Page 163 - Through the gate of the neoliberal academy • Herschberg

data from multiple hiring procedures. In addition, I analysed hiring policies in order to understand the meso-context in which committee members operate.
Each chapter of this dissertation contributes to the answering of the research question. Overall, my data show how multiple inequalities are created for early- career researchers (ECRs) through recruitment and selection processes and selection criteria. I show how committee members practice inequalities based on other aspects than individual merit, such as categories of social differences. Also, inequalities exist between postdoc and assistant professor positions because postdocs (who are hired on a principal investigator’s project) can be treated as a kind of short-term project worker instead of being selected for their potential to pursue a long-term academic career.
First, I started with analysing the inequalities that are (re)produced in the recruitment and selection for postdoc positions in STEM and SSH departments of four European higher education institutions. In chapter 2, I observed that the most apparent inequalities in postdoc recruitment and selection are instigated by the projectification of academia. Due to the lack of accountability for the hiring of postdocs for temporary projects, principal investigators (PIs) can exert a lot of power over the recruitment and selection practices they use. This study showed that in the four countries in this study, PIs often choose to recruit postdocs through informal networks, which creates inequalities between the potential postdoc candidates who are part of a valuable network and those who lack network connections that can give them access to postdoc positions. Furthermore, the recruitment and selection of postdocs that I address in this chapter reveal inequalities between postdocs working on a PI’s project and postdocs who acquired their own funding. The former have fewer possibilities of building their own research line, as they are more dependent on the PI and enjoy less autonomy. Postdocs working on their own project usually have more opportunities to independently develop a coherent research line that is required for a next – more stable - position. Therefore, working on a PI’s project might have an effect on the careers of ECRs because they might have a more scattered research line.
My data show that the second way inequalities are (re)produced is in the translation from macro-discourses to meso-level criteria and to micro-level criteria. In chapter 3, I identified four inequalities through studying the criteria embedded in macro-discourses of internationalisation and excellence, and the application of the criteria at the meso-organisational level and micro-individual level committee members in a Dutch university. At the macro- and meso-levels, criteria remain rather broad and undefined, which leaves room for interpretation by individual committee members when they apply selection criteria in recruitment and selection procedures.
GENERAL DISCUSSION 161
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