The aim of the paper is to investigate those social conditions and experiences which
impact on the possibilities of building a career path in the Italian Universities. The paper will
focus on adjunct professors as paradigmatic example of some pivotal transformations which
affected the (inter)national academic system in the last decades. We especially point out two
interlaced processes which play a crucial role in redefining the formal and informal criteria
for pursuing an academic career: the increasing centrality of research activities and output for
evaluating the efficiency of academic actors and institutes, and the growth and differentiation
of temporary positions. The analysis of the case study is based on the findings of a survey (5,556
respondents) carried out in 2018 and semi-structured interviews (35 interviewees) carried out
between 2018 and 2020. For supporting our analysis we relate the concept of career as developed
by Hughes (1958) with the concepts of (academic) field, habitus and capitals as developed
by Bourdieu (1984; 1986), in order to highlight how the different amount and composition
of their set of capitals influence their trajectory within the academic field
