Precarious Privilege:
Personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers
Authors: Jeanne Rey, Matthieu Bolay and Yonatan N. Gez (Univ. of Teacher Education, Fribourg, Switzerland and University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany)
Summary by Dr Stephen Whitehead
For a great many teachers, especially Westerners, currently suffering interminable covid-19 lockdowns, depressed by miserable weather, and exhausted by ‘hybrid learning’, the idea of being released from all that and departing for the sun and a more or less covid-free country to live and work as an international school teacher must be a delightful dream.
Indeed, even before the virus hit, many thousands of Anglo-Saxon teachers had taken precisely that decision, signing up for teaching posts in far flung corners of the globe – several hundred thousand according to International School Research.
And why not?
It is not a difficult sell for Western, Anglo-Saxon teachers. Why wouldn’t they choose to spend a few years working in the international school sector, travelling the world, enjoying lifestyles they could barely imagine back home in Bradford, Berlin or Buffalo?
However, even this silver cloud has a darker lining if one cares to look more closely, which is precisely what the authors of this article do:
‘While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attention to the financial constraints, and in particular, the challenge of personal debts, which weighs heavily over many Anglo-Saxon teachers…While a key point of appeal for such teachers’ participation in the international school sector lies in the…carefree, privilege environment of lifestyle migration…in reality, such horizons of opulence are limited, as teachers are locked into a precarious system that offers little protection and is highly unpredictable.” (p. 361)
Just how unpredictable is this profession, international school teachers discovered during 2020.
Nevertheless, when set against the performative and professional restrictions which have long been imposed on teachers working for Western state education systems, international school teaching is as close to paradise as most teachers are ever likely to get.
“Professional autonomy and the opportunity to travel and to deepen cultural understanding reinforce the choice of international teaching as an attractive pathway for people eager to embark on fresh challenges both in their professional and personal lives. In this respect, international teaching may not only have an intrinsic value for the ideals that are associated with the profession, but can also give the impression of a type of ‘lifestyle migration’, a privileged form of mobility driven by globalisation, individualisation, increased ease of movement, work-related flexibility, and increases in relative wealth.” (p. 361)
Behind the reasoning and rationale of all international school teachers to enter this profession is the concept of ‘escape’ – leaving behind something not good or perhaps tolerable for something a whole lot better. And being qualified professionals working in an expanding industry (international education), they have this option open to them – especially English- speaking Anglo-Saxon teachers.
“For the lifestyle migrant, mobility is associated with the search for the ‘good life’, as well as authenticity and meaning-making – a project often taking the form of romantic, idyllic, an some say escapist ‘return’ to a simpler mode of living.” (p. 362)
And who among us has not thought of ‘escaping’ at some point in their lives? But where to and how to pull off this disappearing act – or act of reinvention of self?
Answer: Enter the world of international school teaching.
Unfortunately, according to this study, many such teachers may end up swopping one set of problems for another.
“While [school heads and employment agencies] tend to emphasise [the language of freedom and opportunity] we propose that [this] may underplay structural factors, and in particular financial considerations, primary among which is the burden of accumulated student loans.” (p. 362)
Intriguingly, the authors suggest that this:
‘marginalisation of debt is not coincidental’ but part of a wider, global phenomenon wherein ‘privatisation, financialisation and internationalisation of education [combine to heighten] the ‘precarisation and flexibilisation of a globally mobile workforce.”
So where do the authors of this article find their evidence to suggest that many such ‘escapees’ to the international school sector are struggling, financially?
“In presenting our argument, we draw on a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted from 2015 to 2018 in the international education sector. Our ethnography included classroom observations, participation in school event, and attendance at teaching job fairs and specialised online job portals and forums. Throughout our fieldwork, we followed individual teachers across the main market junctures that regulate their employment, while also capturing their experiences as communicated informally in multiple online platforms…in addition, some interviews were conducted online (with teachers who had already left the country where we conducted the study, or with teachers met during job fairs).” (p. 362)
If you are an international school teacher reading this, does it all sound familiar to you?
Perhaps the answer to that question lies in how long you’ve been in the profession, what your job status/professional prospects where before you entered international schooling, and, of course, how much you are currently earning.
I personally know a number of international school teachers who are doing very nicely, financially. Even covid has not impinged on their job prospects or earning power, certainly if they are already living in Asia and not locked down in the UK, USA or Canada.
In making claims for a ‘precarious privileged personal debt lifestyle’ within the international school profession, the authors focus heavily on the issue of student loans, specifically the issue of ‘debt alleviation”.
“Our findings clearly point at the quest for debt alleviation – mostly related to student loans – as important to the motivation of many international school teachers….It is on the background of these mounting debts that we can understand the link between international teaching and personal financial indebtedness. Most of the teachers we interviewed referred to economic strategies or financial concerns when accounting for their own mobile teaching trajectories… Student loans were frequently mentioned by teachers who had studied in Anglo-Saxon countries, where higher education implies considerable fees. In our study, about half the adventurer teachers trained in Anglo-Saxon countries (47%) associated their mobile trajectories with the explicit objective of reducing their student debts.” (p. 366).
I am not sure to what extent international school recruiters currently emphasise the job as being a way to reduce indebtedness, but perhaps they should. Or maybe this is something that goes unstated when potential teachers start applying for posts in exotic lands?
“In our study we found that these two themes, of lifestyle and financial solvency to be persistently evoked alongside one another…Noting enjoyment and repayment of loans as key recurring themes, we observed continuous tradeoff between lifestyle aspirations and financial interests” (p.368)
Of course, much depends on exactly where a teacher ends up working. As this study suggests, if you are working in a high cost environment (e.g. Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia) then don’t expect to be saving much money because the extra salary will go to fund your lifestyle.
So which countries look the best bets for those teachers looking to combine lifestyle with increased financial security or, indeed, who are deciding on an international school career as a way of paying of student loans?
Unfortunately, this article doesn’t lay that out clearly, though from the comments recorded by international school teachers and quoted in the piece, it appears one would be looking at Kuwait and similar tax-free havens in the Middle East, plus Asia (China, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Japan or Korea).
In our recently published book (International Schools: The Teacher’s Guide), Dr Denry Machin and myself make the point that no teacher should embark on a career in international school teaching without first doing due diligence. And that means not only looking closely at the school (leadership, culture, resources); the fine print of the contract; lifestyle and environment; but also the cost of living together with the consequences of working in a profession with little or no employee protection or formal retirement plans.
“Even as adventurer teachers can make choices as if they possess total freedom, we have seen how this taste of privilege often does not live up to the reality and is limited at best or illusory at worst. Even as adventurer international teachers’ employment opportunities are indeed multiple, the market’s high turnover is such that they are often locked into a precarious system that offers little employee protection and formal retirement plans and is sometimes characterised by summary dismissals and continuous relocations.” (p. 370; original emphasis)
All true, though personally I still wouldn’t swop it for working in a Bradford Secondary school.
reference
Jeanne Rey, Matthieu Bolay & Yonatan N. Gez (2020) Precarious privilege: personal debt, lifestyle aspirations and mobility among international school teachers, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18:4, 361-373
link
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14767724.2020.1732193?journalCode=cgse20