Critical geographies of professional careers: contributions to the spatial turn in the social sciences

This article discusses research on critical geographies of professional careers to contextualise and introduce the special issue contributions that develop this emerging field from different geographical, sectoral, and sociocultural perspectives. Aiming to expand on the spatial turn in the social sciences, we focus on the spatially sensitive themes of career mobilities and networks and career structures and environments. These themes are analysed in this special issue from a variety of international and intercultural perspectives in different African and European case study contexts. We argue that research on critical geographies of professional careers should productively embrace epistemic pluralism and further engage with critical poststructuralist theories from variegated positionalities to inform progressive discourses, practices, and policies for inducing spatial, social, and epistemic change.