Identity and belonging among racialised migrant teachers of English in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This article examines how inequalities of race impact on the way migrant teachers of English in Thailand articular their identity and belonging to the teaching profession and to the society they live in. There is at present a rather limited body of work on the migration of language teachers, despite the fact that mobility of teachers across conventional borders is part-and-parcel of language education in the globalised era. We report on research conducted in Thailand, whose education sector accommodates a large, varied population of migrant teachers. On the basis of 14 interviews with migrant teachers based in Thailand, the article highlights significant tension around identity and belonging, both at the professional level (identification with the teaching profession) and the societal level (identification with Thai society). The study highlights the need to balance perspectives in the study of identity and belonging in teacher migration, including the ways teacher migration may be instrumentalised as part of local inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher migration
• teacher identity
• inequality
• belonging
• race

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We note, in the spirit of the journal, that the terms ‘native speaker’ and ‘non-native speaker’ are highly problematic from a (socio)linguistic perspective. Our use of the terms reflects their presence as categories of social identification in the discourse around the ELT profession in Thailand. For more discussion, see Dewaele (2018).

2 Informed consent was obtained from all participants before data collection. Data collection procedures were approved by Social and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board, Prince of Songkla University, approval code 2020 PSU-L-QI008.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Prince of Songkla University Faculty of Liberal Arts: [Grant Number LIA6304048S-0].