as a polarization of identity positions (Ylijoki and Ursin 2013). Under pressure to adapt to a managerialist model emphasizing accountability and entrepreneurship, academic identities have been described as being under threat (Clegg 2008), becoming increasingly fragile (Knights and Clarke 2014) and contested (Archer 2008). However, while the changing nature of academic identities have been studied in great detail, we still know little about how scholars actually ‘work’ on their identities to navigate normative demands and complex career structures. This is surprising, given that academia is characterized by a general lack of objective evaluative standards (Musselin 2010). In such ‘status markets’ (Aspers 2009), reputation – and thus identity – becomes a key commodity.

This paper adds to work on academic identities by investigating how early career academics negotiate career scripts through identity work. More specifically, I discern four patterns of identity talk through which academic identities are constructed and maintained. Defining what to display and how to correctly embody its corresponding values, these patterns comprise identity work strategies junior scholars employ to navigate institutional norms and reward structures. Focusing on the ‘early career’ level, the intersection of self and worth can be particularly vibrant during this ‘status passage’ (Glaser and Strauss 1971) as individuals attend to transition from identities and experiences of unestablished to established scholars. While this passage entails movement into a different position in social structure, it is shaped by the possibility of ‘becoming’ and the risk of ‘unbecoming’ (Archer 2008). In this process, early career academics must thus learn to successfully interpret and communicate status traits in accordance with the anticipated judgment of others. This involves a negotiation of the normative frameworks and institutional arrangements stabilizing valid forms of self-presentation (Goffman 1990).

Early career academics constitute a group that has recently gained attention in higher education research and science studies. Due to the organization of academic labour markets as ‘tournaments’ (Musselin 2010), aspiring scholars face fierce competition and uncertain career prospects (Sigl 2016). In particular, the casualization and surveillance of academic work have reinforced their status as precarious knowledge workers (Gill 2014). These factors have been found to deeply shape the evaluative principles available to early career academics when conceptualizing and proving their worth (Fochler, Felt, and Müller 2016). Yet, the conditions are not the same for everyone. Previous studies points to academic careers being pursued in highly unequal contexts in terms of gender (Bozzon et al. 2017), social class (Crew 2021), and migrant background (Behtoui and Leivestad 2019).

Against this backdrop, identity has emerged as a key concept for understanding the complex realities of early career academics. Pressured to adapt to a career system increasingly governed by the logics of new public management, several studies have explored tensions between internal and external factors shaping scholars’ sense of self. For example, Archer (2008) demonstrates how notions of ‘success’ and ‘authenticity’ are re-defined in terms of neoliberal ideals. Similarly, studying the relationship between the entrepreneurial orientation of contemporary universities and what motivates junior scholars to engage in academic work, Hakala (2009) shows that while some elements of ‘traditional’ academic identity and its moral framework continue to have a strong cultural position, changing framework conditions impel junior scholars to search for new interpretations and sources of meaning. These observations are part of a larger trend characterized by changing institutional demands and identity fragmentation (Henkel 2005; Billot 2010; Ylijoki and Ursin 2013). In line with this, Ylijoki and Henriksson (2017) point to how junior scholars rely upon very different cultural resources when making sense of their careers and professional roles which, in turn, are becoming increasingly polarized.

Although an important body of work has demonstrated how new evaluative regimes and complex career structures shape the identities of junior scholars in various ways, we still know little about how they navigate these normative demands through identity work. In part, this is because of the previous emphasis on academic identity construction as an outcome of change. However, as studies of other status markets show, identities constitute important resources in the pursuit of recognition and reward (Mao and Shen 2020). Aspiring actors within art, film, music, and writing must invest time and energy managing their identities in ways that are distinctive while at the same time remaining connected to the field’s traditions. In this article, I argue that this also holds true for knowledge workers in contemporary academia. Hence, I explore identity as a symbolic resource that is performed: as something scholars do and work upon when trying to advance in their careers. Shaped through the awarding status of those who perform well, this involves different ways in which early career academics manage their identities according to the perceived rules of recognition. By empirically investigating how this is accomplished through various patterns of identity talk, the paper ends with a discussion on how the concept of identity labour may open up new avenues of investigation.

