Undervalued Work of Migrant Teachers and Their Resistance

• In Event: 392 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Education and Social Inequality. The Role of Teachers

Abstract

In this article the author describes how the work of migrant teachers has been devalued and diminished, and what are the forms of depreciation have been exercised to act upon them. The article further argues that the discussion of the “teacher quality” should also take into the consideration of their everyday practice and contribution in the migrant community. It then moved to the narratives of how migrant teachers form their own community to support themselves, especially when most of them are women and considered as powerless and lack of resource. The last part of this article is a detailed recording of series of conversations with one migrant woman teacher and activist. By describing her struggles over recognition and representation in the society, the author argues that the transformation of the identity among migrant teachers would set the foundation for the “real” grass-root mobilization within the migrant communities.

Author

• Min Yu, Missouri State University