Navigating across academic labour markets: a Bourdieusian reflexive narrative of a Chinese international doctoral graduate’s employment experiences

ABSTRACT

Much research has investigated international graduate employability in home or host countries. However, limited studies have accounted for such employability across the home and the host. Drawing on Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology, this paper critically examined the first author’s narrative of his employment experiences as a doctoral graduate navigating across Chinese and Australian academic fields after completing ten years of higher education and research training in Australia. While he encountered various challenges due to capital deficiency and habitus-field mismatch, he also reflexively learned to capitalise on his transnational academic dispositions and decode different logics of practice across different academic fields. Thus, he underwent constant changes of identity, agency, and belonging in his cross-field employment journey, which potentially shaped his transnational habitus. This Bourdieusian reflexive narrative contributes to research and practice on graduate employability and reflexivity from a sociological perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• International doctoral graduate
• Bourdieu
• employability
• reflexivity
• transnational habitus

Introduction

International graduate employability (IGE) is an important topic in the global higher education (HE) context. Extant IGE research has investigated international students’ employment experiences in host countries (e.g., Blackmore et al., 2017; Dai & Pham, 2024; Fakunle, 2021) and international returnees’ (re)adjustment experiences in home countries (e.g., Li et al., 2024; Pham, 2021; Pham & Saito, 2020; Pham et al., 2023; Xu, 2022). Interestingly, the doctoral cohort is under-represented in this IGE literature despite the fact that such a cohort constitutes a significant group of knowledge users and producers in the global HE context (Bentley & Meek, 2018). Even fewer studies have examined Chinese international doctoral graduate employability by illustrating their job-hunting trajectories (Dai, 2023; Jiang et al., 2020). This is a curiously overlooked area of investigation given the significant and rising number of Chinese international doctoral students in the globalised HE sector. According to EIC Education (2023), a leading group in international education in China, there has been consistent growth in the number of Chinese international doctoral students over the past five years, with 2022 seeing a 21.8% increase from 2021. The official data from the Ministry of Education (2023) portrayed a similar profile: Since 1978, approximately five million Chinese international students have returned to China and the doctoral cohort comprises a significant 15.77% of those five million Chinese international returnees. In response to the dearth of IGE research concerning the doctoral cohort generally and the Chinese doctoral cohort specifically, this paper therefore engages with an inquiry of the experience of the first author, a Chinese international doctoral graduate, and asks: How has he navigated across different academic labour markets?

To address the above question, this reflexive narrative study takes a deep dive into the first author’s transnational job-hunting and employment experiences as a Chinese international doctoral graduate from an Australian university. His narratives in this regard constitute the empirical data of the paper, which is theoretically framed through Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology. The rest of the article begins with a review of IGE studies, which establishes the empirical foundation of the research work reported here. This is followed by a Bourdieusian discussion to theorise cross-field job-hunting and (re)adjustment practices. Then, data production and analysis through reflexive narrative inquiry are reported; and from there, findings were formed and interpreted through Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology. The paper concludes with empirical and theoretical implications.

International graduate employability

With the growth of PhDs exceeding the availability of academic positions, earning a degree at the highest academic level no longer translates into enough exchange value when one edges into academia. This is happening in China where doctoral graduates commonly take fixed-term postdoctoral positions funded by Chinese universities or governments at various levels. While such a phenomenon could be understood as a Chinese response to the increasing pressures within the academic labour market, it also mirrors the global picture. Waves of funding cuts in the HE sector across many parts of the world have seen shrinking tenured positions and precarious casual and contract-based employment, which is making the academic career increasingly instable and insecure. Concomitant with such volatility is the neoliberal practice within the HE sector that encourages competition and performance assessment (Kenny, 2018; Rea, 2016; Xing et al., 2022). Such neoliberal logics are epitomised in the ‘publish-or-perish' mantra that prevails in global academia (Lee, 2014, p. 250) and the Chinese HE sector (Yin & Mu, 2023). It is in these (inter)national contexts we discuss doctoral graduates’ employability.

