Authors

Smaranda Boros²; Anna Pechurina¹; Yuliya Shymko³;  ¹ Karlstad University, Sweden;  ² Vlerick Business School, Belgium;  ³ Audencia Business School, France

Discussion

This presentation is based on the qualitative study that explored identity work among female academic professionals from the former communist countries using biographical interviews as the main method. By drawing on ideas of Spivak, Deleuze and philosophical framework of Eliade, our study addresses the intersectional positions of white educated Eastern European immigrant women that render them both visible and invisible within Western systems of oppression/privilege, thus creating a predicament of double non-belonging, or ‘buffering’. In other words, women in our study who left their country of origin and appropriated neoliberal ways of professional assimilation and performativity feel that despite their self-legitimizing efforts they are not fully recognized by institutional structures in their country of residence due to their persistent ‘otherness’. Similarly, they feel detached from the contexts of their homelands where they no longer live and/or work. As a result, women find themselves located within the metaphorical ‘buffer zone' - a liminal space for identity-in-between. However, rather than considering this state as detrimental to their sense of self-worth, our study points to its productive charge for emergence of resistant subjectivity. Instead of being limited by their liminality, women turn it into a coping strategy, a way to relate to the communal, a continuous reinvention of oneself and of social transformation.