Multicultural Neoliberalism and Academic Labor: Experiences of Female Immigrant Faculty in the U.S. Academy

Abstract

In light of limited attention to immigrant faculty (aka, international faculty) in the U.S. academy, we analyze interview discourses with 26 female immigrant faculty members from multiple disciplines working across U.S. colleges and universities. Collectively, the women’s voices converge around three primary themes pertaining to neoliberal restructuring of higher education: commodification of education, multicultural neoliberalism, and universal meritocracy. Furthermore, we explore the various ways in which cultural identities are (re)positioned by dominant ideologies of neoliberalism in the U.S. academy. Our findings develop an understanding of how neoliberal ideologies construct and reinforce marginalized identities and subjectivities at the intersection of gender, race, and immigration.

Keywords

neoliberalism ideology intersectionality immigrant women faculty critical discourse analysis

The stereotype of “academic labor” being oxymoronic is folding in on itself. Growing scholarship addresses the importance of studying the corporatization of higher education and academic labor (Bousquet & Nelson, 2008; Giroux, 2011; Rhoades, 2011; Saunders, 2010), and adjacent research has problematized the bifurcation of the professoriate into adjunct and tenure-track faculty laborers (Miller, 2011; Ovetz, 2015). Furthermore, globalization has shifted what academic labor (i.e., teaching, research, and service) looks like, paying lip service to internationalization, emphasizing an industry-like atmosphere, and offering fewer and fewer funds to accomplish such work (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Little research explores, however, globalization’s effect on who is doing academic labor in the United States and how dominant global ideologies such as capitalism, meritocracy, and neoliberalism shape academic discourse and practices.

Neoliberalism in higher education is characterized by a culture of “rampant individualism,” in which academic freedom and diversity (in beliefs or bodies) are challenged (Darder, 2012, p. 413). In her analysis of the negative impacts of the internationalization of neoliberalism, Darder argues,

In the efficient, cost effective, and competitive neoliberal world, questions of difference have been neatly conflated and diffused by a hypocrisy fueled by racism, elitism, and a tenacious disbelief in the equality of those who exist outside the narrow rationality of its profit logic. As a consequence, “deficient” subjects of difference, unable to march to the homogenizing and bootstrap neoliberal refrain, are conveniently tossed aside or criminalized and held behind iron bars, without concern for their numbers or their fate. (p. 414)

Darder’s concerns paint a picture of an academy that assimilates willing subjects into an ideological system that moves beyond the “publish or parish” mantra and extends expectations to “conform or parish” implications. Neoliberalism further marginalizes non-normative thinkers and marginalized bodies as colleges and universities are run like businesses, which encourage students to think of themselves as “consumers” of knowledge and expect a “standard” educational package. Indeed, Giroux (2011) claims that a neoliberal ideology often constitutes students and faculty as “either redundant, superfluous, or entirely disposable” (n.p.). Giroux describes this group of academics as a new “subaltern” class, working to liberate from such ideological strongholds. Here, we highlight one contingency of this subaltern class—female immigrant faculty members contributing to the academic labor market and realizing their own subjectivity as called into question by larger hegemonic discourses shaping academia. Our previous work with this population has uncovered the subjugated status positioning of female immigrant faculty (Lawless & Chen, 2015). We contend that this subjugation is exacerbated by neoliberal ideologies and practices. Although scholars such as Darder (2012), Fisk (2005), Giroux, and Melamed (2006) have begun to consider neoliberalism’s negative impact on women, the working class, and faculty of color, scant attention has been paid to the intersections of neoliberalism and the internationalization of higher education in the United States.

