„Warum der ganze Terz?“ or in other words ”What was I thinking?“ is a WhatsApp message I receive on the morning of the day that my dear colleague from Switzerland departs with his family on an 18-months “research visit” to New Zealand. I am surprised that it didn’t hit him earlier, but I had a hunch that this moment would come.

How many times have I asked myself exactly this question? When queueing at the airport security check, when sipping at a drink during yet another conference reception, when bidding my husband farewell for supposedly 18 months after having secured my second mobility stipend from the Swiss National Science Foundation… Some friends outside of academia find it difficult to understand why someone would choose such an unsteady path, so I ask myself “is it really a choice”? Or is it just what people do in academia?

While academia has a long-standing tradition of overseas sabbaticals, today many academics make international transfers a conscious career choice way beyond the typical overseas sabbatical (Baruch & Hall, 2004). More broadly, this trend is related to the globalization of higher education (Napier et al., 1997), a shift from ‘elite’ to ‘mass’ higher education which gave rise to a shortage and increasing demand for faculty across various countries (Richardson & Zikic, 2007), and new public management schemes that have prompted universities around the globe to compete internationally for outstanding scholars in order to secure their place in the rankings.

But also individual academics, when asked, consider global career mobility as an important way and widely expected prerequisite for developing their career capital (Dickmann and Harris 2005). And it’s true, some career funding schemes (maybe more so in Europe than in the US) are only eligible to people who can illustrate a good amount of mobility along their CVs (regardless of their private situation) and external hires are mostly preferred over in-house promotions. Does that imply that academics are mobile just for the sake of mobility? Or is there indeed something that can be learned from “being on the move”?

Critical scholars warn that the normative demand to be mobile may result in self-defeating outcomes, as mobility presents “the limitless possibilities never possible to accomplish” (Baerenholdt, 2013: 27; see also Jeanes et al., 2015). They moreover point out that even though being on the move can be stimulating and enriching in many ways, it can also be accompanied however by turbulence and friction, where people on the move may experience a sense of instability, restlessness, disorientation and loneliness.

They may – but they don’t have to!

As of late, I have started to keep a “mobility diary”, as the (e)motions – especially related to country relocations – are so ephemeral and fluctuating that they may be gone already the next morning after a good night’s sleep. But some things, I argue, can only be learned (in both pleasant and unpleasant ways), when leaving sheltered grounds.

Academics travel for different reasons: conferences, field work, sabbaticals, or transfers. In this series “academics on the move” colleagues and I will share some of our unique experiences that we have gathered when being abroad. So please stay tuned…