Graduate employability refers to a set of skills and/or attributes necessary for graduates to venture into the job market, seek work opportunities, secure employment, and develop their career (Römgens et al., 2020). As international education has become commonplace, the investigation of IGE in both host and home countries is proliferating in global HE research (e.g., Ai, 2019; Dai, 2023; Fakunle, 2021; Pham & Saito, 2020; Tran et al., 2020; Xu, 2022). Regarding IGE in host countries, existing literature suggests that professional skills (e.g., building relationships), individual capacities (e.g., English proficiency and self-resilience), local social networks and familiarity with local context, permanent residence status, as well as understanding of the ‘rules of the game’ within the labour market come to define employability (Pham et al., 2019). However, entry to labour markets for international graduates may not always be based on the principle of ‘fair play’; rather it is often fraught with inequalities. It has been found that many international graduates may take longer to secure jobs compared to local graduates; some may have to sacrifice and take jobs outside their original interest (Pham et al., 2019).

The competition in home countries is no fairer or less intense for international graduate returnees. Unfamiliarity with the labour market rules back in the home country, lack of domestic social networks, and reversed culture shocks were found to challenge the employability of international graduate returnees such as those of Vietnamese origin (Pham & Saito, 2020) and Chinese origin (Pham et al., 2023; Tran et al., 2021). When it comes to international doctoral graduate returnees, some autobiographic studies revealed more nuances and dynamics. For example, Ai (2019) analysed his employment experience arriving back to the Chinese HE context following his research study in Australia. A strong sense of identity crisis and disempowerment taking hold of him, he struggled to shift between the Australian and the Chinese academic rules. Xu (2022), a UK doctoral graduate, analysed her job-hunting experiences in the Chinese academic job market amid the Covid-19 pandemic. She brought to light various unfair rules that influenced her employability such as degree origin bias, networking, and gender. All of these are part of a larger problem in the academic labour market, that is, structural inequality, into which sociological these venture while IGE literature overlooks at least to a certain extent. Structural inequality can be reified in different forms, for example, the US degrees accruing more value than degrees obtained elsewhere (Pan et al., 2023); connections with powerful others markedly contributing to academic career advancement (Heffernan, 2021; Tenzin, 2017); and young female academics thwarted by the ‘penalty of motherhood’ (Maxwell et al., 2019). Alongside this body of literature that unveils the ‘dark agenda’ surrounding the world of work of international doctoral returnees, there is sporadic sociological research spotlighting a ‘silver lining’ for international doctoral returnees. A case in point is the collective narratives of Yin and Mu (2023) that showcase the struggles for surviving and the strategies for thriving in the neoliberalised Chinese HE sector.

At the risk of crude oversimplification of the complicated IGE phenomenon, it may be suggested in summary that extant literature tends to follow a human capital model and assume a linear relationship between IGE and the qualities of international graduates as job seekers. Such an assumption risks falling prey to the deficit discourse that positions those who do not have or do not have enough of the required qualities as deficient, hence unemployable. Current literature on employability – with only a modicum of exceptions (Xu, 2022) – tends to adorn the highly employable with an aureole of success, shrouding the structural inequalities behind employability. Extant literature largely takes an individualistic approach to portraying who are employable and who are not. Nevertheless, at the structural level, the inner workings behind the differentiating employment markets remain under-researched. Existing IGE literature has well-documented employability and (re)adjustment in either host or home contexts, but little is known concerning graduate job seekers who chase career opportunities in transborder contexts across home and host. The reflexive narrative inquiry reported in this paper makes a contribution in this regard.

Current IGE literature tends to depict the highly employable as having a set of essential qualities, which are often analogised as different forms of capital valued by the employment market (Soares & Mosquera, 2020). In this vein, Pham et al. (2019) developed a graduate capital model that aggregates human, identity, psychological, cultural, and social capitals. While the ‘capital typology’ productively categorises the necessary attributes and abilities required in the employment market, its explanatory power remains limited when it comes to the complexities surrounding IGE. First, the capital typology produces knowledge workers for what Haigh and Clifford (2011, p. 580) would call ‘the global corporate economic juggernaut’ without paying attention to enable graduates productively with social justice and responsibility. Second and relatedly, the capital typology, by itself, is unable to explain why certain forms of qualities and qualifications are valued more than others. A case in point is the US degree versus the Australian degree as discussed earlier. Next, while the capital typology does tease out what is needed, it regrettably creates a multichrome of monochrome capital blocs as if the capitals are independent of one another. Such a groupist approach to capital forms fails to take into account the convertibility and the exchange rate across different forms of capital (re)produced and re(valued) under different conditions. Furthermore and relatedly, the capital typology is not interested in unequal access to, and different ways of using capitals, hence not attending to structural inequalities behind employability. To further understand the nature and dynamics behind the IGE space, we have recourse to Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology.