In 2013, a total of 3,098 new faculty and researcher positions in the United States were held by newly admitted immigrants (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2013). Although the number of immigrant faculty members at the U.S. colleges and universities is growing, conversations regarding how immigrant faculty experience, navigate, and negotiate the academy remain scarce (Kim, Wolf-Wendel, & Twombly, 2011; McCalman, 2007; Robbins, Smith, & Santini, 2011). Foote, Li, Monk, and Theobald (2008) have described foreign-born academics as “an invisible minority on many U.S. campuses” (p. 168). Michael (2011) argues that “institutional international assets”—consisting of international students, faculty, and researchers—are underutilized. Clearly, there is a need to better understand the views, accounts, and experiences of immigrant academics in the U.S. higher education system. Considering the ongoing neoliberal restructuring of higher education, this essay focuses on examining the first-person accounts of immigrant women faculty through the lens of neoliberalism. Following Darder’s (2012) explanation of neoliberal multiculturalism as the “acknowledgement and acceptance of multicultural subjects, based on an ethos of self-reliance, individualism, and competition, while simultaneously (and conveniently) undermining discourses and social practices that call for collective social action and fundamental social change,” we inductively analyze experiences of our participants within the context of an internationalized neoliberal academy (p. 417). The lens of neoliberalism allows us attend to the potential consequences of neoliberal restructuring of higher education toward business-driven models. Our analysis uncovers several challenges for our participants and implications for global higher education institutions.

The purpose of this study is to uncover intersecting neoliberal ideologies that emerge within the experiences of female immigrant faculty members in the United States. In particular, we seek to gain first-person stories, narratives, and discourses from self-identified immigrant women faculty members across intersecting subject positions (e.g., race, class, nationality, immigration status, etc.) regarding how they negotiate their identities and subjectivities within a neoliberal context. On top of being foreign-born, female immigrant faculty members experience multiple layers of invisibility based on normative expectations that are raced, gendered, and classed in many U.S. colleges and universities. Thus, their voices can expose and render visible multiple borderlands in U.S. higher education as they relate to neoliberal ideologies.

Researchers Always/Already Attempting to Be Critical

Cannella and Lincoln (2015) describe critical perspectives as “any research that recognizes power—that seeks in its analyses to plumb the archeology of taken-for-granted perspectives to understand how unjust and oppressive social conditions came to be reified as historical ‘givens’” (p. 244). Given such directive, we follow Foucault’s (1972) multilayered approach to power, which explains the production of power-laden relationships through social practices and “social hegemonies” (p. 93).

This framework drives us to not just understand but also interrogate how institutions, structures, and practices enable and constrain discourses; how groups are interpellated into particular systems of meaning (Althusser, 1977); and how they might resist institutional barriers. In other words, our approach moves beyond the basic exploration of participants’ voices by couching them within the context of the larger social systems of the academy and immigration in the United States.

Thematic analysis can facilitate a systematic process for analyzing everyday qualitative data with critical agendas if the researcher continuously acknowledges power and issues of privilege and marginalization throughout. When Cannella and Lincoln (2015) argued that critical perspectives can be valuable for qualitative researchers, they introduced several questions that critical inquiry should ask:

How are particular groups represented in discourses, practices and social systems? What knowledges are silenced, made visible, or literally erased? What are examples of oppressions (and/or new exclusions) that are being made to sound equitable through various discourses? How do elite groups define values, constructs, and rhetoric in ways that maintain matrices of power? How are particular discourses infused into the public imaginary? How are power relations constructed and managed through? (p. 259)

Such questions are useful in inductive analysis and can guide the interpretation of themes. We add the following questions for qualitative researchers interested in applying critical epistemologies to analyses: How are everyday discourses enabled and constrained by social systems, dominant ideologies, and power relations? How do macro- and micro-level discourses, practices, and systems intersect and reproduce dominations and oppressions? and How can individual subjects become aware of dominant ideologies (such as neoliberalism) and work toward challenging them and promoting social justices?

Given this critical trajectory, in what follows, we outline a study which can be analyzed by first understanding the patterned results within participants responses and examined secondarily using the questions/framework outlined above, ultimately linking relational communication to wider societal ideologies—a useful approach for critical qualitative researchers.

Female Immigrant Faculty Experiences in Neoliberal Higher Education

We have interviewed 26 women who self-identify as immigrant faculty members within U.S. higher education institutions. Participants were recruited from several universities across the United States using purposeful sampling and all self-identified as immigrants. These women represented multiple positions within the academy including adjunct instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and full-professors. Moreover, the women interviewed hailed from a number of academic fields such as the medical professions, business, humanities, applied sciences, history, arts, and natural sciences. Our participants immigrated from a total of 15 different countries (i.e., Brazil, The Netherlands, China, Germany, Philippines, Taiwan, Haiti, Kenya, Serbia, South Africa, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea), spanning four continents. The most recent migrant has been living in the United States for 6 years, whereas the earliest has been a resident for 25 years. To protect the confidentiality of the participants, we have chosen to use pseudonyms and de-identify academic institutions.