Theorizing identity work: talk and scripts

Theorizing identity as an accomplishment, identity work is a social activity involving others and consists of ongoing processes of signification (Snow and Anderson 1987). For an identity to be established or verified, individuals must use signs recognized by desired audiences. This means that identification, of ourselves and of others, ‘is something that we do.’ It also means that ‘we may get it wrong’ (Jenkins 2014, 2). This vulnerable dynamic is captured in concepts such as ‘self-presentation’ and ‘impression management,’ referring to the ways individuals ‘adapt the public display of their identities in order to create a particular image, or desirable impression, upon the audiences they encounter’ (Scott 2015, 82). However, audiences continuously evaluate individuals’ performances and may reject or discredit identity claims. Identity work is therefore a reflexive activity in which individuals consider the anticipated and looked-for responses of others (Goffman 1990, 78–81).

Conceptualized as part of the generic process of identity work, identity talk is the verbal constructions of desired identities in relation to others (Snow and Anderson 1987). Analytically, the focus is on ‘the role of language in providing reasons and explanations for action, either prospectively or retrospectively, in line with the norms and values of the audience’ (Scott 2015, 67). Hence, identity talk is not about rendering ‘facts’ about objective positions. Rather, it encompasses a variety of rhetoric discursive practices that ‘reflects actors’ perception of social order and is based on interpretations of current situations, themselves, and others’ (Hunt and Benford 1994, 492). As such, the notion of identity talk adopts a relational understanding of agency (Snow and Anderson 1987). Acknowledging that practices of identity work are always embedded in and entangled with normative codes of conduct (Goffman 1990, 244–6), it illustrates how individuals intersubjectively construct meaningful identities and how they try to manage them in a contextually appropriate manner.

This paper analyses how academic identities are accomplished through talks about possibilities and limitations for recognition. In describing how they navigate institutional norms and reward structures, aspiring scholars engage in verbal constructions of desired and non-desired identities. This includes how they negotiate positive and negative status traits in accordance with the anticipated judgment of others. In this form of talk, the concept of ‘others’ is general in nature and refers to any actor whose judgement is deemed important for the valuation of academics and their careers. Hence, this form of talk has a directionality, conveying how scholars connect events and expectations in a temporal order leading towards a desirable end result. This is an anticipating process which contains a mediation between social institutions and individual actors. I conceptualize this form of anticipation as a negotiation of career scripts. In status markets, the relationship between those who perform and their audience constitutes one of the bases for valuation (Aspers 2009). Understood as collective representations that are subject to individual interpretation (Barley 1989), career scripts provide scholars with definitions of who is worthy and who is not, generating guidelines for how to behave in order to be positively evaluated by others. Consequently, examining how scholars negotiate career scripts through identity work provides an analytical opportunity to explore valuation as a dramaturgical problem. That is, as something that needs to be performed.

Material and method

The analysis is based on 35 in-depth interviews with early career academics in political science and history conducted between February and June in 2019. In line with Haddow and Hammarfelt (2019), I employ a rather extensive definition of early career academics, including scholars having received their PhD within the previous eight years and who are yet to obtain a permanent position.

In total, the study covers five departments located at four research-intensive universities in Sweden. As argued elsewhere, Sweden offers an illustrative case of how academia has been reshaped by recent transformations of higher education systems (Roumbanis 2019). Like in many other countries, this includes ‘a strong shift in both academic career structures and the discourses and practices aiming to define and assess the quality of research’ (Fochler, Felt, and Müller 2016, 177). As a prime example, competitive project-based funding has become the main source of funding for researchers generally, and for early career academics specifically (Öquist and Benner 2012). While the lack of one common academic career system in Sweden makes career paths quite unclear, the postdoctoral phase has nevertheless established itself as the bottleneck in the system (Frølich et al. 2018). This means that junior scholars must juggle between fixed-term contracts for many years and career advancement is highly dependent on their success in the funding market (Roumbanis 2019).