Bourdieu’s thinking tools

Looking through a Bourdieusian prism, for international doctoral graduates, hunting and securing an academic position can be analogised to a ‘card game’. To win this game hinges on ‘trump cards’ that ‘determine not only the style of play, but also the success or failure in the game of the young people concerned’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 150). For Bourdieu, there are two trump cards in the game, namely, habitus and capital. The former – habitus – is conceptualised as inherited, acquired, and assimilated dispositions enculturated through prolonged socialisation, for example, an academic knowhow of setting career objectives and performing academic work. The latter – capital – denotes a rare resource that defines positional advantage and has capacity to produce profits convertible into identical or expanded forms. These forms include economic capital (e.g., salary), cultural capital (e.g., qualification and scholarship), social capital (e.g., academic networking), and symbolic capital (e.g., scholastic reputation).

The analogy of a card game gives ‘a first intuitive grasp’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98) of what Bourdieu means by field. By definition, a field refers to a differentiating social space configured with a matrix of relative positions objectively defined by capital and position-taking strategies steered by habitus in order to win the game. On the one hand, ‘players are taken in by the game’ because they play the game ‘only to the extent that they concur in their belief in the game and its stakes’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98). For international doctoral graduates who vie for an academic position in the HE field, they agree often without questioning that ‘the game’ is worth playing. On the other hand, the relative value of the trump cards and the strategy of making most use of the cards ‘change with each game’ and ‘vary across the various fields’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 98). This is particularly salient for international doctoral graduates who navigate between different national labour markets in a transnational context where their capital and habitus produced in one HE field may or may not make sense in another. This is the case of the first author, whose cross-field job hunting and employment experiences will be shown later in the exposition.

Notably, when the academic habitus of international doctoral graduates encounters an HE field of which it is the product, they could be like a ‘fish in water’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 127). In contrast, if their habitus produced in a previous field (e.g., the field of Australian HE) misfits the current field (e.g., the field of Chinese HE), they may lose the ‘sense of one’s place’ (Bourdieu, 1979/1984, p. 471). Despite such predicaments, it is simplistic to understand habitus-field mismatch as wholly negative. Such mismatch may create crises, ‘in which the routine adjustment of subjective and objective structures is brutally disrupted’, constituting a class of circumstances ‘when rational choice may take over, at least among those agents who are in a position to be rational’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 131). Agents with reflexivity are in such a position to capitalise on crises. They see through the conditions in a field, design and deploy a disposition to estimate and seize opportunities in that field, and strategise their investment relative to the odds of success (Yin & Mu, 2023). Here we fundamentally agree with Archer (2010) who powerfully argues that it is not enough to understand practice as largely unconscious, driven by habitus; what also matters is the art of calculation and strategic manipulation of the body and mind through reflexivity. We also echo the call of Mu, Dooley, and Luke (2019) for a reflexive reapproriation of Bourdieu’s thinking tools in sociology of Chinese education. Indeed, reflexivity played a key role in our methodology and stood out forcibly in our analysis, which will become clear in the ensuing exposition.

Research design: a reflexive narrative inquiry

Narrative inquiry is an effective way of representing and understanding experiences. Adopting this methodology, we inquired into the first author’s post-doctoral job-hunting experiences across different HE fields. Such methodology often entails autobiographical storytelling, through individual writings, private talks, and/or daily observations (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Conducting a narrative-based analysis is not only a way of presenting stories, but also a process of interpreting and understanding one’s experiences in different moments, events, and contexts (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). This creates opportunities for the storyteller to reflexively look and relook at their lived stories. This reflexivity, when construed through a Bourdieusian lens, is a form of ‘self-socioanalysis’ (Bourdieu, 2004/2007, p. 1) – analysis of one’s viewpoint taken as a view from a particular point in one’s scholastic and social worlds.