We utilized a semi-structured interview guide, allowing us to identify shared experiences and remain flexible in addressing individual narratives (Lindlof & Taylor, 2011). We asked these women to describe their academic journey and asked questions such as, “How do you neogitate your cultural identities at work?” and “What does it mean to be an immigrant in the U.S. Academy?” Interviews were conducted in neutral, quiet locations and lasted between 40 and 70 min each. Interviews followed institutional review board (IRB) guidelines and were recorded for accuracy. Our subjective analysis yielded three neoliberal themes: commodification, neoliberal multiculturalism, and a redefinition of productivity as experienced by immigrant female faculty.

Commodification of Education: Immigrant Bodies as Products

Within a neoliberal academia, students become consumers, ideologically borrowing an agenda of “the customer is always right.” With this growing mentality, students can demand satisfaction at every level (Saunders, 2010). For example, Hyun explained that while the transnational agenda of neoliberalism created a space for her in the academy, neoliberalism forces her to make compromises that other faculty might not have to,

I do transnational sociology, so if it’s not for neoliberalism pressuring the institution to create for that kind of [global] equilibrium there probably wouldn’t be a job for me. But at the same time, once you enter that institution under that neoliberal influence, there is a competing of the forces that we have to face…capitalism penetrates every corner of the institution including my university. I constantly have to strike the balance of compromising my standard and the need of the university. I am hired to teach about globalization and yet the students are not interested in globalization. This will lead to cancellation of my class. So, I feel undue pressure to become an advocate for the ideology but at the same time I feel like I’m a victim of the ideology itself.

This feeling of compromise is heightened for international faculty who are trying to literally prove they are better than an American faculty member to receive a green card. A hierarchical ordering of faculty members is echoed by Macey in comparing the tenure system with the caste system in Indian: “I really think that the whole tenure-track stuff is totally disgusting. It’s so like caste in India.” In addition to commodifying education into produces, faculty members in the process are also separated into different categories (e.g., tenure track, visiting professors, and adjuncts) with differential pays, benefits, and resources.

Furthermore, student expectations are often unrealistic, or dripping with racism, sexism, or xenophobia. Almost all of our participants noted student curiosity or disdain for their accent, much of which is communicated through student evaluations. International faculty of color seem to bear the brunt of these evaluations, whereas White (Canadian, European, and South African) women’s accents are described as “interesting” and “sing-songy.” For most women of color in our study, accent was seen as part of the product that the student is paying for. Concern over accent led women in our study to use self-deprecating humor, or in one instance, secretly record lectures to make sure she is pronouncing words correctly. Elewa described her personal growth over the issue of accent, explaining,

I would go into classes and start with a disclaimer: “Please, if you don’t understand me, stop and ask.” But then I got exposed to more literature and more voices of people with other differences besides accents and I became strong. And from my third year to today, I just say, “look, listen very carefully. My accent will not change, so if you do not understand me, find another class.”

Elewa’s decision to resist discourses around accent was in the minority among the women we interviewed. Others reflected on the discrimination they received based on student expectations around their educational package. Several women commented on the problematic nature of evaluations. Examples included,

Hyun: On evaluations, “the clarity of the professor’s speech”—I always get that one extremely low. I’m bothered by the fact that this is even included. When I encourage students to ask me to repeat, sometimes they make me repeat like a parrot and it took me a while to realize that [students] were making fun of me.

Chagina: One of the things for my reappointment package is student evaluations. I had three great evaluations and two not too good evaluations, so I had a conversation with the Dean. I explained to her what happened and the dynamics of a class. One of the things I discovered in this place is there is no acknowledgment of the fact that I am an immigrant, an African woman, someone with an accent and that may have a bearing on how the students perceive my work or me.

