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

Abstract

Each 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-notof 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.

Re-opening an Asia-Scar: engaging (troubled) emotions in knowing, knowledge production and scholarly endeavors

“…Like any theory, Chen’s “Asia as Method” has been consumed, appropriated, and engaged with in multiple ways. For example, many education scholars appear to endorse it, as shown above, and in the case of Sherman ( 2022 ) in this Special Issue. Chen ( 2010 ) strongly advocates the importance of seeking innovative ways to look at theory, scholarship, and the production of knowledge; and the education scholars cited above have embraced such advocacy in their research and scholarship.…”

“…At the same time, readers may enjoy the engaging style of writing and can still relate to and follow my line of thought that carries the writing and its scholarly endeavors forward. Indeed, some authors included in this Special Issue such as Khoo and Lin ( 2023 ), Lee ( 2023 ), and Sherman ( 2022 ) have also skillfully showcased their own writing styles in their articles, which makes me appreciate the power of creativity and freedom in writing even more.…”

“…On the one hand, I can see that the will among many scholars to reject any knowledge deemed Western carries with it varied intellectual, political, and emotional rationales. These rationales include countering academic imperialism and the colonization of the mind, opening up fresh avenues for knowledge building, new voices, new references, and new conceptualizations of academic and social realities, and decolonizing overdue dominant knowledge systems and hegemonic practices (Alatas, 2022 ; Lee, 2023 ; Mignolo, 2014 ; Nguyen & Chia, 2023 ; Sherman, 2022 ; Windle, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2015 ). On the other hand, as I have already discussed in greater length (Phan, 2017 ), the temptation to blame and the continued practice of blaming the West and Western colonialism for problems in other societies’ higher education and academia reflect a serious lack of historical knowledge and understanding of the West as well as the world beyond the West.…”

Re-thinking the Future of the English Preparatory Program in the Context of Higher Education in Kuwait

“…Similarly, Canagarajah (1999) describes how TESOL pedagogical practices came to be framed as a result of colonial domination. Finally, Sherman (2023) posits that the expatriate English language teacher, whether native or non-native, is a "fundamentally Western figuration" (p. 245) who acts as a conduit of Western knowledge, thereby extending the colonial legacy into contemporary educational practices. Young (2009) stresses the need to resist the universal or singular conception of Western knowledge.…”