Steph

I can’t just sit and write. I need to do mundane things, to have the space to get bored.

Steph is a migrant academic, researcher, teacher and single mum. She highlights the difficulty of juggling an academic career and childcare. Alongside her fight for better care for her child, who is disabled, Steph battles changing immigration rules – as a precariously employed migrant parent, she juggles childcare, visa extensions, and grant applications.

The hostile immigration rules impact her research: she has had to decline research project positions on two other continents due to visa restrictions, and others because of lack of support for disabled family coming along. Time is never enough: she wishes she could collaborate and meet up with fellow researchers, but with the unpaid care and unpaid academic work she says: ‘I’m so busy, I haven’t had any time to write … It’s been hard to have your own time.’ Her own time, she says, is when her kid is in bed at night – then she does emails for one of her jobs.

Steph’s comic: ‘Shwiya, shwiya’

Steph is a single mum. Today is her daughter’s first day back at school after the holidays.

“I have two university jobs. Both are hourly, one is zero-hours.”

“I usually work in my own time from my kitchen table, in the evenings after my daughter has gone to bed.”
[Image Description] Steph with hot drink and laptop at kitchen table.

“I make mistakes if I’m distracted.”

“Even when she’s not here, I have things to do. Clean, cook, work.”
[Image Description] Steph in foreground, kitchen counter in background with microwave, toaster etc.

Her daughter needs round-the-clock care, something her ex-husband is shirking responsibility for.

“She’s a good kid.”
[Image Description] Steph starting chores in her kitchen.

“She loves instruments.”
[Image Description] Different instruments, keyboard in the shape of a cat, microphone and speakers.

“And Wreck-it Ralph.”

“It’s like having a baby, but a bigger baby.”
[Image Description] Box of absorbent underwear and waste basket.

[Image Description] Shower with commode chair.

“She gets frustrated when she doesn’t know how to tell me what she wants.”
[Image Description] Close up of fridge with simple images for ‘eat, drink, toilet’ and photos.

“If she doesn’t want to go out, we can’t.”

“She can’t be left alone.”
[Image Description] Steph in the sitting room with musical instruments and soft toys.

“If she’s at school and I’m out, I always have to be aware of bus routes to collect her.”
[Image Description] Steph with small map of her bus route.

“I’m squeezing time here and there to learn a language.”
[Image Description] Steph with a book in each hand.

“I used to go for runs and do flower arranging.”
[Image Description] Steph with her books and pots piled up on her back.

“But I don’t have the time now.”
[Image Description] Steph with books, pots, toys all piled up on her back weighing her down.

“I feel like I don’t do much, though.”
[Image Description] Steph drowning in books, pots, toys all around her.

Steph hasn’t been able to go outside in three or four days. She doesn’t have a route. She just walks.
[Image Description] Steph out walking in the woods in her coat, hat and boots with her thoughts.

“I’m still trying to figure out where I belong.”

“Is it Britain? In the country I was born? Where my fiancé lives? Where my parents are? Where I’ve worked in the past? Do I even belong in academia?”

“I have often have to deal with visa battles. It might have affected my PhD funding, and it’s made applications for Postdocs difficult. “

“I’m not able to take just any job, any place.”

“I have to think about my daughter.”

“Some countries don’t support disabled family members coming along for research positions.”

“The jobs I’m in now are hourly and unstable.”

“Every year I panic – am I going to have a job this year?”

“Sometimes I bring my daughter here. She loves this spot, to watch the waterfall.”
[Image Description] Steph sitting on a tree stump, admiring a waterfall.

““Shwiya shwiya.” I learned this recently.”
[Image Description] Close up of waterfall.

“It means, take things as they come.”
[Image Description] Close up portrait of Steph in profile.

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