Precarity in Higher Education

Perspectives From The 1.5 Generation in Israel

Bibliographic Data

ID8406830
AuthorsVictoria Kot (Tel Aviv University), Miri Yemini (0000-0002-5633-6473, Tel Aviv University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume71
Issue6
Pages679-699
Publication date2023-11-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Educational Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1005 • E-ISSN: 1467-8527
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00071005.2023.2242909
OpenAlexW4385707029
LanguageEN
References cited56

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

Demographic economics · Economics · European union · Feeling · Higher education · Immigration · Political science · Precarity · Social capital · Social science · Sociology · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Higher Education Research Studies · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology

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