This paper examines the spatial resistance tactics of early career academics (ECAs) against racism and sexism in academia. Drawing on 50 in-depth interviews with ECAs from five Belgian Dutch-speaking universities, I investigate how women ECAs’ everyday enactments of resistance are a way to navigate the exclusionary boundaries of academia. I identify three manifestations of everyday resistance in which women ECAs transgress and reconstitute symbolic and material boundaries: (1) innerspace-tactics occur “inside” the work-space breaking and blurring the symbolic boundaries of who the legitimate occupant can be, (2) outerspace-tactics are tactics to develop Other spaces “outside” the workspace aiming to become the “unencumbered” academic subtly touching the exclusionary boundaries while avoiding the label of a troublemaker, and (3) inner-outerspace blend tactics are tactics to establish counter-spaces developing new exclusionary boundaries on their own terms simulating a space of personal and academic support. I conclude by extending Puwar’s “space invader” concept to “space interpreter,” highlighting women ECAs’ active boundary work in developing an anti-racist-sexist academia.
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