As demonstrated by these faculty members, in a consumer-driven market, instructors must do whatever they can to satisfy customers and keep them coming back. Students demonstrate such satisfaction through the educational equivalent of Yelp Reviews (e.g., ratemyprofessor.com or standardized university evaluations).

Everything about our participants’ classrooms become part of the package they offer consumers: their syllabus, their bodies, their voices, and their knowledge are all consumed, evaluated, and compared with other “brands.” A disturbing common experience among our participants was the frequency at which students tested these women’s knowledge to make sure their expectations were met. For example, Adalina, a German woman, found, “Because I’m a foreigner, I have particular students who will ask questions about very particular things to kind of test whether I might know those.” In contrast, Dana, a Canadian women explained, “When I first came here, I taught a lot of U.S.-based, information-based courses and no one asked me if I knew anything about it, which I thought was very interesting. They just assumed that U.S. policy was the norm.” The active challenging of credibility seen here was interesting linked to perceived foreign status. As a Canadian, Dana felt that her credibility on U.S. matters was rarely challenged because she was perceived as American, whereas a woman with an accent is “presumed incompetent” (Harris & González, 2012).

As an added burden, the expectation that a foreign body and identity is part of an educational package results in increased academic work for these participants. As Adalina notes,

I have students who have an international background and there’s sort of a recognition that I understand some of their struggles, whether it’s linguistic or dealing with visa issues, so they will come to me and my advising burden increases compared to other faculty.

Adalina’s experience marks the subjugated position that female immigrant faculty members hold and how that becomes exacerbated in the neoliberal academy. Together, these examples demonstrate how the commodification of education places undue pressure on female immigrant faculty members.

Neoliberal Multiculturalism

As previously described, neoliberal multiculturalism is an ideology that promotes meritocracy in a way that ignores individual differences and intersectionalities (Darder, 2012). Darder explains that under this ideology, people publicly recognize and advocate for multicultural subjects and yet link their success to meritocracy, individual effort, and personal success. Thus, neoliberal principles are used to justify tokenization and later undercut concerns for equity around issues of identity. Discrimination, racism, sexism, and homophobia become disregarded under “bootstrap” mentalities and inequality is justified. This ideology informed the experiences of many of our participants.

A hallmark of neoliberal multiculturalism is the public recognition of multiculturalism. In our study, women were being hired as a means to “internationalize” the university and to contribute to the diversity on campus. And, in many cases, these international women were tokenized by immediately being asked to serve on the “diversity committee,” “faculty of color caucus,” or similar service outlet. More overtly, this public recognition of multiculturalism becomes clear in discourses about the hiring process:

Jana: I really experience the imposter syndrome. And of course, I mean, when you hear there is a push for diversity on campus to kinda increase the pull of international faculty or faculty of color, of course I’m also thinking whether that played into my case.

Xevera: I remember once having a conversation with a colleague—this was three years ago—he’s white and he’s a male and he said “well you know, when we go to the market, you’re going to have way more chances than me to get a job” and I said, “Really? Why?” and he said, “Because you’re a woman and you’re from Mexico” . . . Now I learned, that no, I’m actually not Mexican-American so that doesn’t play in my favor at all. If anything actually there are a lot of jobs I can’t qualify for because I don’t have the papers.

Both examples point for a growing demand for multicultural faculty. Xevera’s example points to common discourses about the presence of diversity, perhaps regardless of qualifications, but the lack of equitable support for international faculty—the epitome of neoliberal multiculturalism. In other words, these women have been interpellated into a larger discourse that identifies multiculturalism as a goal, but not one that is unrealized through institutional practices. Despite the desire to internationalize, women in this study often felt unsupported by their institution. As two participants explain, this can unfortunately result in the attrition of female and minority faculty:

Esther: I’m only the second minority person in the department and I know they’ve had other minority females that didn’t last. They never last. So, I don’t want any kind of attention, so I will last. I started to find out it was like standard practice to say, “We’ll let you in the door but we’re really not gonna do anything to help you stay inside the doors.”

