A postdoc generation, by Freddy Jeanneteau, France

Science is international, and any brief overview of publications origins in Pubmed can attest such an observation. The international mobility and training of scientists has long been an integral part of the way science works.

The significance of mobility in science put emphasize on several criteria. Aside from the strict definition of mobility, going abroad for scientists has some pretty serious implications for future career prospects. Certainly, mobility has become a mandatory requirement to tailor the job market competition and remains an attractive alternative to the recent concerns about research budget cuts in certain countries. For European and Asian young scientists, an international research experience has become an essential component of one’s scientific training and for fulfilling competing skills for positions in one’s home country. Many of the individuals who undertake nontraditional postdoctoral appointments are likely to choose nontraditional career paths.

Seven years ago, I decided to do part of my graduate studies abroad to enter a renowned graduate program back in France. Unfortunately, most of my classmates and friends encountered many difficulties to get in any programs. Today, I graduated in neuroscience, and I prepare doing a postdoc abroad considering my past experience. The most precocious of my friends already started a postdoc in Germany, in England or in the United States placing aside the socio-economical difficulties facing them. Although the availability of mobility programs (EMBO, HSFP, Erasmus, ISEP, Marie Curie…) increased, the number of demanding postdocs exploded, placing them to delicate immobile or precarious perspectives. Despite postdocs have become increasingly indispensable to the production of science, it is apparent that that they are often unpaid, lack job security, and receive too little consideration for their work. So, why a postdoctorate appointment abroad has become, nowadays, a de facto standard? Isn’t it other possibilities in occidental countries that tend to overproduce qualified scientists? If the number of new faculty positions is seriously frozen in many countries, postdocs offers are flourishing to the detriment of pay, benefits, and status levels that definitely need to rise. Is mobility the first selection for the most ambitious and opportunist young researchers or just another word for discriminating the less focus-minded yet as qualified? The phenomenon is not restricted to science and concerns young lawyers, economists, engineers who are asked to accomplished several internships to expect being considered by the job market. The succession of such precarious appointments may not always enrich a technical skill list generally well furnished. Survey of scientists conducted several years after the completion of their postdoctoral appointments could provide information about the ways in which postdoctoral appointments proved more or less useful.

Mobility requires careful planning of completing grant applications, getting social insurance and visas applications. A year of preparation is more a rule than an exception. University’s International office may give an accurate general assistance to these issues. So far, I never encountered too many difficulties preparing my mobility as it was mostly to the charge of my mobility program and host universities. For example, bilateral clauses between home and host countries certainly accelerate the visa procedure. But other international movers are confronted to a more rigid bureaucracy, so are couples. Despite the difficult obtaining of appropriate visa status for theirs wifes, two couples friend of mine are currently faced to absurd conditions that will certainly shorten their mobility. Although tenured with nurse and physician degrees and full experience, my friends wifes were not attributed the right to work in the host country. This example will certainly not give a good echo of mobility to young researchers who, like other people in the thirties, are generally not free of strong social and affective links. I ear too frequently the same story about couples that suffer separation. At the beginning, they get to meet but it does not last. I have a girl friend and I am sensitive to the establishment of programs that would make it easier for couples to live in the same location. But this may be hard to solve since the world of research has found it normal, up to now, for couples to live apart. So I am curious and speculating about the obstacles young researchers either single-parented or pregnant experience due to mobility of a lack of mobility.

There are also pragmatic questions about the details of postdocs mobility, like finding accommodation, child care, banking, what to bring, living conditions, languages and customs, and what to expect. These issues are being addressed more and more in recent times due to the large number of people experiencing them. Some mobility programs and universities propose language classes, some kind of cultural manifestations and they offer well-documented information through the Internet. Because hosts institutions generally benefits from talented young researchers in terms of publications, patent applications and grants, dealing with foreign or mobile postdocs and understanding their needs should not be a problem.

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