by Jessica A. Albrecht
At the moment it feels like no week passes by on my academic social media in which no one celebrates being “First Gen” in academia, or problematises the excluding and hierarchical classist structures of academia. Myself definitely such a “First Gen” I have been hesitant using the label since I first came across it. I have struggled for a long time to pinpoint my problems with it. Now that I have finished my PhD and still do not really celebrate this part of my journey I started to think about it. This is what this thinking came to:
Why it is important to know this story
First of all, I am acutely aware of classist (and other intersectional) hierarchies within academia. When I say classist here, I mean a mingling of academic and financial backgrounds that influence the knowledge a student, PhD student or early career academic comes to work with and their socio-economic safety-net. Typically, First Gens cannot claim either, but that does not have to be the case.
Seeing such discrepancies is hugely important to challenge them. If we cannot see them, how can we try to make this place better? Also, academia is place that thrives when being multifold and diverse (what place doesn’t?). First Gens will make this place different than it was two decades before (see also: Roksa et. al. 2018).
I think this is apparent.
Celebrating achievements is also important. Whether they are individual or collective. And I do agree that First Gens can be proud of themselves – maybe even prouder that others – for their life’s journey and accomplishments.
But I also think that this holds problems. Some are bound to this form of celebration, others to structural issues. Let us start with the context.
Why context is important
The First Gen celebrations take place all over the world, mainly on social media. It seems as if there is a global community of people who share a similar history, similar experiences and challenges. But is this really the case – can this really be the case?
Most likely not. Being a First Gen in Germany is highly different to being one in the USA or India – just for the different structures of academia, let alone different intersectional positionalities such as race, migration history, gender, sexuality…
For instance, the numbers in Germany are quite obvious: while only 2 out of 100 people who went to primary school have a PhD who are first gen, 6 out of 100 (continuing-generation) obtain a PhD. That difference it not quite as big as one would imagine. However, the slight difference actually comes from a divide that happens when people start to study (27 first gen in comparison to 79 continous). However, this statistics does not tell us anything about other intersectional backgrounds. As scholar of elites Michael Hartmann has argued, changes in elite power institutions (such as academia and politics) happen gradually: only one aspect of oppressed identities is tackled first, then the others. For instance, first white women get more places, then BIPoC women. First first gen men, then all the others.
Furthermore, doing a PhD in Germany is – as studying in general – free. One “only” has to secure their cost of living. This is a huge difference to places like the US where first gens are completely dependent upon a full scholarship to even start graduate studies. And all of the other global experiences are somewhere between those.
Why, then, do we create an arbitrary imagined community between first gens all over the world?
Dreaming of impact
As Kelly Craig has written, a career in academia is alluring because it upholds the myth of belonging – belonging to a community of seekers, people who “seek to belong to a community where our curiosity is nourished and our commitment to research, writing, teaching and discovery is appreciated.”
YES!! Who does not feel this? Sometimes I think I joined the community of ultimate seekers: Religious Studies scholars 😉
It is this sense of community that first gens particularly have only access to in academia and seldomly outside of it. Which is why first gens persist even though the odds for an academic career work against all of us – and against first gens even more, since there is no financial backing and often strategic CV decisions are made much too late.
Perpetuating problems
This is also why Craig (and many more) urge PhD advisors to be open about the future of academia before encouraging students to start a PhD program. What makes first gens want it more, also creates a higher danger for regret, a higher mental load and sometimes even risk of psychological problems such as depression.
But that still does not explain why I have problems with the category itself. Apart from the intersectional losses that created through the focus on one particular aspect of our identity, this all reads quite positive.
One aspect is something that has been argued here. As the author states:
As educational scholars have noted in critical studies, the way in which families are framed matter. When students understand that, regardless of current circumstances, their family has unrealized potential, they can engage educational spaces with a stronger sense of self. We owe it to students and their families to complete the move away from deficit language and toward naming the assets of families.
It is time to stop using the term First Gen.
While first gen makes us understand our problems and structural problems of academic knowledge production better, it also creates a divide between us as academics and our families. And I know many fellow academics who share feeling of being separated from their families because of academia. However, talking about our families as if they were solely hindering our academic success might be part of the problem. If we want academia to transform into a better place, then maybe we should endorse and celebrate all those aspects that we got from our families (and friends etc.) that made us think differently, made us be critical, made us see things from a different perspective. First gen is an asset, but the wording obscures that.
This, lastly, brings me back to my main argument: Celebrating first gen perpetuates a culture of success and individualism in academia that is backed up by global academic neo-liberal structures of knowledge production.
Every time we celebrate a first gen for tackling their obstacles, we celebrate them for fitting into the categories that academia created. Which, for sure, is a great success for those who did not fit to beging with. But it does not change anything. It might even make it worse. As said, those who might lose more from not becoming part of the community, might perform academia even stricter than others – i.e. “publish or perish” makes first gen publish even more than others, thereby strengthening the system.
And here we are. The reason why I never wanted to call myself a first gen. Because it would make my own success, my publications, my long CV explainable: I am like this because I adhered to the system instead of fighting it. But when can we fight? And when are we too encaptured by it to move? How much damage have we done once we reach tenure and can “start fighting the system”?
I don’t know.
En-Gender 