Chagina: I did meet a South African woman and one of the first things she told me and she is an associate professor, she told me to be very careful about my associations on campus. Our school is very political, very and especially as a lecturer because it is a contractual thing. She explained to me about another young lady who had been hired two years ago and she was actually an assistant professor but she was let go. She was fired.

Other women in this study often felt unsupported in matriculating into the United States and its academic systems. When requesting assistance to navigate the green card process, many participants were left to fend for themselves and prove their success. In many cases, this added burden interfered with their ability to remain as academically productive as their domestic peers. Hyun explained the burden of applying for citizenship and its direct implications for her research:

I asked for the university’s support when I wanted to apply for the US citizenship. They kind of told me that I was on my own. That’s a lot of time away from my work. My green card expires next year. It also coincides with my sabbatical and that means that I can’t really leave the country for my sabbatical. I am a researcher in Japan and you’re not allowed to apply for the renewal of the green card unless it’s like forty days before the expiration date. I decided to just renew my green card and reapply for the U.S. citizenship later. That’s one layer that immigrant faculty really have to deal with.

For Hyun, taking charge of her own naturalization process put her research productivity at risk, causing tension for her in the workplace. Also feeling undue burdens, Dana details how a multicultural lens fuels ignorance among those “helping” immigrant faculty to navigate such systems. She explains,

When I applied for a green card I was asked to put forward a lot of papers to prove that I am better than an American academic and I found that my lawyer (that the university had appointed) was sort of balking and I couldn’t figure out why. She didn’t consider my Canadian letters of reference adequate because they weren’t “international.” So I had to find others and of course I ironically found an American who was working in Amsterdam and she had no idea the letter of reference was from an American. I thought it was so funny.

This example also points out the inherent neoliberal multiculturalism in the green card application processes for international faculty. To stay in the country and achieve academic success, these women will be lauded for their academic success, not if they achieve standards set by American peers, but rather, when they exceed such standards. Thus, the system itself is imbued with neoliberal multiculturalism. Dana reinforces the embedded meritocracy in stating,

There are many scholars who are international scholars but they are not recognized for that. We’re coming into a period where the university is becoming much more driven to reward faculty who are bringing in grant and development money. I think that’s a problem in terms of a university that says they want to internationalize.

Dana’s reflections echo scholars who have theorized neoliberal multiculturalism—universities say they value diversity, but organizational practices value a meritocratic structure that ignores the needs of a diverse population.

Perhaps most telling of the divide created by neoliberal multiculturalism, Elewa reflects on an experience that demonstrates how this ideology reproduces discriminatory practices:

I remember one time the faculty of color caucus had a meeting. I remember leaving my office at 1pm and my colleagues were seated in their offices. I came back at 3pm and they were still there. I walked down that whole hallway and everyone was working in their office. And I said, “Wow. That’s what it means to be white. You don’t have to go to meetings where you’ve got to be justifying your existence.”

In general, the participants in our study describe discourses that invite them to be a highly visible part of the academic communities, but do little to offer support for matriculation, academic success, and personal well-being. The multicultural neoliberalism that becomes apparent in our participants’ experiences is supplemented and exacerbated by the increased prevalence of the ideology of individual meritocracy—the belief that individual efforts should be rewarded (McNamee & Miller, 2009). Such an ideology ignores larger social systems and ideological constraints, as demonstrated by the voices of our participants.

Redefining Productivity

Productivity is a cornerstone to the way academic work is measured for all regardless of the realities of racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Under neoliberalism, individual-based discourses of meritocracy are universalized and fuel crude expectations about academic productivity especially for immigrant women faculty. Xue, a new assistant professor, notes, “As an immigrant, you don’t really have the same opportunity. For you to reach the same level, you have to work much harder.” Carissa echoes, “If you are an immigrant, you work twice as hard for half the recognition.” Similarly, Esther says, “You have to show them [U.S. American colleagues] that you can do it. You have to put in the extra effort to really prove it. ‘Look! I can do it. I belong here as much as you do.’” Meritocracy in higher education promises reward on an egalitarian basis of abilities, talents, and potentials, which ignores and reproduces “the structural differential distribution of opportunities of achievement” (Tlili, 2007, p. 303). As a neoliberal ideal, the emphasis on individual ability, talent, and potential ignores the reality of intersecting racism, sexism, and classism that face many immigrant women. In fact, the paradox is disorienting. Several of our participants have a hard time acknowledging the cruel reality of structural differences. Gabby’s quote below exemplifies a deep discomfort with considering systems such as sexism and racism:

I never really look at gender or race. I guess I am like gender and race blind. When I look at a person it is more about what they can bring to the table. Having said that I know that that doesn’t always happen everywhere. So, I guess it’s mixed.