As a bounded knower, the autobiographer’s view can be blurred and biased by layers of veils due to their particular standpoint. In simple terms, ‘you can’t see your own back!’ Narcissistic, solipsistic autobiographical storytelling may risk creating a skewed or distorted narrative of oneself. To eschew the risk at least to a certain extent, the reflexive narrative inquiry into the first author’s job-hunting experiences also engaged with the viewpoint of the second author – an established researcher with transnational work and life experiences in China, Canada, and Australia. Sharing job-hunting experiences in a transnational context, the two authors – we – are in-betweeners (Dai, 2021) who are familiar with, and simultaneously strange to different academic systems. We may take similar views due to our common sense of in-betweenness. However, our views may also differ due to our different positions (capital) and dispositions (habitus) in the scholastic and social worlds (field). Working through a collective reflexive lens, we may see something different from, and additional to the story than if it were narrated from a singular viewpoint.

The data reported and included in this paper are the first author’s research notes and diaries from 2018 December to 2019 December. These resources documented his job-hunting journeys and reflections as an international doctoral graduate from a leading Australian university. To clarify the storyline, we collectively analysed this data deductively, drawing on Bourdieu’s thinking tools (e.g., field, capital, and habitus). Meanwhile, we inductively analysed data and generated themes recursively by adopting Braun and Clarke’s (2019) reflexive approach to thematic analysis. Their approach supports the methodology of narrative inquiry due to their emphasis on the active role of the researcher in the knowledge production process. Informed by Bourdieu’s (1990a) reflexive sociology, each of us not merely engaged with the narratives from our individual viewpoints; we also put our feet in each other’s shoes through constant mutual questioning, clarification, and reflection. Thus, this narrative was produced through our viewpoints based on our work experiences and theoretical stances. The narrative, though not generalisable, can work as an invitation to readers to engage with our viewpoints from a different point of view. To protect the privacy of stakeholders, we used pseudonyms in presenting the stories in four interrelated themes: struggling for entry into the Australian academic labour market, venturing into the Chinese academic labour market, habitus-field mismatch and capital deficiency, and shaping an in-between habitus across fields. We used ‘Ping’ as a pseudonym to represent the first author and to meet blind peer-review requirements.

Struggling for entry into the Australian academic market

Having completed his HE degrees (Bachelor and Master) and Higher Degree by Research (PhD) in Australia, Ping decided to venture into an academic career. He expected to find an academic position relevant to his PhD, that is, international or comparative higher education. Initially, Ping thought that his degrees obtained in Australia, publications in English journals, and living experiences in Australia would give him an edge when competing for positions in Australia’s academic labour market. Here Ping’s expectation was that institutionalised cultural capital with legally guaranteed value produced in the Australian HE field (e.g., PhD), in the academic publishing field (e.g., journal articles), and in the Australian national field (e.g., PR) could be necessarily exchanged for entry into the Australian labour market. That expectation, arguably, sprang out of a disposition of ‘taken-for-grantedness’ – habitus – which was yet to be able to (fully) decrypt the rules of the game of academic recruitment. While institutionalised cultural capital in all forms of credentials can define positions in fields, that habitus failed to understand that the positions defined by institutionalised cultural capital are largely ‘independent of the biological individuals’ and ‘may be occupied by agents who are biologically different but interchangeable in respect of the qualifications they hold’ (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 132). That habitus also assumed a simplistic human capital equation, directly converting legalised written proofs of qualifications into employability for someone conferred with credentials. Interestingly, as Ping’s job-hunting process was going on, he started to realise that institutionalised cultural capital by itself did not necessarily endow him with a ‘distinction’ in the academic labour market in Australia. He recollected:

I applied several positions in Australia; however, I always got rejections or no responses. When I communicated with other peers and academics, I felt that most academic positions in Australia recruit those with expertise in educational studies in the K-12 context.¹ Most schools of education do not have strong focuses on higher education research. However, I did not have any experiences in researching K-12 issues.

Meanwhile, through searching university websites and viewing other early career researchers’ profiles, Ping further realised that:

Most doctoral graduates who found positions usually have fruitful previous working experiences in schools or other education-related industries. Obtaining a doctoral degree could further enhance their career development. Compared to them, I lacked enough working experiences in educational settings. However, most academic positions need those working experiences … Whereas everyone needs a position to start getting experiences; but in Australia, it seems that I will not have an opportunity to start the career.

But Ping did not give up despite the challenging situation. Instead, he continued to learn more about the context and went to numerous seminars related to doctoral students’ career development. He recalled:

I participated in a seminar hosted by graduate school about doctoral students’ career development. The speaker mentioned that nearly 60% of jobs in Australian academic market were based on social network. After knowing this situation, I felt that it was so difficult to find something here as I did not have such a strong network.

