UCLA

The knowledge productivity of world-renowned universities is greatly advanced by the fastest growing research workforce—60,000 postdoctoral scholars in the United States. This increasingly instrumental segment of academe's labor force is also the most internationalized group within higher education. However, despite the diversity of the workforce and their recognized academic capital, the postdoctorate is oftentimes experienced as a low-paying academic position that offers limited employment stability due to the nature of temporary workplace visas. The purpose of this study, Postdoctoral Scholars at the University of California: Constructing a Migrant Identity Within the Workplace, is to better support international postdoctoral scholars that are employed through temporary workplace visas and makeup over 50 percent of the workforce. The study examined the workplace experiences of international postdocs at the University of California (UC), and was guided by two theoretical frameworks—Mary Waters (1999) migrant identity framework and Kimberlé W. Crenshaw's (1989, 1991) intersectionality framework. Waters' (1999) migrant identity framework posits that migrants' attitudes, beliefs, and actions are changed and influenced by experienced conditions in the U.S., inclusive of race relations and social hierarchies. The transformative mixed methods research design was employed to support the application of critical frameworks and a research process that sought to understand the relationship between work experiences and academic migrant identity formation. Quantitative (550 multilingual surveys) and qualitative (26 in-depth interviews) data was collected from all ten UC campuses. The findings extended Waters' framework, and identified the personal characteristics and work experiences that negatively influenced the migrant identity formation. The findings also unpacked the nuances of workplace agency and illustrated the spectrum of vulnerabilities that academic migrants experience as a result of their temporary workplace visas. The triangulation of data supported the development of a new academic migrant model that interrogates previous class and race assumptions in regards to migrant identity formation. The newly proposed model can be utilized as a tool to measure campus climate for academic migrants. The ability to examine academic migrant identity formation within the institution that employs the largest number of international postdocs advances knowledge for an understudied population. Findings from this research study also support equitable policies that recognize the challenges international academic employees navigate within U.S. postsecondary institutions.