Productivity is redefined through a neoliberal lens and as such academic work has become less collaborative, more individual, and sometimes about quantity, rather than quality. Nevertheless, some of the work that immigrant women and women of color put forth are not recognized or measured fairly by the meritocratic system. Kali explains, “Women of color, especially, have enormous demands placed on them. Everyone wants them to be on every committee, students want them to mentor them, and the demands made on them are very very heavy.” Among tenure-track faculty, publishing is a necessity for job security. For adjunct and term faculty, productivity can mean teaching five to eight classes and finding time to write to remain a viable candidate on the job market. Our participants argue that productivity is difficult to achieve when you are navigating multiple systems (ideological, organizational, and governmental) and experiencing daily micro-aggressions. In particular, many of our participants experience difficulties navigating the immigration system. Pratibha comments,

For me the whole immigrant concept is real through the entire visa process. In the sense that that adds to the sense of not belonging because the government imposed alien status is sometimes so real that it restricts my freedom to move or choose other areas of job.

In fact, Pratibha along with several participating women have encountered unexpected delays in applying for their U.S. permanent residency largely due to others’ inexperience with the visa and immigrant processes. Gina was told that she needed to make more progress on her tenure case; otherwise, “They [the university] were setting the grounds with my green card if I don’t make progress. I am walking a thin line.” For these women, productivity is about quantity and quality in teaching and service, along with emotional and interpersonal labor. As an example, Tai-Yi has consistently experienced some students giving her lower overall teaching evaluation because she said, “Sometimes it feels like, ‘we [students] don’t have any problem with you, but we just don’t like you.’”

In some ways, productivity is about the numbers, as GG notes, “You are measured by your course evaluations, students’ ratings, and your publication numbers and what peers in the research field say about you.” Hyun exacerbates the problem with productivity for international faculty, explaining,

It’s as stupid a thing as taking department minutes at a faculty meeting. I feel so disadvantaged because they do get it but at the same time they say, “You have a PhD. You should be able to do the job at the same rate we do.” And it’s the same thing about [academic] writing. It takes twice as much time for me to write in English. It’s an ongoing challenge to my status as a college professor, especially after ten years. It feels like I have less and less room to excuse myself for my mistakes.

Interestingly, Hyun notes a difference in how we define productivity in the United States from her home country, stating, “If you pursue too much of the individual productivity as a scholar, that gets frowned upon in Japan. It’s different in the U.S.” Similarly, Dona explains that, in Canada, “because of privatization and neoliberal policies, I would have to do a lot more academic work and do my own fundraising. So, I decided to stay in the United States.”

Related, Mabel points to issues with quality in productivity inherent in a growing standardization of publishing:

It’s odd because [the Netherlands] kind of replicated the American model of the “publish or perish” but in such a rigorous way and in such a strict sense that there is not even room to deliberate in which journals one needs to publish. There’s just a—from the government, one gets a list. They are mostly international journals. And publishing in one’s home language is no longer appreciated. They don’t count anymore.

Regardless of arguments over quantity versus quality, it becomes clear that neoliberal policies in higher education have created a panopticon by which faculty are monitored, measured, and scrutinized by their peers. Two participants noted this sense of “surveillance.” First, Marcela compares her notions of U.S. academic practices to this in Brazil, explaining,

In Brazil, I think people are less worried about what other people are doing. Here, people think you’re not working enough and there’s more a culture of surveillance—being aware of what other people are doing. And it’s more accentuated in terms of how male colleagues look at female colleagues.

