Surviving carelessness and disposability in British higher education: the gendered and racialised emotional labours of academic migration

Abstract

In this paper, I examine emotional labour mechanisms for navigating and surviving the policing and disciplining of migrant subjectivities in the internationalised context of British Higher Education. I draw on my pedagogical practices, relationships with staff and students, research and leadership in my trajectory to Professorship in the UK and turn to the affective to expose gendered and racialised othering of migrant academics engaging in transformational and authentic practices of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), involving change agency and responsibility praxis against institutional and social injustices. Such practices include the emotional labour of managing the white classroom and doing social justice; speaking out, doing caring leadership and feminist anti-racial solidarity and dealing with exhaustion; and the emotional labour of “excellence” for managing policing of the migrant body. The narratives outlined in this paper illustrate the entanglement of power, emotions and irresponsibility and a complete absence of an ethic of care towards underprivileged groups and trespassing bodies, rendering them disposable in educational institutions where racism is prevalent alongside a non-performative EDI rhetoric. Although practicing a political ethic of care has the potential to challenge neo-liberalised HE and disrupt normative whiteness it can also inadvertently perpetuate the instrumentalisation of feminised and racialised labours of migrant academics for signifying EDI. Moreover, navigating biopower and resisting illegitimisation in Higher Education (HE), might sometimes require alignment with careless gendered labours, including over-commitment, presenteeism and complaining.