Being Women and being Migrant Confronting Double Strangeness

Being Women and being Migrant: Confronting Double Strangeness in UK Higher Education Dr Thushari Welikala King’s Learning Institute thushari. welikala@kcl. ac. uk

The overview Migrant women academic (MWA) The emerging research context The autoethnographic narrative The insights Towards opening up discussions within the ‘global university’ to interrogate gendered and racialized practices.

What is the significance of MWA autoethnographies? Provide alternative world views to reinterpret issues and challenges women academics encounter in HE A simple step towards thinking about demasculinising and deracialising methodologies.

HESA 2016

The research context: narratives of adjustment Individual Institutional socialisation Degree of ADJUSTMENT Work Family General The Role Institutional culture Family and other

What is missing in adjustment narratives? Methodologically and theoretically: apolitical post-racial post-post colonial power-neutral Centred on culture-based differences and difficulties (Except for few exceptions)

Addressing the missing points: an alternative approach ‘The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two in society. The challenge is to develop a methodology that allows us to examine how the private troubles of individuals are connected to public issues and to public responses to these troubles’ (Mills, 1959: 5 -6).

Autoethnographic narratives Personal written accounts, Conversations with colleagues –both face-to-face and virtual, Life experiences, Personal email correspondence. Method of making-sense of stories: critical reflection on reflection (Ro. R) • • • Stories written on similar issues over selected period of time Critical reflections on the written text Identification of themes Interrogate the ways in which themes have been reflected upon identifying new perceptions on themes.

Why autoethnography? § Imaginative, more feminine way of being § Self-repositioning my stories § Writing as self-reading § Reframing my understandings of the world § Epiphanic § Disruptive § Expose myths and realities about power and hierarchy in the academy

Autoethnography and research rigour Concerns: The unproblematic reliance on voice, presence and experience The narrative self with an unproblematic window to the past, present and future The decisions of the teller to decide on the stories worth telling (see Mac. Lure, 2011)

Deconstructive autoethnography De-centres the teller ‘I’ become the ‘eye’ Challenges the written text Unsettles the perceptions Critical reflection reconstructs the teller in the telling Performance of discourse (Denzin, 2014).

Reflection on Reflection: Interrogating the text

Recurring themes: Relationships (with peers and between student and teacher) Institutional context (physical and conceptual) Behavioural norms Self

Interrogating my reflections: Relationships with colleagues Reflection on reflection Interrogating reflection on reflection • Authentic Superficial Complex • Open communication Top-down communication Microaggression/racism • Welcome diversity Highlight adjustment White hegemony • Build on trust Opportunistic Temporary • Flexible Non-hierarchical Hierarchical FEMININE MASCULINE

Confronting the stranger Self: Ontological disruption ‘Home’ Liminal selfhood Imagined ‘home’ Middle path in life Post colonial history Identification –no singular identity Belonging enough

The learning wave of the migrant woman academic Native-like Accepted foreigner Foreigner The migrant No one

Making use of this identification process for creative reinterpretation E. g. Masculinity in UK HE Manly, muscular, strong, well built, robust, powerful, red-blooded, vigorous, objective, rational… Masculinity and (ascribed) power Why do we always relate men with power? Multiple masculinities performed by both men and women Social identities emerge from identifications with self-relevant groups (political, religious, national…. ) and social categories (gender, ethnicity…). Social identity construction is a process of self- stereotyping (Echabe, 2010).

Using ‘difference’ to challenge gendered and racialized difference Different world views I think therefore I am’ of Descartes Ubuntu: I am because we are; since we are, therefore I am –Ubuntu: a way of being in the African society

Thank You! Your ideas are welcome!

References Anderson, B. and Blinder, S. (2015), Who Counts as a Migrant: Definitions and their Consequences, Migration Observatory Briefing, Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2015. Bauman, Z. (1998)Globalisation: the human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Echabe, A. E. (2010) Role identities versus social identities: Masculinity, femininity, instrumentality and communality, Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 30– 43. Kim, T. (2010) Transnational academic mobility, knowledge, and identity capital, Discourse Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 3, 5: 577 -591. Mac. Lure, (2011), Qualitative Inquiry: Where are the ruins? Qualitative Inquiry 17, 997 -1005. Mills, C. R. (1959) The Sociological Imagination. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Motha, S. and Varghese, M. (2016), Rewriting narratives of the academy: Women faulty of colour and identity management, Race Ethnicity and Education, DOI: 10. 1080/13613324. 2016. 1248826 Müller, J. and Trahar, T. (2016) Facing our whiteness in doing Ubuntu research. Finding spatial justice for the researcher, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, http: //www. hts. org. za P. 1 -7. Ong, A. (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logic of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Vertovec, S. (2001) Transnationalism and identity, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27: 4, 573 -582