Indeed, this holds true for early career academics in political science and history. Moreover, these fields are deliberately selected due to them being sites where negotiations regarding ‘ideal career trajectories’ are currently ongoing. As in many social science and humanities (SSH) disciplines, shifts in the ways in which academic work is evaluated have generated tensions between ‘rivalling value systems’ and junior scholars are continuously mentioned as those most affected by these dynamics (Haddow and Hammarfelt 2019; Salö 2017). In a previous study, I pointed to differences between political science and history in terms of how they anticipate the value of their research practices (Nästesjö 2021). Interestingly, the analysis of identity talk did not render any substantial disparities between the fields. In this paper, they thus provide a joint empirical case of how junior scholars navigate rather heterogenous and conflicting evaluative landscapes.

Regarding disciplinary background and gender, the number of participants is balanced (history: 9 male, 8 female; political science: 11 male, 7 female). Roughly 80% may be characterized as middle class or upper middle class and 20% as working class. At the time of the data collection, nearly all of the respondents worked in project-based research positions with some teaching responsibility. To bring variation into the material, I sampled early career academics who differed in terms of ‘academic age’ (years post PhD) and with diverse experiences of research, teaching, administration, publishing, mobility, and collaborative work. Additionally, this resulted in variation with respect to the respondent’s family situation. The interviews were conducted in Swedish (n27) or English (n8) and lasted between 90 and 140 min. All of the interviews were recorded and fully transcribed. Informed consent was obtained before each interview, ensuring the respondents of voluntary participation and anonymity. Consequently, some biographical details have been amended slightly or left out of the empirical sections. All names are assigned pseudonyms.

The interviews had a reflexive and biographical character (Sigl 2016). This included a wide variety of questions, ranging from their initial fascination of research to their unfolding careers and future aspirations. Rather than revealing ‘objective’ life courses, the aim was to use temporal and situational perspectives as interview interventions for studying how early career academics conceptualize their room for manoeuvring, especially with reference to evaluation practices and reward structures. Focusing on how scholars perform ‘biographical work’ allowed insights into the normative frameworks guiding their presentation of self. Moreover, asking the respondents to draw internal (what traits do I value) and external (what traits do others value) boundaries regarding what characterizes successful and unsuccessful academics made it possible to shed light on how they negotiate career expectations and conceptions of worth in relation to the ‘social identities’ of early career academics – that is, their self-concept and how others define them.

The analysis followed an inductive approach. Initially, I identified situations where self and identity matters and how such issues were discussed. In due time, two interrelated categories highlighting the importance of identity emerged: identity as sense-making and identity as self-presentation. While the first category consisted of the many ways in which scholars come to understand themselves as they make sense of academic work and careers, the second category focused more narrowly on how scholars attempted to display themselves in ways that are likely to be positively evaluated by others. Together, the two categories provide scholars with an orientation for how to act in order to be recognized and obtain status. From this perspective, the verbal construction of academic identities both relied on and tried to enact career scripts. Based on the inductively generated categories, I discerned four patterns of identity talk through which junior scholars construct and avow identities.

Findings

The empirical findings are structured around four patterns of identity talk, focusing on what definitions of worth that are enacted in each pattern and how performances of identity work are negotiated to be considered appropriate. Utilized by a majority of the respondents, achievement talk, authenticity talk, and loyalty talk comprise three dominant ways in which junior scholars perceive the rules of recognition and how they seek to manage their identities accordingly. In addition, female respondents and respondents with working-class background also utilize personation talk, aiming to make adjustments to what is regarded as privileged identities. While these patterns are treated separately in the findings section, the relationship between them and the challenge of striking the right performative balance are elaborated upon in the ending discussion.

Achievement talk

Achievement talk involves strategies intended to present an identity that signals achievement and competitiveness. Emerging from the structural conditions of project-based careers, where individuals frequently have to prove their worth in order to continue competing for symbolic and economic recourses, junior scholars try to manage their identities according to its competitive logics. Scholars must therefore not only make achievements, but constantly demonstrate them in interactions with others. For instance, Maria stated that:

Academic life’s a pitch. No one knows what you’ve accomplished unless you tell them. You have to make sure you’re perceived as capable of making it at this level. Otherwise, they won’t come knocking on your door when future opportunities arise.