Social networks have been described as an essential condition for academic positions (Heffernan, 2021). Previously Ping’s habitus of naivety assumed a link between subjective expectations and objective chances. Now he has realised that his credentials – institutionalised cultural capital – by themselves may not enhance the odds of success in competition for entry into the field of Australian academia. What also came to determine the chances of success, as Ping realised, were previous experiences – cultural capital – and existing networks – social capital. In this vein, Bourdieu (1986/2021, p. 15) is accurate: ‘Each field then sets its entrance fee, which will take very different forms, whether explicit or implicit’. An explicit formula is ‘a canon law, the codification of a tacit principle’ while the implicit rule is the hidden inner workings set by the field (Bourdieu, 1986/2021, p. 15). In a time when the intensity of competition for entry into academia is very high, the understandings of the explicit and implicit rules do not necessarily guarantee an academic position. Yet it is arguable that those with better understanding of the rules and more capital required by the rules may have higher odds of success in job application.

Ping became able to read both the explicit and implicit ‘entrance fees’ of the field of Australian HE. This may be attributed to his continuous self-initiated learning that sparked reflexivity. Moreover, by dint of reflexivity, Ping started to move away from his lay epistemology based on subjective expectations to the objective conditions for the differential success of job hunting. With reflexivity, Ping did not lock himself into, but strategically withdrew from the condition of structural disadvantage, which would otherwise further reduce his odds of success in job hunting in an era of fierce competition in the academic labour market. He then started to search opportunities in the field of the Chinese HE.

Venturing into the Chinese academic market

The current Chinese HE field has completed rapid expansion (late 1990s and early 2000s) and is undergoing intensifying competition for academic excellence. The Chinese state, through its ‘Double First-Class Plan’ with attendant policy and financial support, aims to develop a highly selective cohort of universities and disciplines into world first class level. Against this backdrop, many Chinese universities, prestigious ones particularly, employ ‘high-quality’ faculties as part of their competition for academic excellence. Through viewing numerous job advertisements, Ping found that the Chinese HE field of recruiting doctoral graduates may provide potential opportunities for him:

Many universities are actively recruiting Chinese doctoral returnees. Moreover, central and local governments also have various fellowship programmes to attract scholars to conduct research in China. The salary packages seem to be very competitive compared to many other countries. Recruiting standards for scholars in different career stages are also very clear and determine which level/type that potential candidates could apply for. In most cases, the ranking of the doctoral degree awarding university (e.g., top 100 universities in the world), number/quality of publications (e.g., SCI/SSCI indexed journals), and age (e.g., normally less than 35 years old) are key factors that could influence employability. However, most high-ranked universities require candidates to have postdoctoral or overseas working experiences to apply for assistant professorship or higher academic positions.

According to Ping’s account, it seems that the ‘trump cards’ to win the competition for entry into Chinese academia are institutionalised cultural capitals in the forms of doctoral qualifications awarded by the world’s top universities and publications in high ranked journals. Even age, an embodied attribute, is codified and objectified. Behind these clearly defined and seemingly transparent criteria lurk a dehumanising, reductionist logic: the scholarly dispositions of human applicants are reduced to classified, quantified objects exchanged for entry into academia; the human applicants and their irreplaceable minds and bodies no longer seem to matter much; at stakes here are capitals ‘set up, in objectivity, among institutions’ (Bourdieu, 1980/1990b, p. 132), for example, the distinction made between top universities and lower ranked ones. The illusio seems to be a meritocratic belief, namely, a seemingly ‘fair play’ where those classified as the most objectively ‘qualified’ deserve the best positions.

Having analysed the criteria for entry into Chinese academia, Ping decided to seek opportunities for a national postdoctoral fellowship scheme that mainly funds doctoral graduates from world’s top 100 universities. Ping knew that the institutionalised cultural capital at his disposal would help him secure such a position. This realistic, pragmatic career aspiration could come from Ping’s making virtue out of necessity; but it could also be attributed to reflexivity, with which Ping was able to align subjective expectations to objective chances. In other words, reflexivity helped Ping to evaluate the objective conditions and exclude the possibility of aspiring for the impossible. Ping’s reflexivity was also proactive and forward-looking as he knew that postdoctoral experiences were essential for his future job applications when competing for assistant professorship at reputed Chinese universities.

