“We are disposable”: precarity, mobility, and inequity in higher education’s gig academy

Abstract

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic amplified inequities for contingent scholars in the neoliberal gig academy. In this article, we document the struggles of three early career scholars, all contingent instructors, researchers, or both, working at multiple institutions in higher education (HE). Through critical collaborative autoethnography we follow our experiences through the pandemic with a focus on the ‘return to campus’ semester in fall 2021. We forge a critique and activist stance against the structural problem of precarity in HE using our dialogues and vignettes to highlight our experiences around precarity, mobility, and systemic inequities.