About to finish her second postdoc project, Maria underlines the importance of signalling achievement and competitiveness. Because her colleagues not only represent an abstract community of peers, but future job opportunities, she needs to manage her identity in relation to their judgment. Similarly, Peter emphasized the importance of coming across as a ‘proper investment’:

When applying for funding or a position, you have to present not only your research, but yourself, as a proper investment. […] This applies in almost every aspect of postdoctoral life. To be picked for a project or an application, you have to be recognized as someone others can count on to succeed.

While the reputation-based economy in which scholars compete is not unique to present day academia, the projectification of research seems to strengthen its importance on academic labour markets. In the narratives of Peter and Maria, the ambition to increase one’s visibility is closely linked to the sociality of project-based careers, namely, that ‘whoever you meet represent a work opportunity’ (Gill 2014, 16). Consequently, self-promotion becomes a key activity for managing academic identities.

However, achievement talk is a complex identity management technique. Whereas competition-judgment relations create conditions for self-promotion, not every way of displaying achievement and competitiveness may be recognized by others. One example is the tacit rules for telling others about one’s success. According to Peter, ‘you have to be sensitive about these things as you don’t want to come across as a braggart.’ Similarly, Lisa underlined the importance of showing respect to others when she noted that ‘academic work is hard, people fail all the time, you have to keep that in mind when celebrating your own victories.’ Furthermore, while competitiveness is recognized as a status trait of high-achieving scholars, coming across as overly competitive may result in damaged social bonds. To manage this tension, junior scholars try to signal competitive capacity rather than a competitive mindset. For instance, Fredrik distanced himself from individuals who he deemed ‘too competitive,’ concluding that ‘it’s not about behaving like everything’s a race. Rather, I try to show that I’m a strong candidate in comparison to others, that I have what it takes.’

In accordance with the definitions of worth emphasized by achievement talk, junior scholars sometimes hide status traits not compatible with a career script consisting of a high-achieving academic subject. One example is David, who found himself without an income after finishing his first postdoc project. Beginning to work hours at a library, he was afraid of being labelled a ‘drop out’ or a ‘failure’ since it ‘was not part of the right story you have to tell about yourself’. He thus decided to ‘keep quiet about it in front of colleagues.’

Achievement talk constructs an idealized version of a successful scholar. Since hardly anyone is able to live up to its standard, identity work strategies are employed to navigate the fear of other people’s judgment. Indeed, many respondents emphasized the importance of fostering an impression of their individual career trajectory as successful and linear. Often centred on the amount and temporal frequency of publications, it also involved the reputation and impact-factor of journals. For example, Anna underlined the importance of continuously aiming ‘for more prestigious, high-ranked journals, to show progress and future potential.’

Recognized as symbolic resources for managing identities, performance metrics provide a form of valuation establishing competition as the primary site where academics and their work are made valuable. Making careers and identities comparable, they enforce temporal notions of efficiency and expectations of ever-increasing production (Hammarfelt, Rushforth, and de Rijcke 2020). In everyday interactions, such ‘trajectoral thinking’ also includes the more subtle expressions of norms associated with future success:

At the same time as everybody’s talking about the importance of slowing down, it seems like it's almost ‘ugly’ to actually do so… It sorts of signals that you’re not wanted or asked for. So you have to pretend to be this stressed out academic who works every hour of the day.

The discourse of overwork has a powerful status within academia (Gill 2014). While generally underlining their willingness to find work-life balance, many respondents nevertheless acknowledged the significance in displaying individual dedication and aspiration associated with the overwork discourse. In face-to-face interactions, they thus had to negotiate its symbolic power.

Authenticity talk

Authenticity talk involves strategies aiming at presenting an identity that is perceived as genuine and true to self. As argued elsewhere, academic work often takes the form of ‘principled projects that embody core values of intellectual labour, ethics, and professionalism,’ including a passionate attachment to one’s working life (Cannizzo, Mauri, and Osbaldiston 2019, 260). Furthermore, in status markets, authenticity is key to establish credibility (Mao and Shen 2020).

One way of displaying authenticity was to demonstrate consistency between scholars’ internal values and their external expressions. This was especially common when making justifications for conducting research, where the respondents emphasized that its relevance must exceed individual scholars and their careers. Authenticity talk is here a way of coming across as genuine in front of one’s colleagues. As Thomas made clear, this is important when constructing a distinctive and credible academic identity:

I engage with society in different ways, that is sort of my trademark. […] I think I’m recognized as someone who’s genuinely interested in and devoted to contributing to a better understanding of these issues.

