Unraveling the EFL expat: challenging privilege through borderlands and Asia as Method

dc.contributor.authorSherman, Brandon
dc.date.accessioned2022-10-04T20:31:17Z
dc.date.available2022-10-04T20:31:17Z
dc.date.issued2022
dc.description.abstractEach year, multitudes respond to the demand for native English speakers to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Asian countries, particularly China, Japan, and South Korea. These EFL transnationals are often young, new to living abroad, and inexperienced as educators. When they arrive, they often find a community, and an identity waiting for them: that of the expatriate. In this paper, I draw on research on EFL expatriates to produce a figuration, a way of engaging with and highlighting contradiction and disjuncture in the narrative identity of EFL expat taken up by some transnational EFL teachers. This figuration serves as a nexus to which I bring two bodies of theory with which to think. These are the Borderlands Thought of Gloria Anzaldúa and Chen Kwan-Hsing’s articulation of Asia as Method. Separately, I bring these into conversation with the figuration of the EFL expat, then consider what emerges when all three are brought together. In doing so, I highlight how the figuration of the EFL expat is outlined by privileged and constrictive colonial, racial, professional, and linguistic dichotomies. The theories of Anzaldúa and Chen help to unravel these binaries, suggesting ways in which transnational English teachers can move on from such constraints to become something more than in-but-not-of their local world. I also consider what it means for Western scholars to work respectfully in theoretical spaces that were not developed by and for them, proposing that such researchers can think of themselves as theoretical expatriates.en_US
dc.identifier.citationSherman, B. (2022). Unraveling the EFL expat: Challenging privilege through borderlands and Asia as Method. Asia Pacific Education Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-022-09790-5en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1805/30181
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.relation.isversionof10.1007/s12564-022-09790-5en_US
dc.subjectExpatriateen_US
dc.subjectAsia as Methoden_US
dc.subjectGloria Anzaldúaen_US
dc.subjectEnglish as a Foreign Languageen_US
dc.subjectFigurationen_US
dc.subjectTransnationalen_US
dc.titleUnraveling the EFL expat: challenging privilege through borderlands and Asia as Methoden_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
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