This project engages with the topic of digital transition in the development of careers in science, focusing on the experiences of people employed in research centres at Portuguese universities. It has the main aim of exploring how these processes have transformed the research profession, with positive and negative consequences for researchers’ personal and professional development, including work/life balance and internationalization. Through evidence-based analysis, the objective of the project is to help inform policymakers and stakeholders in the Research and Development (R&D) sector of the economy about these issues as they pertain to Portugal, and create a better understanding of the impact of digital transitions on the lives of professionals for wider research communities. Theoretically, the project situates digital transitions within a mobilities context. Significantly, this body of work has acknowledged the importance of greater global interconnectedness and a reliance upon information technology in highly qualified professions. This extends to the research teams’ own contributions to the mobilities research field, including the idea that many societies are currently experiencing an immobility turn arising from a problematization of corporeal travel within urban environments and an expansion of digital work platforms, at national and international levels. These developments create new possibilities and a wider range of connections, but also place impositions on researchers, including an erosion of personal time and space by work imperatives. In regard to empirical approach, research questions aim to explore not only the extent of digitalization in research units, including key tasks relating to experimental work, field studies and international collaboration, as well as the normalization of remote working, but also the impact on the domestic sphere, taking a cross-sectional approach covering researchers at different career stages, enabling the research ...

Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic, Europe continues to be a major destination for transnational migrants, notably from Asia and Africa. The way in which this phenomenon has been unfolding underlines the urgent need to further conceptualise transnational migration by analysing the decision-making of aspiring (re)migrants. This scholarly enterprise is critically important as mainstream migration theories put more of a focus on broader social processes and dynamics, thereby overlooking the human aspects of migration. Basing itself on several migration theories in various disciplines, this proposal adopts a framework that humanises research on (non-)migration decision-making, i.e. highlighting its human aspects in three ways: engendering, decolonising and situating the analysis in temporal, psychological, relational and social contexts. As a case study, this research project will examine the decisionmaking of aspiring (re)migrants from selected Southeast and East Asian countries (China, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam) to and within selected EU member countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Finland). These migrants are oriented towards the EU labour markets where they are concentrated in ethnic niches. Employing qualitative and participatory research methodologies, the study will map the extent to which spatial mobility policies at the EU and national levels take into account aspiring (re)migrants’ behaviour, identify the micro- and meso-level drivers of (re)migration aspiration and/or intention and determine the temporality of aspiring (re)migrants’ decision-making. The results of this project will provide concrete information as to how individuals’ migration decisions change over time and on the specific stage at which mobility policies are more likely to play a role in shaping migration outcomes, which will enhance EU migration policies.   Research Team: Sofia Gaspar (CIES-Iscte)Renata Carone (CIES-Iscte)Olga Cojocaru (CIES-Iscte...