The performance of authenticity consists of expressing sincerity and engagement over time. However, consistency is not a value in itself. Rather, identity work strategies must conform to a common set of norms structuring the field in which scholars seek recognition. In practice, this requires a certain feel for the game of recognition:

Of course, publications are important. But you don’t want to come across as a scholar from let say medicine, with literally hundreds of publications. That’s just not the way to do it in history. Then you’re not thorough enough. […] Do you just care about the number of publications or do you actually care about the research itself?

As is evident in the above quotation, authenticity talk enacts a career script sensitive to disciplinary norms privileging a form of probity, rather than instrumental activities performed through external pressure. This involves a presentation of self avoiding notions of careerism and calculation. As such, authenticity talk is centred on how well scholars are able to embody the rules of recognition without paying much attention to them. Anna knew about this when she said that ‘the ideal is not to talk about how to succeed in academic careers, but still act like you know it.’ Similarly, Peter underlined that ‘scholars who basically just try to maximize their chances of success are kind of scorned at.’ Such tensions between career strategies and coming off as authentic were also discussed in relation to performance metrics:

Like most scholars, I pay attention to citations, numbers of publications, and all that stuff. But it’s not something that I talk about with others. I think paying too much attention to these things is looked down upon. You don’t want to be perceived as that guy. You have to communicate other values.

While experiences of authenticity may be a motivational factor influencing academic work (Archer 2008), the empirical analysis demonstrates that it is something scholars are subjugated to perform in interactions with others whose recognition they desire. From this perspective, authenticity is not a state of mind but an identity claim that is either accepted or rejected by others. Given the decisive role audiences play in defining the symbols and boundaries of authenticity, displaying its corresponding values is a matter of strategic identity work.

Loyalty talk

Loyalty talk contains strategies in which scholars construct an identity based on social ties and willingness of helping out. The focus is on presenting oneself as a loyal colleague, committed to contributing to the joint workplace and to the work of others. According to Robert, this may include a wide range of activities such as ‘do a workload of teaching when necessary, to help out, comment on others’ manuscripts’ or simply ‘make coffee for seminars and be friendly.’ While often described as valuable in itself, the role of a loyal colleague was also pictured as a resource for constructing identities through which junior scholars may realize career opportunities. Having combined smaller research grants with substitute teaching and administration duties for more than three years, Robert knew about this when he said that ‘I think it’s widely known that selection and hiring processes in academia are … well … a little biased. It pays to belong.’ Similarly, Hanna stated that ‘to be the one they ask to fill in a position or whatever, I try to come across as reliable and willing to help. You can’t say no too many times.’

Depending on short term extensions of working contracts, career trajectories among junior scholars tend to be fragmented and disrupted rather than linear (Hammarfelt, Rushforth, and de Rijcke 2020). Emerging from these structural conditions, displaying loyalty is closely connected to the importance of networks as tools for recognition. More specifically, loyalty talk draws upon the logic of gift-giving (Bloch 2002). To come forward when needed and helping out implies a recognition of the status of the giver as a valued member of the group. While reciprocity is not guaranteed by external coercion, enacting the role of a loyal colleague seeks to generate gratitude which establishes a reciprocal bond. Hence, in defining group membership, loyalty talk aims to build and maintain social relationships through which early career academics may access valuable resources.

Symbolically, loyalty talk often utilizes the widespread individualism otherwise known to distinguish an academic culture governed by competition. For example, Sam said:

There is this discussion about publish, publish, publish. Many have adopted that mindset. But in my experience, acting like a good colleague, that sort of puts you in the spotlight. […] There are too many individualists in academia and very few team players.

