ERIC Number: EJ1404494
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0007-1005
EISSN: EISSN-1467-8527
Precarity in Higher Education: Perspectives from the 1.5 Generation in Israel
Kot, Victoria; Yemini, Miri
British Journal of Educational Studies, v71 n6 p679-699 2023
We examined perceptions of precarity in higher education by conducting interviews with a cohort of academics in Israel. The participants were 1.5 generation immigrants who were born in the former Soviet Union (FSU) and then moved to Israel as children or teenagers with their family, typically in the 1990s. Using a narrative research approach, we examined the personal perceptions of 43 academics employed at colleges and universities in Israel. Despite differences in their employment status and contract conditions, our findings made clear that all the academics in our cohort had experienced employment precarity. Using a Bourdieusian framework, we attribute Israeli academic precarity to a deficiency in the cultural and social capital necessary for establishing relevance. Although they had been relatively successful in integrating into Israeli society, and had decades of living within it, our interviewees from all types of academic institutions reported feelings and experiences of extreme precarity. This precarity was ascribed by interviewees to the structure of the Israeli higher education market, which is characterized by an unstable, hyper-competitive, and neoliberal environment, leaving minority groups employed within it particularly vulnerable.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Higher Education, Neoliberalism, College Faculty, Teacher Attitudes, Immigrants, Temporary Employment, Cultural Capital, Social Capital, Acculturation, Labor Market, Competition, Minority Group Teachers, Academic Rank (Professional)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Israel
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A