To apply for a nationally funded postdoctoral fellowship, Ping had to find a host university and an advisor at that university to support his application. In this respect, Ping considered himself to be ‘lucky’ as a senior academic from a top Chinese university whom he met at a conference agreed to support his application:

Professor S has agreed to support me to apply for the national fellowship programme after reviewing my research proposal and educational background information. The university is also a landmark institution in China. If I can go there, that will be my honour and have positive influences on my future development.

As expected, Ping was awarded the postdoctoral fellowship hosted by the prestigious Chinese university and supervised by Professor S. Yet new challenges emerged. Ping reflected on one of his early meetings with Professor S:

My advisor told me that I should publish something in Chinese journals to establish my domestic reputation; otherwise, I may not be well recognised by others. In China, if I only publish in English, it will be strange. However, publishing in Chinese is challenging for me. I need to be familiar with features of the target journals and pick up academic Chinese writing skills as soon as possible.

Ping also wrote:

According to the contract, I need to publish several peer-reviewed articles in high-quality international and Chinese journals. Moreover, I also need to apply for research grants. Even though I am confident to publish in international journals, the Chinese publications and research funding applications made me stressed since I did not have research training in China. In short, I am a stranger towards the Chinese academic field.

Ping’s institutionalised cultural capital helped him earn entry into Chinese academia and was convertible into economic (e.g., high salary package), social (e.g., opportunities to build academic networks), and symbolic capitals (e.g., reputation as a nationally funded postdoctoral fellow at a prestigious Chinese university). However, he did not know how to write academically in Chinese. As the acceptance rate for scholarly publication and grant application is low, academic literacy in Chinese does not necessarily translate into success. This was part of a larger problem, that is, the misfit between the habitus developed from his ten years of study in the Australian HE field and the logic of practices in Chinese academia.

Habitus-field mismatch and capital deficiency in Chinese academia

Since Ping’s commencement as a postdoctoral fellow in 2019, he has struggled for surviving and thriving in Chinese academia because of capital deficiency and habitus-field mismatch. On the one hand, Ping perceived himself as disadvantaged when compared to some other postdoctoral fellows who had studied in China before and/or had strong connections with domestic scholars:

Many postdoc peers studied in China and knew the system very well. Moreover, some colleagues completed their Master’s in China and then got their doctoral degree overseas. They had connections and networks with their Chinese universities, supervisors, and peers, which potentially helped them to fit into the Chinese academia without too many barriers. For me, I need to develop those networks and understandings from scratch.

Lacking existing connections with ‘significant others’ in the field, Ping did not have much social capital – ‘a helping hand’ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 258, n.21) – to support his adjustment to the Chinese system. On the other hand, Ping was not familiar with the academic policies, principles, and priorities in China:

Recently, I met many academics in my area of study. Through communicating with them, I noticed that I seemed to have no idea about how to be an academic in China. When they talked about the developmental trajectory in Chinese higher education and international education, I even did not know what I should do and did not know many particular terms. It seems that I am an outsider of the system.

This experience could indicate that Ping was a ‘fish out of water’. He did not have the knowhow – habitus – to figure out how things would work in Chinese academia. He further reflected:

I got a notice that postdoc research fellows could apply for research funds. Having written something down, I emailed it to my advisor and other peers to seek their suggestions. When I communicated with a peer colleague, he joked that ‘you are not localised enough … you should learn how to write in academic Chinese …  … Another senior academic mentioned ‘you should be familiar with the hot topics in China first and then propose something ‘down to earth’. (Jie Di Qi)

Bourdieu (1986/2021, p. 15) reminds us of the terms of entrance and inclusion in a field, that is, ‘the properties that the new entrants must possess to produce effects in the field’, without which the new entrants ‘will produce effects that are not those of the field’ and they will be ‘covered in ridicule’. This was exactly Ping’s predicament. It seemed that his academic habitus developed in the Australian HE field failed to decode the logics of practice in Chinese academia. When a habitus enters an unfamiliar field, contradictions and uncertainties may emerge as a result of habitus-field misfit (Reay, 2004).

