‘Devils’ or ‘Superstars’? Making English Language Teachers in China

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the experiences of young Westerners who travel to China to teach English, often as a first job. In recent years, demand for native-speaking English language teachers (ELTs) has boomed across China, moving beyond the established urban areas into more remote cities and even towns and rural villages. The seemingly unstoppable demand has not only led to an increase in opportunities for trained language teachers but has also led to a buoyant underground market for young, white, native English speakers to obtain work quickly and easily, whether or not they are appropriately qualified. However, very little is known about what it may mean to work ‘below the radar’ in China, disenfranchised from official visa recognition and employed by rural or lower-tier city schools with little training provision or support and perhaps being ‘the only foreigner in the village’. I draw on new qualitative research conducted with a sample of largely unqualified ELTs of various nationalities teaching across China, in both rural and urban locations, to demonstrate that the contradictory discursive context about foreigners in China demands careful negotiation on the part of the new migrants to fashion an identity which both meets the cultural expectations of students and maintains a personal sense of self. In the process, teachers are implicated in new contextual understandings of the meanings of race, nationality, and gender which necessitate decisions to be made about identities, performances, and social relations.