In this quotation, opposing individualism provides Sam with resources to construct a distinctive and credible identity. This involves distancing himself from junior scholars having adopted a narrow set of evaluative principles centred on individual productivity. Instead, enacting the role of a team player, he employs identity work strategies intended to strengthen his attachment to individuals and groups at his workplace. Yet, there is a symbolic ambiguity in the relation between recognition and the performance of loyalty. Because academic settings are strongly hierarchized, loyalty cannot create symmetrical social relationships. Consequently, it may lead to increased exploitation, where junior scholars carry out largely invisible work tasks not recognized as ‘merits’ (Bird, Litt, and Wang 2004). In such situations, the symbolic effects of loyalty do not follow the logic of gift-giving. Instead, the agency of junior scholars is reduced, negatively affecting their possibility of earning recognition and obtain status.

Personation talk

Personation talk involves strategies intended to portray or make adjustment to what is regarded as privileged identities in the valuation of academics and their careers. As such, it is a response to existing social inequalities in academia which are well documented in previous research (see e.g. Blackwell and Glover 2008; Crew 2021). Providing scholars with identity management techniques for enacting roles which ‘naturally fit,’ personation talk covers different ways in which junior scholars negotiate their social identities in terms of gender and social class background.

In the narratives of female scholars, academic careers were often described as gendered. Demanding ‘masculine’ norms associated with competition and success, these scholars thus tried to diminish or alter their femininity by changing the way they behaved in face-to-face interactions. Talking about research seminars in particular, Maria stated that:

I talk loudly, I do not tolerate being interrupted, I try to come across as self-confident. I kind of behave like a guy. In many situations, that’s how you need to act in order to be taken seriously.

For Maria, enacting the masculine norms of self-confidence constitutes a strategy for coping with a recurrent set of situations characterized by gender inequality. To be recognized as someone who deserves taking up space and promote herself, she needs to perform roles traditionally associated with male academics. This was also present in accounts of female scholars who distanced themselves from low-status roles. Discussing career paths and its gendered boundaries, Steph said:

Everybody knows teaching and administration is a ‘women’s trap.’ If you end up doing too much of it, you’re not recognized as a researcher anymore, and that means that you’re sort of out of the game. Even if I’ve been teaching quite a lot, I’ve made sure not to be associated with that group.

Under pressure to adapt to a career script favouring research, Steph self-consciously distanced herself from female colleagues representing less credible groups. In terms of identity work, distancing is a strategical attempt to foster the impression of a lack of attachment to a particular role or group in order to deny the social identity implied (Snow and Anderson 1987). Hence, it involves drawing distinctions between oneself and others who tend to be negatively evaluated by a shared community of peers. However, while distancing may enable female scholars to assume characteristics of privileged (masculine) identities, personation talk also encompasses dealing with tensions arising from having to perform several roles simultaneously. This was particularly salient when female respondents experienced conflicts between their role as an academic and their role as a mother, resulting in tactical attempts to keep these social roles apart. For example, Susie described how she came to employ such strategies after receiving negative reactions when leaving a research conference early to go to the park to play with her son:

It was very clear that they thought my prioritization was deeply wrong, like I was not committed. […] As an academic, you have to behave in a certain way, to signal the worth academic work has for you […] Due to experiences like this, I try to keep my private and my professional self apart.

There are strong echoes here with previous studies highlighting the negative impact of maternity on female scholar’s career advancement (see e.g. Blackwell and Glover 2008; Bozzon et al. 2017). For women like Susie, displaying one’s role as a mother and caregiver has no exchange-value, generating no benefit in academic contexts. Rather, it is seen as a limitation of dedication to the academic career.

While aiming to make adjustments to what is regarded as privileged identities, scholars must at the same time navigate the risk of being perceived as ‘inauthentic.’ This was evident in the accounts of scholars coming from working class backgrounds as they tried to adapt to an academic culture to which they initially felt alien. Crucially, this involved the management of embodied identity identifiers, such as emotions, speech, and clothes. For example, Fredrik stated that:

In comparison to all these ‘professor’s children,’ I had very little pre-understanding of what it meant to pursue an academic career. To handle the uncertainty, going without a salary for a couple of months, the competition. […] They seem to be OK with it, they’re self-confident, relaxed. […] At work, I try to do the same. Not talk about how I’m doubting myself and whether or not I fit in.

