Geographies of Affective Knowledge: Site,the Embodied Ethnicity and Transformation

Abstract

This article examines the inner experiences of two (im)migrant bodies, focusing on an Asian immigrant teacher and a British expatriate teacher across various temporal spaces. By addressing ordinary affect, the performative paradigm offers a space for writing marginal individuals into existence and preserving visceral experiences. Through ‘betweener talk,’ it produces geographies of affective knowledge and transformation over time. The ethical validity of embodied knowing underscores their specific situatedness. By engaging in reparative performance, it provides counter-narratives to essentialist views of people in mobility contexts. This article demonstrates how performative writing empowers (im)migrant bodies by highlighting their unique histories and the economic and socio-cultural forces that influence their desired futures.

Opener: Affective mobilities

Over the years, through our ongoing dialogues and collaborations (Yan et al., 2023; Yan & Poole, 2024), we have come to recognize our differing research practices and epistemologies. By creating a space where differences can emerge and converge, this article explores and contrasts the affective mobilities of two (im)migrant bodies. Navigating between “the physical and the possible,” we use this performative space to understand how our bodies contest meaning, challenge power, and embody “both structure and the means by which it might be overcome” (Giardina & Newman, 2011, p. 393).

In this article, we differentiate between immigrants, who move to another country with the intention of living there permanently, and migrants, who may move temporarily for work, education, or other reasons, either within a country or across borders. This distinction highlights differences in ethno-national and socio-economic backgrounds, state regulations, and various transnational phenomena (Poole & Bunnell, 2024; Yan et al., 2025a). Therefore, the term “(im)migrant bodies” encompasses the experiences of both Asian immigrant teachers and Western-born expatriate teachers within this research context.

Given the differing migration regimes of Asian countries, such as China, and Western nations, such as Australia, the significance of this research lies in examining the geographies of teacher-becoming through the lens of affective mobilities. As Dekeyser et al. (2024) contend, “geographies of ambivalence” linger with “intensities of feeling that would otherwise collapse into moments of positive or negative evaluation, to proliferate possibilities for enacting worlds otherwise” (p. 197). Through affect, memory, and place, we map out our physiological and psychological reactions to certain life events in our environment, producing situated knowledge of beings across various places.

Grounded in the notions of experience, action, position, and perspective, this article contributes to complementary standpoints on “movement, affect, and human (im)possibility” (Glăveanu & Womersley, 2021, p. 628). Through a performative paradigm, we offer a way of understanding how voice connects us to each other, envisioning what might be possible for us across different times. In a performance of possibility, we see the “possible” as suggesting “a movement culminating in creation and change” (Madison, 2003, p. 471). To do this mapping, we attend to memories attached to various places where our stories do not simply oscillate between hope and despair but exist simultaneously. Rather than capturing a single moment, we perform the life course of moving between countries to open up the horizon of “possibilities and impossibilities [of becoming] that make up a mobile existence” (Glăveanu & Womersley, 2021, p. 629). It is this very experience that maps out our affective (im)possibilities of migration, contributing to the academic discourse on what motivates ordinary people to move across borders and what might be possible for them.

Behind the Scenes: Cultural Design and Significance

Informed by migration studies and geographic scholarship, we draw on our experiences as foreign-born teachers and emerging academics within a transnational context. To enliven scholarly understandings of migrant mobilities, we consider the notion of desire as an ongoing process of spatio-temporal differentiation of becoming (Collins, 2020). This enables us to gain a better understanding of how we were initially drawn to move to another country and then subsequently strived to achieve our desired identities in countries other than our own. Most importantly, these desired transformations allow us to reflect on our aspirations, desires, and the motivations behind migration (Collins & Carling, 2020).

By expressing our inner feelings and exploring possibilities, we use performance to create a context where migrant bodies are recognized as individuals with their own histories and social influences (Nail, 2015). To perform life events across various spaces, we consider Diversi and Moreira’s (2009, 2018) practice of betweener talk to articulate our aspirations and desires. We do this by examining transnational mobilities, a concept rarely linked with the dichotomy of ‘Asian immigrant teachers’ meeting ‘Anglo-Western teachers’ on the stage. This type of performance autoethnography addresses the perceived limitations of traditional qualitative research writing by highlighting how our situated knowledges are formed and reshaped (Yan et al., 2024).