Similarly, Elewa compares the general sense of surveillance within academia with other contexts, noting a contrast for international women and people of color. Elewa articulates, “With all due respect, tenure process is the only time white people are under surveillance. The rest of us are under surveillance all our lives.” This notion of surveillance as a key characteristic of academic productivity redefines success in the academy given our neoliberal era. Through a lens of neoliberalism, competition is seen as a healthy demonstration of goal orientation and the “rampant individualism” that Darder (2012) equates with neoliberal practices.

Discussions and Implications

Our study with female immigrant faculty members offers implications regarding neoliberalism, immigration, and higher education in the face of racism, sexism, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Our case analysis suggests that, we must begin to rethink the ways in which “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” and “internationalization” are discussed and practiced on many university and college campuses in the United States. As critical intercultural scholars, we would not contend that diversity, multiculturalism, and internationalization are to the detriment of academia—indeed, we should celebrate moves that truly diversify faculty, staff, administrator, and student populations in ways that address racial, gender, and global inequalities. It is the lack of critical consciousness, equitable support, and paying lip service to diversity that concern us. Our analysis demonstrates how female immigrant faculty members have systematically been given more work and less support than their normative counterparts, and this has become ideologically sound and thus rarely visible. The principles of neoliberalism and universal meritocracy would have us believe that there is a level playing field where success is earned, but our participants’ experiences demonstrate how these harmful ideologies place undue burden on individuals who need additional resources to be successful. Academics must continue to look inward and consider whether they are promoting multiculturalism in name to feel good about themselves or they are truly practicing multiculturalism to confront inequalities.

Our analysis presents itself not as a summary of participants’ experiences, but moves to a macro-level analysis that links everyday discourses to intersecting larger ideologies (e.g., neoliberalism, meritocracy, individualism, and consumerism). Our entry point of cultural identity positioning highlights how these ideologies function to enable/constrain, sustain, and render invisible intersecting marginalized perspectives, and in some cases the hegemonic domination that subjugated individuals experience when taking for granted. Some of the women we interviewed were quite cognizant of the ways that these ideologies enabled and constrained them, whereas others willfully submitted to inequitable systems that influenced their daily lives. Yet, these experiences were recurrent, repetitive, and forceful, which is useful in identifying common experiences and understanding marginalized realities. However, a critical or macro-level approach is necessary to understand the social construction of these shared realities, the influence of power, and the perpetuation of domination. It is this level of analysis that moves us closer to challenging dominant structures and creating social justice.

Furthermore, our analysis identifies particular ways in which neoliberal restructuring occurs on many U.S. campuses as illustrated by the voices of female immigrant faculty. Specifically, neoliberalism is combined, fueled, and reinforced by consumerism, individualism, and meritocracy in higher education to emphasize corporatized logics about academic labor. Those intersecting ideologies create narrow and constraining representations of what a successful (female immigrant) faculty member should be like. Essentially, this person is a semi-cultureless, apolitical, and model academic who is experienced in teaching classes well with little to no student complaints, is hyper-productive in consistently churning out publications, is interpersonally pleasant, and knows when to—and when not to—bring up sensitive issues such as immigration. It is important to point out this absolutely unrealistic image of an ideal (female immigrant) faculty so that we can create opportunities and spaces for humanizing higher education against the backdrops of the tyranny of neoliberalism.

Using critically informed thematic analysis, we were able to identify three overarching themes emerging from participants’ voices: (a) commodification of education, (b) multicultural neoliberalism, and (c) universal meritocracy. Given the strength and veracity of such ideologies within the daily experiences of our participants, it becomes clear that the neoliberalization of the U.S. academy has changed the understanding of not only what higher education is but also who should be doing that labor. Given this redefinition, critical qualitative researchers must heed the call to document such experiences, critique hegemonic ideologies, and create a pathway toward social justice.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Brandi Lawless is an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco. Her current work theorizes critical applied research as a way to study the interections of race, class, and gender in work with nonprofit organizations. Her work has been published in edited books and peer-reviewed national and international journals.

Yea-Wen Chen is an assistant professor at San Diego State University. Her scholarship aims to raise consciousness of the particular ways in which communication—including silence—about cultural identities impacts diversity, inclusion, and social justice across contexts. She has published an edited book, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles.

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