You Are (Not) Wanted: U.S. Transnational English Teachers’ Intersectionality and Precarity in China

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Transnational Perspectives and Experiences (Table 5)

Abstract

This qualitative digital ethnography uses intersectionality and precarity theories as a joint theoretical framework to explore U.S. transnational English teachers’ experiences in China. Analyzing 14 participants' narratives and observations from five social media groups, the thematic analysis reveals participants’ intersectional privilege and precarity shaped by ideologies of English nativespeakerism, white supremacy, and Chinese Occidentalism, which romanticize and emulate the West and whiteness as superior in local P-16 English education. Desires for whiteness and English nativeness simultaneously discriminate against teachers of color and commodifies White teachers as replaceable global migrant educational laborers. This study offers insights into the complex niche occupied by U.S. transnational teachers in China and contributes to critical scholarship on transnational English teachers’ intersectionality and precarity.

Author

• Yixuan Wang, Gwinnett County Public Schools