A transnational habitus of in-betweenness

While challenges abounded as discussed earlier, Ping perceived himself as an in-betweener who strategically took advantages of his available academic repertoire obtained in different academic fields. He wrote:

I noticed that many top-ranked universities in China require applicants to have at least three top-ranked international journals. Otherwise, one will not be able to pass the CV screening stage. Some colleagues also mentioned that many universities now prefer young scholars to publish in English journals rather than in Chinese. Even though government does not encourage universities to assess scholars’ academic performances based on the quantity of publications, this trend seems ineluctable.

These logics of practice in the Chinese academic field provided opportunities for Ping to become a ‘fish in many waters’ (Stahl et al., 2023). On the one hand, Ping could take advantage of the cultural capital gained from the Australian HE field to continue engaging in the global debates in his area of study through publishing in English. On the other hand, he reflexively fostered a Chinese academic habitus to fit into the Chinese HE field. Thus, Ping straddled different academic fields as an academic in-betweener in everyday research activities:

Some of my colleagues mainly focus on Chinese research. They are familiar with the Chinese context. When I communicate with them, I do need to use or focus on my ‘Chinese brain’. For some peers, they are keen to engage in international research and are familiar with literature in several key English journals. When I discuss some topics with them, I then need to use the ‘international brain’.

These everyday research life experiences enculturated Ping into an academic habitus simultaneously trans-spatial and floating:

I am not sure whether I could fit well into the Chinese system. While this journey makes me stressed, I am learning new knowledge and gaining domestic experiences as a Chinese scholar. For the future, I am still uncertain where I should go: working in China as a doctoral returnee or seeking opportunities overseas.

Here transnational academic mobilities produced a complex transnational academic habitus with co-existing and sometimes conflicting senses of belonging and marginalisation. This transnational habitus went beyond a position-taking of being caught in the middle or an excruciating disposition of being split against itself; rather it steered Ping to strategically maintain and develop different capitals required for surviving and thriving in two academic fields while facing crises in both. This transnational habitus also simultaneously created precarities and potentials, afflictions and attractions, predicament and power, leading to complicated identity in the making and agency work ‘everywhere and nowhere’.

Discussion

Drawing on Bourdieu’s thinking tools, this paper illustrated the first author’s job-hunting and (re)adjustment trajectories in-between Australia and China. In this process, he shifted between different HE fields, which continuously (re)shaped his academic habitus and re-evaluated his capital portfolio. On the one hand, he seemed to become a dissociative in-betweener who may not (fully) belong to Chinese or Australian HE field. On the other hand, his self-initiated learning as an ‘academic vagabond’ sparked reflexivity that helped him resiliently and agentically rise to early career challenges and strategically navigate through a bumpy early career path, seeking and seizing the best possible employment opportunities. At some point of Ping’s job-hunting journey, his habitus was rooted in historical conditions, making assumptions of, and adjustments to the field; yet habitus is not always pre-reflexive but can be generative, creating margins of rationalisation and reasoning in response to new and emerging conditions. This reflexive narrative could serve as an example for doctoral students, early career researchers, senior academics, and HE policymakers to understand the job-hunting and (re)adjustment experiences across different academic fields.

Previous research has suggested that international graduates need to gain multiple capitals valued by the labour market (Pham et al., 2019) and understand the rules of the game in the labour market (Blackmore et al., 2017; Pham et al., 2023) in order to enhance their employability. We provide additional suggestions to complement the success-oriented recommendations provided by previous research. The reflexive narrative has shown that unexpected challenges may emerge from the ‘reality’ of job markets and applications for the seemingly ideal positions may be often rejected. For Ping, seeking and securing academic positions was a bumpy journey full of precarities and uncertainties. For international doctoral graduates, their adventure of job hunting would be unlikely to be more certain than Ping’s experience. Preparedness for the target labour market (e.g., carefully considered alignment with the available position and a well-developed application) and normalisation of failure (e.g., the understanding of the low objective chance of success) are integral to a productive job-hunting process.

