Between Optimism and Precarity: Unravel the Intersectional Challenges of Chinese Female Immigrant Teachers in the United States

Abstract

This thesis investigates the work and life experiences of an under-discussed and female-dominant Chinese diasporic community, Chinese immigrant teachers in American K12 education. I argue that, firstly, while being privileged as high-skilled professionals and enjoying more mobility compared to their domestic sisters, Chinese female immigrant teachers are also subject to the precarity and intersectionality deriving from the underfunded American education and their triple marginality of being women, Asian and first-generation immigrants. Secondly, the structural inequality of gendered labor performed in both the professional and domestic roles of female teachers tends to be reinforced in the diaspora. By adopting mixed approaches of interview-based ethnography and digital ethnography, this thesis offers a critical alternative to the masculine and material version of Chinese immigration and contributes to a more extensive intellectual effort to understand the systematic racial and gender inequality associated with globalization.