Conceptualizing Spatial Ambivalence Among Migrant Academics: The Dimension of Temporalities in Understanding Career Strategies

Highly skilled migrants are often deemed to have 'mobility capital': extant studies have shown that for career advancement they mobilize the capacity to  be spatially mobile across borders, drawing on their cultural, social and economic capital. In policy, too, the debate around "gain and retain" has popularized the construction of mobile skilled migrants. In fact, Germany, the country which this paper focuses on, has been widening its channel for skilled and highly skilled migration streams and opened a route for long-term and permanent settlement for migrants entering through its skilled migration regime. This new, skill-b(i)ased migration governance radically rewrites the established understanding of German citizenship, based on "Selecting by Origin".

Recent scholarship has brought about a nuanced understanding about spatial mobility capital and its negotiated nature, by considering the work-family interaction. While these studies put forth ambivalence and gendered power dynamics in realizing career aspirations among highly skilled migrants, I argue that less attention has been paid to the temporal dimension in capturing spatial ambivalence and career strategies. By focusing on migrant academics in three German cities, this paper aims to conceptualize their spatial ambivalence, which is influenced by three temporal points in their own and family lives: past, present and future. However, rather than treating these three 'points' in isolation from one another, I want to make sense of them in a continuum, that would together affect migrant academics’ decision/orientation to stay, move on, or return. Drawing on a quantitative survey and problem-centered interviews, I aim to demonstrate that the temporalities intersect with, and give meaning to, locally specific experiences along the social division of race/ethnicity, gender, country of origin, and age in the workplace, family, neighborhood and local administration. In addition, I will discuss the strengths and challenges in using these methods.