To present our research, we recognize and valorize lived experience as a valuable social phenomenon worthy of examination (Saldaña, 2005). In doing so, we articulate diverse epistemologies and experiences within specific cultural settings (Akehurst & Scott, 2023; Lahiri-Roy et al., 2023; Phillips et al., 2022). Manning and Adams (2015) assert that personal experience has an emotional quality and, through thoughtful analysis, demonstrate why such lived experience is meaningful and culturally significant. The cultural design of this betweener talk aims to both align and differentiate the human experiences of migration within diverse socio-cultural settings. To magnify our desired transformations across various times and locales, we offer a “productive and unsettling” disposition for becoming, via the “circuits of feeling-thinking-acting” in which these intensities move (Dekeyser et al., 2024, p. 197).

Within the performative framework, we take in Glăveanu and Womersley’s (2021) study of “emotions on the move,” helping us to “connect self and other, private and public, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, agency and structure, the psychological and the political” (p. 633). The concept of affective mobilities is understood as bodily capacities that emerge from encounters with oneself and others (Berlant, 2011; Brennan, 2004; Massumi, 2002; Stewart, 2007). Reflecting on our migrant trajectories and experiences, this ‘betweener’ performance examines the development of our emotional lives across different places as ordinary individuals.

To contribute to the emerging field of affective mobilities, we create a hybrid text of betweener talk, offering a liberating way to express our situated knowledge against essentialist views of (im)migrant bodies. In composing cultural connections, Hradsky (2024) argues that writing about oneself and others introduces complexities in depicting characters’ cultural identities, which in turn creates new opportunities and uncertainties. Meeting halfway, we inhabit the in-between spaces of doing, feeling, and being. By writing and rewriting our life events, we examine, deconstruct, and challenge our reflections within the politics of knowledge production (Diversi & Moreira, 2016).

In performing the notion of inappropriate(d)ness, we carefully construct various “voices [that] begin calling to you” from invisible locations (Yan et al., 2024, p. 100). Instead of “more essentialist representations and interpretations of lived experience,” Diversi and Moreira (2016) remind us to “look for narratives of lives lived, here and there, in the spaces between fixed identities” (p. 586). By engaging in border-crossing events and experiences of in-betweenness, we establish a liminal space for situated knowledge at the intersection of personal, cultural, economic and intellectual dimensions. This ‘doubling’ discourse of performance allows us to write the self into the other self, reliving and reflecting on this journey of becoming-other (Yan et al., 2024).

Through this ‘betweener’ talk, we use dramatis personae as a writing technique to blend personal stories with scholarly discourse. The interplay between migration trajectories and affective landscapes is woven into our understanding of place, creating a bricolage of the present. ¹ At its core, bricolage is about avoiding the reductionistic knowledge of externally imposed methods (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 326) and writing ourselves into the history-in-the-making of our times (Diversi & Moreira, 2016, p. 583). To amplify the complexity of human existence while sidestepping monological forms of knowledge, it offers “the ‘storied-self’ as a resolution of the competing constructions and experiences of personal continuity, alongside the inconsistencies and constant change in the individual” (Leyshon & Bull, 2011, p. 159). This method of writing events creates affective geographies “of storytelling […] akin to the novel or biography” which “fractures the boundaries that normally separate social science from literature […] the narrative text refuses to abstract and explain” (Ellis & Bochner, 2000, p. 744).

Built around the concepts of action, position, and perspective, our methodological decisions are guided by a commitment to empowerment. This commitment aims to enhance, rather than smother or reify, our lived experiences (Halliwell & Limpus, 2025; Nziba Pindi, 2018; Schwartzman, 2017). In examining our experiences, this scholarship contributes to interdisciplinary literature by challenging the “binary thinking of (im)migrant-teacher” (Yan, 2024), underscoring that this hyphen becomes a chain to limit what I can become, “mark[ing] a relationship of power and inequality that continues to shape differential patterns of cultural dominance and social privilege” (Jones & Jenkins, 2008, p. 473).

Under the weight of our lived experiences, which highlight both our differences and similarities, performative text involves the continuous negotiation of individual desires, class, positioning, and social contexts. This process of writing and rewriting is marked by repetition and difference: “repetition changes nothing in the object being repeated, but it does change something in the mind that contemplates it. […] A change is produced in the mind that contemplates: a difference, something new in the mind” (Deleuze, 1968/1994, p. 70). Through performative discourse, this article encourages and empowers us to engage with difference and contention.