According to Fredrik, being recognized in a competitive academic culture involves displaying self-confidence and ability. Coming from a different social class background than many of his peers, he had limited knowledge about prevailing career conditions and how to handle them. Feeling insecure and unacquainted, he had to learn how to manage his emotions in front of others. In a similar vocabulary, Navid described his social class background by contrasting himself against the majority of his colleagues. Looking back at his time as a master’s and PhD student, Navid explained how he started to ‘to talk and dress like an academic’ in order to ‘fit in and to be taken seriously.’ Yet, strategies intended to portray privileged identities always run the risk of resulting in situations characterized by unease rather than ease:

I remember attending my first international conference as a PhD student [big laughter]. I had bought new clothes, I was super prepared, all dressed up. But when I showed up, I was way over-dressed, it was embarrassing really. I felt like such a try-hard. […] The problem is, you can’t behave like you’re reading a manual for being an academic. It has to come naturally.

In the narratives of Navid and Fredrik, attempts to adjust oneself to the rules of recognition are shaped by experiences of ‘fitting in’ and ‘standing out.’ Hence, personation talk comprises different ways in which junior scholar seek to display a form of naturalness and belonging. However, given the difficulty of acting in accordance with a career script privileging those who have academic culture as their native culture, such strategies always risk to symbolically express one’s distance rather than one’s natural feel for the game of recognition.

Discussion

In this paper, I have elaborated four patterns of identity talk through which junior scholars construct and maintain academic identities. These patterns of talk – achievement, authenticity, loyalty, and personation – are used to navigate institutional norms and reward structures. The analysis demonstrates several contrasting understandings of what it means to act and to represent worth as an early career academic; understandings which the respondents alternate between in their pursuit of recognition. Junior scholars in history and political science thus relate to a more versatile evaluative repertoire than revealed in studies of other epistemic cultures, such as the life sciences (Fochler, Felt, and Müller 2016), or captured in notions like ‘publish or perish’ or ‘neoliberal subjects’ (Archer 2008). This is not to say that a culture of publish or perish does not exist, nor that the pervasiveness of neoliberalism does not shape academic life. Rather, these findings underline the actual challenge the respondents face when trying to manage their identities in a contextually appropriate manner. To navigate the rules of recognition, their identity performances must conform to multiple roles and diverse definition of worth.

This resonates with studies pointing to the multilayeredness of contemporary academia. According to Ylijoki and Henriksson (2017, 1305), ‘older layers do not disappear when new ones emerge.’ Instead, ‘traditional academic values and ideals continue to have a strong cultural standing in the current entrepreneurial university context.’ Consequently, there are fundamentally different ways to make sense of academic careers (Duberley, Cohen, and Mallon 2006) and identities (Billot 2010). For younger scholars, this has been found to be significant as it creates tensions between growing into a scientific vocation and adapting to a competitive selection process guided by entrepreneurial values (Hakala 2009). While such tensions are evident across academia, they are perhaps particularly salient in SSH fields such as political science and history, whose evaluative landscapes have recently, or are currently, changing due to outside pressure and new framework conditions (see Haddow and Hammarfelt 2019).

What is less known is how early career academics deal with this multilayered complexity through identity work. Exploring identity as a symbolic resource that is performed, the four patterns of identity talk encompass a range of activities in which scholars give meaning to themselves and others by selectively presenting identities congruent with both their understanding of reward structures and their own interest of career advancement. The findings indicate that these patterns coexist as they continuously overlap and clash in situations described by the respondents. For example, there are evident tensions between achievement talk and authenticity talk as they require different ways of presenting oneself. Nevertheless, in order to show tact in competitive relations and appear trustworthy in the eyes of one’s colleagues, displaying achievement is often attuned with expressions of authenticity. Likewise, to navigate the judgment of others in settings which are strongly hierarchized, enacting the role of a loyal team player must frequently be combined with self-promoting activities demonstrating one’s individual ability to compete. As such, different patterns of identity talk relate to one another in a complex balancing act since they, in reality, are always embodied identity performances (Goffman 1990, 241–3).

