Academic Labour Process and ‘Identity-Work’ Construction: Liminal Experience of Academics in the University

Abstract

Academic labour process in the context of neo-liberal Higher Education (HE) management system, specifically the university system, had in recent years evoked multiple and conflicting dimensions for lived-work experiences of academics in the university. Between multiple levels of mundane/routine teaching and learning, and at the extreme of the continuum, i.e. research for knowledge production, and community engagements, occasioned by the dictates of neo-liberal logics, the lived-work experiences and self-identity of academics are constructed. This co-construction illustrates how the work of academics is further embedded in global neo-liberal dynamics, and how this reconstructs the “normalcy” of academic work process, and “self- identity” of academics. Change in normalcy such as the reforms in universities management system, globally , and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, for example, has also deepened challenges facing HE management in terms of funding, governance, and “social mission”. This has further compelled universities to initiate alternatives in managerial practices. This is even more demonstrated along the “contours” of neo-liberal reforms of the universities system, globally. Utilizing the concept of “liminality” in organisational research, the paper demonstrates how the emerging dynamics in neo-liberal university system, including the impact of the pandemic shape the “identity-work”, “subjectitviy” and “agency” of academics, in context. While the paper draws on conceptual-analytics of liminality, it evaluates and examines the “discursive narratives” of academics, in context, during period of uncertainties, such as academic policy reforms, academic governance; illustrating the implications on their identity-work. The paper shows how liminal practices in the academia at a time of reform in the universities’ governance could aid the process of construction and co-construction of identity-work of academics. The on-going co-construction of identity-work in the context of neo-liberal academia has produced “liminal personae” in the university system, even at a time of uncertainty.