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ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, growing numbers of foreign-born English speakers from the Global South have begun migrating to Thailand to seek work as teachers in the region’s booming Teaching English as a Foreign Language industry. As citizens of so-called outer circle English-speaking countries (former British and American colonies in Asia and Africa), these migrants enter the highly competitive and racially stratified Asian Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages labor market at a significant disadvantage. In this paper I examine the growing demand for English education in Thailand and argue that it is best understood through an analysis of regional competition in a globally ascendant ‘Asia’. Government responses have been marked by shifting and contradictory entry and employment requirements, resulting in uncertainty for foreigners seeking work as teachers in Thailand. However, this same uncertainty enables non-Western teachers to utilize Thailand as a site for migration and employment in ways not possible in other parts of the region.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 There is a wide array of jargon and terminology for English teaching in the fields of sociolinguistics and language education. For the sake of brevity and clarity, terminology in this paper is limited to the following: TESOL, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ESL (English as a second language), and are considered interchangeable in the context of the paper.
2 The model employing ‘inner circle’, ‘outer circle’ and ‘extended circle’ as a means of classifying English-speaking countries comes from Kachru (Citation1998). This model provides a useful shorthand for the purposes of this paper. ‘Inner circle’ countries include: the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ‘Outer circle’ refers primarily to former British colonies in Africa and Asia, including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Singapore, Myanmar and India. The Philippines, a former US colony is also included as an ‘outer circle’ country.
3 These terms are controversial and the focus of a growing body of research and critique within TESOL studies and applied linguistics. In addition, they are somewhat inaccurate and misleading in this particular context, see note 6 for further discussion.
4 See note 5 below for discussion.
5 One axis of debate centers around what constitutes ‘correct’ English language usage and, by extension, who is therefore qualified to teach and evaluate English language competency. Kachru’s work (Citation1998) divides the world into concentric circles comprising of ‘inner circle’ English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom and its historical settler states: Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), and ‘outer circle’ English-speaking countries (former colonies of the British Empire and the USA). For the purpose of this paper, I utilize Karchu’s terminology of inner and outer circle countries and refer to my research informants as coming from ‘outer circle’ countries, although I acknowledge that such usage is problematic.
A second axis centers on the expanding global English language labor market. The positionality of TESOL teachers has engendered debate within the fields of language education and applied linguistics over the best method of teaching English to NNS learners. This debate challenges academic and real-world models that hold up native speakers as the ideal English teaching subject (Rudolph, Selvi, & Yazan, Citation2015) This is an important area of research, but an awkward fit in this context. My informants are not NNESTs as they are more accurately described as bi-lingual or multi-lingual and grew up speaking and utilizing English in some aspect of their daily lives. Thus, while I selectively use the terminology ’NS’ and ‘NNS’ as they are utilized in the Thai context, it is in reference to how these teachers are actively mislabeled within the Thai TESOL labor market.
6 Interviews, with one exception, took place at informants’ work-sites (four public secondary schools) and were accompanied, where possible, with participant observation. All interviews were conducted in English. This article, based primarily on interviews with Filipino and African migrants, examines the experiences of these non-Western TESOL teachers working in Thailand.
7 ASEAN stands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
8 Ajarn.com is the most important TESOL job resource and professional network in Thailand.
9 Charging extra for these programs is forbidden by the Ministry of Education, but this policy is largely ignored in practice (Griffith, Citation2010).
10 ‘A TOEIC score of 600+ or IELTS score of 5+ if you are from a non-native speaking country (which includes South Africa)’ (Bond, Citation2016).
11 All names have been changed, along with selected personal information.
12 The first 30 minutes of my interview with John were not recorded. This account is reconstructed from field notes.
13 These teachers had education degrees, considerable classroom experience back home, or (most commonly) both.