You are (not) wanted: U.S. teachers’ transnational experiences of intersectional precarity in China

• In Event: Challenging Education: Overcoming Exclusion/Inclusion Paradoxes in Postsecondary Education, Advocating for Reproductive Justice in Public Education, and Navigating Intersectional Precarity as U.S. Teachers Abroad

Abstract

With an estimated 400 million learners of English (Bolton et al., 2020; British Council, n.d.), China forms one of the largest demanding markets for transnational English teachers from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Guided by the coined theoretical framework intersectional precarity, from intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989, 1991) and precarity (Butler, 2004; Zembylas, 2019), this digital ethnography examines U.S. teachers’ transnational experiences of co-existing privilege as English native individuals from the U.S. and precarity due to their individual intersectional identities (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.). Findings suggest that teaching and living in China lead to a journey of becoming global migrant workers, bilingual/bicultural, and transnational denizens (Standing, 2014) who are marginalized migrants without social, cultural, political, and legal capital in the host country. The co-existing privilege and precarity offer further theorization of precarity, English native-speakerism, and critical pedagogy of precarity.

Author

• Yixuan Wang, University of Georgia