Reviewing research on researchers : our knowledge of early-career researchers in Latin America and the Caribbean / Alejandro Miranda-Nieto, Lynn McAlpine, Franziska F. N. Schreiber, Matt Keane ; Global Young Academy/German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

Abstract

This working paper is a systematic review of 101 articles dealing with early-career researchers (ECRs) in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the social study of science and higher education in this region has developed for several decades, the social contexts in which ECRs’ trajectories take place have been scarcely explored. In analysing the ways in which the literature has studied this issue, we found that the most dominant themes are growth and transformation in research and higher education, academic productivity and efficiency, issues in the labour market and job insecurity, international mobility and, to a lesser extent, gender and diversity. Strikingly, by examining these themes regarding the intersection between micro-, meso- and macro-dimensions of social activity and individual agency, we demonstrate that this literature is silent about the actual experience of ECRs. Thus, this literature overlooks the interactions between individuals’ capacity to act as social agents and the structural affordances and constraints that shape their career trajectories. The paper signals the most significant gaps in this body of literature, including empirical, methodological and conceptual issues, which we argue have influenced the present state of the evidence. This results in a clear agenda for future research.