At some point of the job-hunting process, international doctoral graduates would have to fail and fall. Reflexivity is a key to figure out what’s going on and what’s going wrong. With reflexive self-socioanalysis, international doctoral graduates may learn to strategically withdraw from something that is not working and come up with alternative solutions. This is a form of resilience for ‘failing better’ and ‘falling well’ (Mu, 2022). This is also a form of ‘employability agency’ (Pham, 2021) for (re)appraising subjective, institutional, and contextual constraints and facilitators when making decisions and taking actions. With resilience and agency, international doctoral graduates – similar to Ping’s transnational job-seeking experiences – may go through a roundabout pathway to employment. With resilience and agency, they may take a strength-based approach to capitalise on their full capacity reservoir and in-betweenness enculturated through diverse experiences across different sociocultural and academic systems. These insights may also evoke international students and other stakeholders (e.g., policymakers and employers) to critically consider structural influences caused by neoliberal reform of HE sectors that emphasise massification, marketisation, and competition. The universities should carefully reassess the responsibility, ethics, and outcomes of HE so that it is possible to shift from the capital typology of IGE that underpins the economically oriented training model to a more sustainable approach that focus on social justice and responsibility (Haigh & Clifford, 2011). Moreover, our paper aligns with previous work (Dai & Pham, 2024; Heffernan, 2021; Pham & Saito, 2020; Pham et al., 2023; Xu, 2022) that ‘significant others’ can play essential roles in securing academic positions. In Ping’s case, had he not met Professor S serendipitously at a conference, he would have missed the postdoctoral opportunity.

For Chinese universities as employers, we also have something to say. Recruitment criteria based on age and the ranking of degree-awarding institutions may be dehumanising. Regrettably, criteria as such are codified, legitimated, and unquestioned. Ironically, such ‘transparent’ criteria erroneously equate quantification with quality and mistakenly reduce academic intellectual workers into lifeless objective qualifications. These doxic classifications and the classificatory schemata behind them are not only a disservice to job applicants but also a form of symbolic violence that undermines equity and equality. While we understand that there is no perfect system in the academic world, we call for a critical consideration of recruitment criteria prevailing in the Chinese HE academic labour market. For example, we recommend not using age as a criterion for job application and grant application. Instead, scholars can be categorised as early career academics, middle career academics, and senior academics based on the number of years after the completion of a research degree, the number of years of service in academia, and the number of years of career interruption. We also recommend to consider scholastic track record of the applicant rather than highly relying on university ranking. Meanwhile, it is also essential for graduates to reflexively consider personal conditions and structural norms. Yet, it is by no means our intention to scapegoat HE for structural problems. Such recruitment criteria are part of a larger problem of the neoliberalism, market society, and social stratification as persistent forces penetrating into HE. Some decades ago, Bourdieu (1984/1988, p. 158) was outspoken:

… it is difficult to see where there might arise any forces capable of imposing in practice the establishment of an order where recruitment and promotion would depend on the sole criteria of pedagogical or scientific productivity and efficiency.

Our paper does not find such forces that Bourdieu wrote. Nevertheless, we consider that reflexivity might be a key. We therefore hope the reflexive narrative presented in this paper can serve as an invitation to all stakeholders, from international doctoral graduates to HE recruitment policymakers, to generate a collective force that bolsters pedagogical and scientific instead of neoliberal productivity and efficiency within the field of HE.

Conclusion

This paper illustrates a Chinese international doctoral graduate’s job-hunting experiences in Australia and China. While this paper only reports the first author’s experiences, his stories mirror the challenges and opportunities in the current academic job markets that other returnees may encounter in different contexts. Moreover, this paper may help universities and other employers understand the barriers and strategies that some returnees may have in their readjustment to home contexts. At the empirical level, the paper enriches existing IGE literature by shedding light on graduate job seekers who chase career opportunities in transborder contexts instead of merely looking at employability and (re)adjustment in either host or home contexts. Yet the paper’s contribution to knowledge goes beyond the empirical level by drawing on reflexivity and habitus to make sense of rational decision-making and subconscious strategies in seeking and securing employment in a transnational context. In so doing, the paper responds to the criticism of Bourdieu for epistemological determinism and methodological nationalism.

Notably, this study has limitations. One person’s story jointly written, analysed, and theorised by two authors generates knowledge in situ limited by the viewpoints of the authors coming from their particular (dis)positions in the sociological and social world. We therefore invite the readers to engage with this paper critically through their viewpoints to see the things that we are unable to see (through). Writing this paper, it is by no means our intention to represent the struggles and strategies of all international doctoral graduates. Instead, we call for larger scale, longitudinal research to better understand their diverse post-graduation developments in different contexts, for a more transparent employment process and a more nurturing HE system at large.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Kindergarten to Year 12. Early childhood education to school education.