Belonging, caring, and community building across the borders: transnational feminist citizenship pedagogies of a migrant teacher

ABSTRACT

Anchored in transnational feminist citizenship theories, this narrative inquiry study delves into the lived experiences and citizenship education pedagogies of a female migrant social studies teacher named Ms. Bailey who works in a school in New York City. The findings of the study demonstrate the ways Ms. Bailey incorporates multiple borders and private/informal arenas in her senses of belonging and caring practices. The findings also highlight how Ms. Bailey’s transnational trajectories inform her perceptions and pedagogies of citizenship education, which are centred on affective, cultural, and trans-communal realms. By illuminating Ms. Bailey’s fluid and multilayered citizen-subjects as well as her distinctive citizenship education, this study challenges and complicates normative, patriarchal, political-juridical, and nation-centric ideas of citizens. The study also contributes to an emergent body of work on migrant social studies teachers’ citizenship education and the ways it is shaped by their distinctive personal, familial, and transnational experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Social studies teacher
• migrant teacher
• citizenship education
• transnational feminist theories
• border-crossing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Data from the author’s (Kim 2020; 2021) earlier studies were used in this article to discuss the participant's backgrounds, experiences, and teaching practices of citizenship.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yeji Kim

Yeji Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Learning, Teaching, & Curriculum at the University of Missouri. Her research interests include social studies and teacher education in transnational contexts and citizenship education for migrant children and communities. Her work has appeared in publications such as Theory & Research in Social Education, Critical Studies in Education, Equity & Excellence in Education, and Teaching and Teacher Education.