The Internationalisation of Academic Markets, Careers and Professions

Abstract

This chapter analyses the internationalisation of the academic profession through three prisms, i.e. national markets, individual careers trajectories and professional activities, and compares the academic profession in 12 European countries in those respects. It is hoped to contribute to the understanding of the character of internationalisation in this context: possibly a polymorph dimension of the academic activity, impacting differently the profession – depending on historical organisation and structure of higher education – as well as on disciplinary specificities and individual characteristics. In the first parts of the chapter, the market and the careers of academics are addressed. The subsequent parts concentrate on various aspects of international professional activities. Beside strong differences of internationalisation between national academic markets as well as between individuals, this chapter reveals that ascriptive factors seem to play a role in a career internationalisation: being young, being a woman and having a father with tertiary education positively influence the probability of being internationally active. But this is not consistently an advantage: it seems to facilitate early access to junior academic position, but not to senior academic ones.