The ability to move freely in the academic world – to attend conferences, meetings, networking, visiting fellowships, or simply to be present at the table of academic exchange – is frequently taken for granted in academia in the Global North and is highly valued in terms of career advancement. Yet for many scholars from the Global South, mobility is not that easy.
For us, the ability to participate is frequently thwarted by complicated, exclusionary and punitive visa regimes that keep us out of spaces where knowledge is generated and disseminated.
In my recent provocation article, I draw upon over 15 years of lived experience navigating this unequal terrain. I reflect on the psychological, financial and temporal costs of trying to become a scholar, to take part in the academic world while continually being reminded – through interrogations at visa centres, borders, endless forms and documentations, and visa denials – that I am not supposed to be there.
What emerged from this reflection is not simply a personal grievance but the significance of visa regulations as structural barriers to Global South scholars’ mobility. Visa regimes, I argue, are not merely bureaucratic hurdles but active political tools that shape who gets to produce knowledge, who is heard, and who is silenced. In other words, they are components of a larger system of epistemic injustice.
When meritocracy meets mobility injustice
Academia likes to tell itself a story about merit, that the most deserving voices – the most brilliant minds – will rise to the top. But what happens when your access to opportunity is routinely obstructed by where your passport was issued? The answer is that mobility becomes a proxy for merit, and privilege gets mistaken for excellence.
A scholar with a Global North passport can attend a prestigious event at short notice, with nearly all expenses covered by their institution. A scholar from the Global South needs to plan months in advance, preparing evidence and documents, paying exorbitant fees, attending visa interviews, and anxiously waiting for a visa that may never come. All that time and effort… The invisible labour of ‘trying to attend’ becomes its own exhausting and demoralising job.
Visa regimes as academic gatekeepers
The impact of visa regimes goes far beyond the logistical. When scholars are excluded from academic dialogue, the knowledge they produce – often rooted in different geographies, sociopolitical climates, epistemologies and lived realities – is also excluded. This narrows the scope of what is considered legitimate or authoritative knowledge.
These exclusions are rarely random. They map closely onto colonial legacies and geopolitical hierarchies. Many of the most influential universities in the world are located in former colonial powers. Meanwhile, Global South scholars are expected to not only cite the works of Global North scholars in their studies but also be grateful for any access to the academic world – even when that access is contingent, conditional and precarious.
“You are not supposed to be here”
This is the feeling you might get while waiting at the gate of the visa centres. It is the message embedded in every delay, every rejection, and every absurd requirement for proof of ties to your so-called home country.
The institutional mistrust… The default is the assumption that you want to stay, that your desire to participate in a conference is somehow a cover for migrating to the host country illegally. And it is your responsibility to dispel that assumption. As a result, your (academic) identity is constantly under suspicion. You are not seen as a knowledge producer but as a potential defector.
This experience is not unique to me. Through readings online and conversations with fellow scholars across disciplines and continents, I’ve come to see this as a widespread – and widely underacknowledged – form of exclusion, one that our institutions are rarely prepared to address.
Reimagining academic mobility
If we are to take academic inclusivity seriously, we must radically reimagine what mobility looks like. This includes, among others:
- Institutional recognition: Visa challenges must be recognised as more than administrative problems. They are structural barriers with real implications on our careers. In the end, when you apply for an academic post, the selection committee does not even know about your ‘lack of access’. They compare your CV to the white, male, Western names.
- Material support: Institutions in the Global North must provide logistical and financial support to scholars facing visa hurdles – from covering application fees to offering flexible deadlines and remote options.
- Policy advocacy: Universities should advocate for academic visas and policies that facilitate, rather than hinder, global knowledge exchange.
- Valuing presence differently: Finally, we must disentangle the meaning of ‘presence’ from success, network and career opportunities. We must expand our understanding of ‘presence’ to include virtual and hybrid modes of participation, without assuming them to be second-best. One example could be e
A call to action
This is not just about visas. It’s about who gets to belong in the intellectual commons. It’s about whether academia will continue to replicate the very hierarchies it claims to critique – or whether it can become a space where knowledge flows freely across borders, rather than being filtered through them. Global North’s research funding calls are rife with references to decolonisation, the Global South, etc. But where are the bodies producing that decolonial, Global South perspective?
This article is based on the first article published in Bristol University Press’s fully open access Global Social Challenges Journal as part of our Early Career Researcher (ECR) programme, which supports emerging scholars from the Global South and diasporas in addressing urgent global social challenges through innovative and accessible research.
Devran Gülel is a Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. She is engaged in interdisciplinary research on gender equality and human rights across a variety of fields, including law, politics, sociology and organisational studies.
Navigating visa inequities: mobility as privilege in academia – ‘You are not supposed to be here’ by Devran Gülel is available to read open access Global Social Challenges Journal on Bristol University Press Digital here.
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