By presenting a layered account of lived experiences of specific sociocultural phenomena, this betweener talk reveals embodied performances that emerge from the spaces in-between identities, providing us with the possibility of hope “that come with a raised critical consciousness” (Newman, 2013, p. 247). It offers a pedagogical encounter where our unique perspectives and experiences are juxtaposed, amplifying the singularity of individual voices through intersubjectivity and multivocality (Hernandez et al., 2017). Writing our inner speech on the page allows us to “re-evaluate and revalue bad feelings by seeing them as a source of potential rather than just diminishment” (Dekeyser et al., 2024, p. 196).

Staging: Reparative Performance

As the reader (audience) engages with the following play, they will gradually understand who we are and what we are becoming. On stage, the audience sees an Asian figure in his late 30s (Pynchøn) and a white British male in his early 40s (Adam). The Chorus, embodying scholarly discourse, steps onto the stage to ensure “crucial aspects of difference do not escape attention” (Ruez & Cockayne, 2021, p. 91).

Through dramatis personae, irony serves as a political concept. It is undertaken in a reflexive mode, where we engage in irony by suspending our “own values, judgments, and knowledge about the world, and accepting the point of view of ‘the other’ as valid” (Eyal et al., 2003, p. 9). This allows us to present an examination and critique of life events for critical social analysis.

Pynchøn: As a kid in the ’90s, I dreamed of studying in the UK. By the 2000s, the US was my new utopia. Turns out, my aspirations were just riding the waves of global power shifts. I once asked my mum how to become President of China. Instead of crushing my dreams, she said, “Go to Harvard, and you might have a shot.” So, off to the West I went.

Adam: As a teenager in the 1990s, I dreamed of becoming a musician or a poet. This led to a more practical dream, of becoming an English teacher, but a disappointing D grade in GCSE maths discouraged me from pursuing a formal teaching career in the UK. In the 2000s, as China gained prominence on the global stage, I was turned eastward to realize my ambition of becoming an educator.

Pynchøn (looks at Adam): Who are you?

Adam: cradled in a cosy suburban dream

life begins,

a simulation family machine: father, mother, brother and sister.

but the idyll is soon shattered,

the nest scattered.

mother flew with me and my brother

whilst father keeps the sister,

only one mouth to feed.

Cut from the sleepy streets

of Plympton

and pasted onto the rough roads

of Efford.

After hearing Adam’s poetics, Pynchøn plunges into his past, revisiting his childhood and the origins of his country—memories he had tried to forget.

Pynchøn (murmurs): solo Child of the ’80s

in China’s birth control, an only child am I,

my mark, unique traits

to signify. I

speak not for all of my countrymen,

but just for my own tale,

where shadows mar the light, and joys are frail.

nightly echoes of discord,

a harsh and jarring sound,

my father’s fury is unleashed, where peace is never found.

the violence, a spectre,

through years it will persist, until Grade 12’s end, when my mother’s life desists—

death gave me so much jouissance (Kristeva, 1982).

Pynchøn (recounts): In 2003, as I was completing my senior year, my mum fell ill and passed away shortly after I received an acceptance offer from a provincial university. I packed my clothes, hoping to leave my childhood behind, naively believing I could become independent.

But during school holidays, the campus closed, forcing me back to my hometown and my dad. At the time, I didn’t understand the notion of trauma or the necessary conditions for human flourishing, as I was told that if you are good enough, you can accomplish anything. So, I dared to dream big, but my dad, ever the realist, often reminded me that I was just an ordinary person with high expectations who might fall the hardest.

Adam (looks into distance): I always felt that I didn’t quite belong anywhere. The absent father would call us ‘thick’ and the ‘neighbours’ would call us ‘posh’. And yet, within this contradiction I was able to construct a third space from the words and phrases of Keats, Wilde, Lawrence and Eliot. This withdrawal into a safe, secure and familiar inner world fed aspirations to study literature. And so, at 18, I made my way to a university far from Plymouth to study English literature.

