Negotiating ‘global middle-class’ teacher professionalism: using transnational habitus to explore the experiences of teacher expatriates in Shanghai

Abstract

This paper investigates the experiences of Western teacher expatriates in a Shanghai international schooling organization. We explore the risks and benefits associated with transnational mobility and how teacher expatriates, as part of the global middle-class (GMC), maintain and reaffirm their middle-class status. Focusing on adaptation and constraint in professional contexts, the data illustrates how the teachers respond to new discourses and the rules of exchange in the rapidly changing Chinese education market. We operationalise transnational habitus, as a conceptual tool, to explore how certain identities are sustained and negotiated in various moments of unsettlement. As these teacher expatriates navigate new professional contexts, we see how their habitus remains heavily influenced by class and previous professional experiences in their country of origin as they engage in new work environments, in order to secure an advantageous position.

Keywords:

• Teacher expatriates
• transnationalism
• Bourdieusian framework
• transnational habitus
• global middle-class teacher professionals

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hannah Soong

Dr Hannah Soong is a senior lecturer in Education Futures, University of South Australia. She has specialized interests in the effects of social and cultural forces shaping the field of international education and migration nexus, the aspirations of parents for their children’s education, and transnational identity shifts. One key area is the investigation around developing ethical engagement with global shifts and relations in education.

Garth Stahl

Dr. Garth Stahl is Associate Professor at the University of Queensland and Research Fellow, Australian Research Council (DECRA). His research interests lie on the nexus of neoliberalism and socio-cultural studies of education, identity, equity/inequality, and social change. Currently, his research projects and publications encompass theoretical and empirical studies of learner identities, gender and youth, sociology of schooling in a neoliberal age, gendered subjectivities, equity and difference, and educational reform.