"Not Enough": Navigating dichotomies and decolonial hopes as Latina ECR in Academia

This paper offers a feminist autoethnographic and autotheoretical reflection on my journey of becoming a Latin American decolonial scholar within the United Kingdom’s higher education system. Written as a series of letters to myself, it intertwines personal narrative and theoretical reflection to explore how migration, positionality, vulnerability, and hope shape academic identities and struggles. The letter form enables me to bring sociology, decolonial thought, feminism, and development studies into dialogue with lived experience, challenging the hierarchies and conventions of Western academic writing. As an early career Latina scholar, I confront the contradictions of attempting to enact decolonial practices within institutions structured by colonial legacies. I reflect on the pervasive notion of not being enough that migrant and racialised people face daily, and on the constant pressure to do more: learn another language, adapt, work harder, and continually prove our worth. By challenging this narrative, I argue that it is not migrant or racialised scholars who are not doing or being enough; rather, it is the academy itself that fails to live up to its decolonial aspirations and to recognise the structural barriers it continues to uphold. Through this paper, I attempt to transform vulnerability into a political gesture of care, solidarity, and resistance. By acknowledging fear, exhaustion, and isolation, I aim to open spaces for collective healing, shared strength and hope. I argue that decolonial work cannot be sustained in isolation; it demands networks of mutual care, solidarity, and spaces of belonging where vulnerability is not a weakness but a shared condition for transformation. Ultimately, I contend that it is not marginalised or migrant communities who are failing Western academia, but rather the European–Western academy itself that is not doing enough to realise its decolonial commitments. Although confronting these truths can be uncomfortable, they hold the potential to create spaces of dialogue, collective pain, and, crucially, shared healing and hope.