Exactly how this is accomplished, interactionally, is beyond the scope of this article and demands further ethnographic investigation. Yet, my interview data suggests this process is shaped by the meaning system structuring the field in which early career academics seek recognition. To manage their identities successfully, they must develop a certain feel for the game of recognition. This involves balancing multiple identity claims while conforming to the tacit rules for how to correctly embody high-status traits. Furthermore, the study points to how scholars’ identity work is embedded in broader social and political structures. The narratives of many female scholars and scholars with working class backgrounds were deeply shaped by the management of their social identities. Centred on the symbolic struggle of ‘fitting in’ and ‘standing out,’ these findings highlight how gender and class origin may constrain the possibility to display privileged academic identities. This adds to existing literature on academic careers and social inequality (see e.g. Behtoui and Leivestad 2019; Bozzon et al. 2017; Crew 2021). However, future studies should look more closely to the configuration of different aspects of social division. For example, an intersectional lens could open up new perspectives on how the expression or concealment of class identity are gendered in academic settings (see Friedman 2022).

Demonstrating how early career academics engage in identity work to navigate the judgment of others resembles what Bloch (2002) calls ‘the deceiving game,’ in which scholars express a staged reality serving as protective measures. Yet, impression management should not be reduced to bluffing (Goffman 1990, 81). Rather, it is a way of adapting to the demands of a career system marked by conflicting normative expectations. For scholars, identity is a key commodity having a powerful pull on audiences and markets (Gill 2014). Since the responsibility of handling future uncertainties rely solely on individual scholars themselves, they are increasingly required to treat their academic identity as a project; a project through which they may realize career opportunities and obtain valuable resources.

In my view, this points to the need of not just talking about identity work when considering scholars’ management of academic identities, but also what I call identity labour. Whereas identity work is a general social process, identity labour refers to the more specific process of managing identities to fulfil the requirements of a job. Echoing Hochschild’s (2012) distinction between emotion work and emotional labour, the former has use value while the latter has exchange value. Hence, identity labour covers different ways in which workers are expected to regulate, construct, and display their identities in accordance with occupational demands. This connects to literature in organizational studies emphasizing ‘the managerial interest in regulating employees ‘insides’ – their self-image, their feelings and identifications’ (Alvesson and Willmott 2002, 622). However, while acknowledging identity regulation as a form of organizational control, the concept of identity labour compliments such perspectives in that it puts focus on the exchange value of identities in occupational settings. This involves the process of identity capitalization which refers both to the activities aiming to convert one’s identity into a type of ‘capital’ (Mao and Shen 2020) and how the valuation of present identities often relies upon future estimations (Muniesa 2017). Considering the relationship between identity and employability, identity labour is likely to be most intense among those in career transitions and/or working on temporary contracts. Evidently, early career academics fit both these categories.

While the social relations in academia have always implied a serious amount of identity labour, the transformation of universities along the lines of accountability and marketization more frequently fosters situations which call for identity labour. Indeed, recent studies suggest that the growth of performative expectations within academia have nourished a disciplined culture of self-promotion (Hamann and Kaltenbrunner 2022; Macfarlane 2020). This is evident considering how academic careers have become project-based, creating conditions for scholars to act like freelancers in an enterprise-like economy. Moreover, as a response to these structural changes, the normative demands for visibility requiring identity labour are increasingly organized by universities themselves (see e.g. Roumbanis 2019). This encompasses arrangements relating to a wide repertoire of academic activities, such as conferencing, writing grant applications, publishing, networking, social media usage, and writing CVs.

By further investigating scholars’ management of academic identities in terms of identity labour, identity is established as a key site for the struggle of worth and recognition in academic life. This involves questions about who may (not) claim their identity performances as occupational resources having exchange value and how this relates to social inequalities and role conflicts. While my findings suggest that male academics with higher social origin are privileged in this respect, and that female scholars and scholars with working class background thus are penalized, additional studies are needed in order to understand how identity labour are affected by different aspects of social division. This should include how identity labour relates to issues of emotional labour, alienation, and career progression, as well as acts of resistance. Furthermore, whereas my findings are limited to two SSH disciplines located at research-intensive universities in Sweden, an important empirical question for future theorizing identity labour is how it depends on contextual factors. For instance, how is identity labour shaped in institutions that are more education-oriented or in other epistemic domains where the work organization differ considerably? Does identity labour manifest itself similarly across higher education systems and academic job markets?

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to all of those who took part in this study. Moreover, I would like to thank Björn Hammarfelt and Max Persson for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

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