Gender and citizenship in academic career progression: an intersectional, meso-scale analysis in German higher education institutions

ABSTRACT

In tune with the fundamental shift in Germany’s skill-b(i)ased immigration policy since 2005, higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly becoming ‘magnets’ for a skilled migrant workforce. While ‘internationalisation’ is often understood as something to be celebrated and (further) accomplished, some observers speak of clear signs of discriminatory experiences among racialised and migrant academics. This is a new aspect, as social inequalities have by and large been considered in migration studies to be the sole terrain of labour mobility into less-skilled sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, abundant literature on gender and higher education shows that women academics have poorer access to career progression than men, demonstrating gender-based academic career inequalities. However, the insights generated in these two strands of scholarship have seldom been in conversation with one another. This paper takes stock of the lack of an intersectional perspective, focusing on citizenship and gender within HEIs as hiring meso-level organisations that are becoming increasingly transnationalised. It explores the intersectionality of citizenship and gender in accessing academic career advancement by examining three key career stages, that is, doctoral researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and professors, in two case-study HEIs.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• citizenship
• intersectionality
• higher education
• mobility/migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. My translation.

2. https://www.oecd.org/els/mig/LETERME%20BERLIN%20ENG_final.pdf (accessed 7 May 2015).

3. In the European context, too, although not using the term ‘intersectionality’, scholars such as Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis have been theorising the links ‘between the concepts of racism and ethnicity as well as attempting to relate ethnic divisions to those of gender and class.’ (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1983, 63) Addressing broader contexts of migration, instead of the black-white division, their conceptualization has been broad enough to examine the structural locations occupied by different groups of migrant women.

4. There are four main types of people with a ‘migration background’ according to the official definition by the Federal Statistical Office. For details, see: https://www.destatis.de/EN/FactsFigures/SocietyState/Population/MigrationIntegration/PersonsMigrationBackground/MigrationBackgroundMethods.html (accessed 3 March 2016).

5. According to the figures based on the personnel statistics compiled by the human resource department, University A.

6. See https://www.destatis.de/EN/FactsFigures/SocietyState/Population/CurrentPopulation/Tables/Census_SexAndCitizenship.html (accessed 17 March 2016).