International academics in the peripheries. A qualitative meta-analysis across fifteen countries

ABSTRACT

This paper is a meta-analysis of qualitative studies on international scholars migrating to academic peripheries. In contrast to studies focused on relocating to the US and other global centers, or those focused on ‘star faculty,’ these studies reveal a different face of international migration. By examining 19 studies from all over the world, we identified eleven common themes centered around: institutional motivations to hire international faculty, individual motivations to seek employment in the peripheries, the specificity of migration and recruitment processes as well as various integration problems associated with choosing a career in less popular destinations. This analysis offers an overview of in-depth national cases, which is interesting for cross-cultural researchers and students of particular peripheral systems. We demonstrate that foreign-born scholars in the peripheries are very often motivated by factors that would be negligible in the analysis of academic migration to centers and face different challenges.