Navigating across academic labour markets: a Bourdieusian reflexive narrative of a Chinese international doctoral graduate’s employment experiences

Abstract

Much research has investigated international graduate employability in home or host countries. However, limited studies have accounted for such employability across the home and the host. Drawing on Bourdieu’s relational and reflexive sociology, this paper critically examined the first author’s narrative of his employment experiences as a doctoral graduate navigating across Chinese and Australian academic fields after completing ten years of higher education and research training in Australia. While he encountered various challenges due to capital deficiency and habitus-field mismatch, he also reflexively learned to capitalise on his transnational academic dispositions and decode different logics of practice across different academic fields. Thus, he underwent constant changes of identity, agency, and belonging in his cross-field employment journey, which potentially shaped his transnational habitus. This Bourdieusian reflexive narrative contributes to research and practice on graduate employability and reflexivity from a sociological perspective.