On participation, presence and absence in hierarchies of knowledge production at times of academic precarity
In this article, Fjolla Çeku Sylejmani reflects on attendance at two conferences this past summer, visa issues, additional hurdles faced by those residing outside the Global North, and whether or not there is sufficient time and space to render our experiences and connections meaningful in the complex ordering of hierarchies.
Participation in two international studies conferences this June, the BISA annual conference in Brighton and the CEEISA conference in Sarajevo, was a journey of reconciling presence with absence, in known and unknown settings. The journey made me witness omissions, non-recognition, silences and hierarchies of belonging embodied in my situated experience. Flying from Kosovo conveniently on a direct flight to the UK one week, then travelling to Sarajevo the following week, a whole-day journey with a layover, after a long and unpredictable visa ordeal. Coming from Kosovo, I was faced yet again with the persisting hierarchies of centrality and periphery within the region of South East Europe, in itself a periphery to the ‘Global North’.
Photo: Brighton seafront
Presence in a familiar setting: navigating epistemic hierarchies of belonging
My second consecutive BISA conference brought me back to Brighton, 19 years after finishing my master's studies at the University of Sussex. I conveniently flew from Pristina on a direct flight to London. Being based in Kosovo, I returned to present my ongoing PhD research at the University of Graz. Brighton felt much of the same city as I remembered it: the strong winds, the scaffolding around buildings, the hungry seagulls. On the first conference day I walked to my former student accommodation at 51-53 King's Road, just steps from the conference venue, to find it locked. I was comforted to see a familiar place, The Buddies Fish & Chips just across the street, still open. A lot has changed in the focus areas of disciplinary knowledge production over the years in the UK. During my master’s studies, over a decade before Brexit, the Sussex European Institute boasted one of the best European Studies programmes, including in continental Europe. After Brexit, it has diversified its research to cover the politics of Brexit and the ‘post-Brexit landscape’.
These changes notwithstanding, a constant and persisting reality in the UK academia remains the visa regime for students of so-called “developing countries”. Despite the UK visa regime for non-EU countries of the South-East European region, there seems to be a steady albeit limited presence and participation of students and researchers from the region in conferences such as BISA. Yet inevitably, a visa process leads to unfortunate rejections and therefore absences in participation as I also witnessed in a panel convened by the South East Europe Working Group. The challenges of academics from the peripheries to be present and take up their place in the epistemic centres of knowledge production are numerous, layered and diverse, including navigating belonging and non-belonging, (in)visibility, borders, visas, the salience of documents and the colour of our passports in these spaces.
One of the persisting issues of this struggle is apparent in the relatively marginal number of published works in the journals of Global North with authors from the so-called “developing countries” - the Global South, Global East or other categories of regions. During a roundtable discussion with journal editors, the issue of the exponential increase in the number of article submissions and the corresponding higher number of rejections was raised. The expressed frustration from some Global South young scholars about the perceived gatekeeping from journals and the difficulties of getting published in the Global North journals ensued. Some existing mentorship opportunities for scholars from the Global South (an umbrella category featuring Global East and SEE region scholars in some of these journals) in preparation of journal submissions are put in place as an attempt to soften the apparent gap. But the reality remains that the expectation to publish in the established hierarchy of journals is more difficult to be met by scholars coming from the peripheries due to the apparent systemic inequalities and the uneven access to epistemic infrastructure.
As we were exchanging views over coffees and lunch, one topic felt like the ‘elephant in the room’. The talk of and decisions about cuts in academic positions in many UK universities was what many conference participants were concerned with and affected by. This felt to be almost an existential concern, beyond an academic one. As one UK academic put it: “These days, you are lucky if you have a job”. Coming from Kosovo, worry of precarity being a constant feature, pursuing doctoral studies almost 20 years after finishing my master’s, having worked in non-academic fields, a mother of three, I began to wonder about what the future holds for non-linear academics from the periphery of knowledge production hierarchies. My passport has always had a prevailing importance in ascribing my place and belonging in the epistemic and workplace settings alike. Which category of jobs I can hold – in Kosovo and abroad, what opportunities I can pursue, which conferences I can attend are ultimately conditioned by my passport, as well as my age, the unspoken caretaking responsibilities and my career choices. The non-linear trajectory of my academic pursuit as a result is another factor that adds to this layered conditioning of belonging at these precarious times. Precarity, from my lived experience, beyond the uncertainty of academic employment, is a wider existential question of the fundamental struggle to belong, to be included, to be present and heard.
