Session Information
23 SES 07 C, Theorizing Globally Distributed Educational Work
Symposium
Contribution
This paper considers educational work amongst South East Asian women migrating to Australia and rebuilding occupational identities. I draw on postcolonial feminist theory and transnational/migration studies to understand the social and cultural significance of this movement as women travel from highly stratified, ethnicized, and politicized Malaysian and Singaporean contexts to Australia. I use Australian Bureau of Statistics migration data to analyse the relationship between educational qualifications, occupational category and labour force participation. In-depth interviews show how these women draw on multiple educational and cultural resources in the (re)making of their occupational identities as transnational educational workers. The analysis shows these women use identity strategies to become successful and productive educational workers in Australia. They use essentialist definitions of cultural binaries to understand their transnational material realities. Yet at the same time, their identities are shaped by discourses of a dynamic and becoming self that extended beyond these stereotypes. The way these women engage in on-going processes of interpretation, particularly in regard to re-negotiating social positions, provides insights into the nature of educational work as a practice . This identity work has broad researching implications in regard to educational work in globalising times.
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