Gendered Meanings of Teaching and Professional Commitment among Turkish Muslim Migrant Women Teachers

• In Event: Crossing Borders: Immigrant, Migrant, and Transnational Teacher Identities

Abstract

This paper examines how Turkish Muslim migrant women teachers in the U.S. sustain and reconfigure their professional identities through transnational migration. Drawing on fifteen life history interviews, the study explores how these women navigate the tensions between their established pedagogical expertise and the demands of unfamiliar educational, cultural, and institutional contexts. Teaching is not only a career pathway but a gendered and moral practice that offers social belonging, spiritual meaning, and personal legitimacy. Despite intensified emotional and cognitive labor, participants reaffirm teaching as a space of continuity, dignity, and aspiration. By foregrounding the intersection of gender, religion, and migration, this work contributes to critical scholarship on transnational teacher subjectivities and the affective, ideological, and professional negotiations that shape them.

Author

• Esra Bozkurt, University of California - Santa Cruz