Photo: Luton Airport Parkway railway station
Presence in an unknown familiar setting: navigating post-Yugoslav hierarchies
A week after returning from Brighton, and following a cumbersome visa process, I travelled to Sarajevo for the Central and East European ISA conference. My visa was issued on the actual travel day at the BiH Embassy in Skopje, a day before the conference started, after a long and unpredictable ordeal. The Embassy issues BiH visas for Kosovo passport holders on a separate piece of paper, due to BiH’s non-recognition of Kosovo. I took a photo of the visa on the paper and shared it with friends and family as proof of a major accomplishment and good news. I bought the last, albeit expensive tickets from Skopje via Zagreb to Sarajevo, so I made it on time for the conference. It was my first time in Sarajevo, although I had many good reasons to visit earlier. Sarajevo has lived vividly in my imagination since childhood, with family and friends who had studied and lived in the city. I had encountered pieces of the city through their stories and experiences. During the war in Kosovo, I exchanged letters with my friend who moved there to finish music high school and later settled in, and during the pandemic we were exchanging common concerns of confinement in Prishtina and Sarajevo. I tried to take in as much of the city as I could in those few days, aware that planning a next visit will most likely prove to be difficult.
I realised soon that I was the only Kosovo participant at the conference. I had support from conference organisers with the visa and strong encouragement to participate from the programme convener and my thesis supervisor. The academic encounters and experiencing Sarajevo were very much worth it. Yet, I was struck with an invisible yet apparent gap of missed opportunities and missing connections between the lived experiences of the two countries and its people, once part of the former Yugoslavia, both war survivors. I could not help but feel a sense of missing links of our pasts and presents, be it in academic discussions on war and memorialisation, or in exchanges with Bosnian academics, many of whom academic diaspora. The silence around Kosovo and its omission felt deafening at this particular space and time. Only a six-hour drive from Sarajevo, yet the distance made exponentially bigger by an impossible visa ordeal, non-recognition of my passport and a flight with a layover, making the encounter ever more difficult. Coming from Kosovo, I was met with an element of surprise, almost as a guest who dropped by unexpectedly, received by unprepared hosts. “I did not know you were coming from Prishtina. I assumed you were born and raised in Austria” said a well-meaning conference team member.
The absence and silence around Kosovo were also apparent in a roundtable discussion on 'Teaching IR in the post-Yugoslav space within IR/political science departments of universities in the region'. In an attempt to fill that void, I offered a contribution from my personal understanding of the academic landscape in Kosovo. There was mentioning of a follow-up project covering the post-Yugoslav space, with uncertainty whether Kosovo would be included. Some 27 years after the war, there are several IR/political science programmes offered by the public and private universities in Prishtina and other cities of Kosovo. I found it troubling that there was no single presence to talk about that experience. I felt as an intruder in an otherwise orderly discussion about IR in the post-Yugoslav space. It felt like this space was not necessarily designed to be inclusive, nor geographically all-encompassing, intentionally or not.
Taking up the space as subjects in spaces of knowledge production for some of us comes with more than an effort, starting from the visa ordeals and the perpetual uncertainty about our presence in such spaces to navigating our presence in the layered hierarchies. Ultimately, this boils down to a constant struggle to meet our needs of belonging, participation, equality and dignity amidst omission and silences. Taking up space also takes determination in the face of such uncertainty. “I thought you would give up,” said Amer, one of the conference host organisers, who was helping me with the visa process, when I met him in Sarajevo. We exchanged over 15 emails and I do not know how many more emails and phone calls he had to make on his end about my visa.
On the closing panel of CEEISA, Hariz Halilovich shared reflections on human loss and funerals, as an inevitable ritual of life. He also shared his sense of ethical responsibility towards his own community, friends and family in Bosnia to pursue his research on genocide. When I asked him during a panel how he responded to claims that researchers from the region should not only research their own countries, his unwavering position was that of responsibility to research about our own communities. I had pondered about this question of subjectivity and reflexivity in research, along with the stories that are continuously told, written and rewritten about our places as objects when we are absent as subjects from such spaces of research and sharing.
Sarajevo has many sites of cemeteries and remembrance. I could not make it to visit one of them. I felt the landscape of grief, loss and memories, both personal and collective, overcome me. I returned to Kosovo with the lasting impression of new and old connections, familiar and unknown places with more questions than answers. In the persisting and layered hierarchies of knowledge production, who speaks, which forms of lived experiences and whose contribution is considered valuable and accepted as viable knowledge? Who talks to whom and what does this say about the possibility of knowledge exchanges? Is there a chance for new, collaborative modes of knowledge production? I remained with the lingering feeling of nostalgia and loss over the limited time and space to render our experiences and connections meaningful in the complex ordering of hierarchies.
All images by Fjolla Çeku Sylejmani