The Hard Path of Academic Stabilisation into a Neoliberal European Academic Framework

In the past two decades, the early career academics have faced increasingly difficulties to stabilise their position in the European academic systems. Currently we can identify similarities in the academic recruitment as results of neoliberal policies (Deem, Brehony, 2005; Ball, 2012; Bozzon et al., 2018) adopted by the European governments that contribute to the academics precarity. The process of entering and stabilizing the academic career has always been long and complex. Spending reduction policies have also exacerbated the difficulties and competition among aspiring academics. In UE countries, the ‘new academic regime’ (Normand, 2016) produces a new stage of academic capitalism. This situation has produced various effects. The push to publish or perish’’ has strongly raised average productivity, placing aspiring academics under tremendous pressure. Furthermore, it is possible to identify several effects at the individual level: the fragmentation of the career path has reflected on life paths, on forced mobility, on parenting choices, on psychophysical well-being. Starting from a set of semi-structured interviews carried out in the fields of education sciences, sociology, physics, biology and medicine, this paper shows the effects of the changes listed above, also taking into account the differences between the various research sectors. The interviewees live and work in Italy, several European countries and the United Kingdom. We investigate the figure of ‘new European researcher’ who build is academic and private identity (Djerasimovic, Villani, 2019; Colarusso, Giancola, 2020) following the ideas of mobility, new mode of knowledge production (Gibbons et al., 1994), performativity, accountability. The early career researcher (ECR) has to face several trials such as: the balance of private and professional life, instability, penury of fundings and jobs vacancy, the managerialization of academic profession (Normand, Villani, 2019). In addition, ECR needs to combine individual strategies for academic survival in a context that impose the oxymoron of competitive partnership. Finally, we analyse the path of the real researcher that struggles constantly with all difficulties imposed by the new academic regime.