[V.O.] Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home. (Gyasi, 2017)

Chorus: Homegoing

Despite growing up in different cultural societies, both of us endured varying degrees of trauma that we were unaware of when we were young. Was it because we came from a poor family background? When trauma hits home, we were not merely seeking new beginnings but also escaping painful pasts. Berlant (2011) cautions that we form attachments or think about our future, we often do so with optimism, believing that these attachments will bring positive outcomes. Understanding our childhoods might be crucial to comprehending later mobility decisions and seeking for opportunities to survive.

Our stories may share similarities, yet stark contrasts emerge. Many issues encountered later in the narratives can be traced back to these formative years. Mobility requires personal resilience and is also influenced by factors like race, education, culture, social class and so on. Berlant (2011, p. 24) describes this as “cruel optimism,” where “the subject leans toward promises contained within the present moment of the encounter with [his or] her object.” Both of our narratives have been concealed through the act of leaving performatively, highlighting not only the destinations individuals seek but also the painful realities they are fleeing from.

However, our readings soon highlight the importance of embracing a pluralistic approach that does not shy away from the negative aspects of society. Instead, it encourages engaging with these issues in a nuanced and emotionally complex way, recognizing that critique is inherently political and necessary in a diverse and unequal world (Ruez & Cockayne, 2021). In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006) writes “Things usually work out in the end. What if they don’t? That just means you haven’t come to the end yet.”

[V.O.] When we were young, we believed in resilience and the idea that challenges are often temporary. We remained hopeful for the future. Now, we are not so sure; maybe we are just inventing our childhood trauma to justify the current world we live in.

Pynchøn (looks at the audience): As a product of China’s 80s, my thirst for personal aspiration is stronger than ever, like a tree reaching ever higher towards the sunlight. It is as unquenchable as the country’s love for economic reforms.

In 2007, I find myself in the paradoxical position of teaching at a Canadian school in Shenzhen, a modern metropolis that links Hong Kong to China’s mainland, where the air is as charged with ambition as it is with the smog on my mind.

After scrimping and saving in this ‘silicon alley’, I take a leap of faith—or perhaps a flight of fancy—towards New Zealand. The land of sheep and hobbits becomes my hope for envisioning a future, not because of its lush landscapes, but because it offers a Working Holiday Scheme that doesn’t demand the wealth of a small dynasty.

In an era when studying abroad is a luxury akin to owning a panda, New Zealand’s agreement with mainland China is my golden ticket. It is my escape from the clutches of a modest upbringing, a satirical twist where financial constraints become the wings of my overseas aspirations. This decision shall transform my life, for better or for worse, in the process of becoming a Chinese-New Zealander; here binary thinking does not aid in the analysis of experience (Gaither, 2018).

Adam: Unfortunately, I left university after a couple of months. Once again, I just didn’t fit it. My classmates seemed so articulate and at home in their skin whilst I felt rough and unready. Now, I realize that this was an example of what Bourdieu refers to as ‘cleft habitus’—a sense of dislocation when an individual’s conditions of existence change suddenly and drastically. At the time, I felt confused and conflicted. My body was at university, but my mind was back there. Caught in another contradiction.

My decision to ‘quit’ was met with disdain from my family. When I returned home, everyone had moved on and seemed to resent me for coming back and unsettling their new rhythm. After some time, I returned to a university closer to home and graduated with a degree in English literature. I then worked for some years for the Royal Mail, inputting post codes into a computer. It was soul destroying work, but it afforded me the time and money to study for a master’s degree in English literature.

Then, in 2008, I received an email from a former Royal Mail colleague who had moved to China and was teaching English. He suggested I do the same. With nothing to keep me in my job—it was a black hole for graduates—I stuffed my master’s degree and vague aspirations into a backpack and headed to a place called Nanchang, which was somewhere in China. I really had no idea what I was getting into, but knew that I needed to break away and prove myself to my family, who were confident that, just like before, I would be home within three months.

Chorus: Aspirations of Normal People

As we approach our late twenties, we were driven by a desire for personal and professional growth. Pynchøn seeks to escape the limitations of his ‘modest’ background, finding opportunity in New Zealand whereas Adam feels undervalued in the UK and is lured to China by the promise of a better life, where qualifications seem secondary to racial appearance. In Cruel Optimism, Berlant (2011) points out that compromised conditions of possibility, whose realization is discovered to be either impossible, sheer fantasy or, possible and toxic. We scrutinize this possibility by looking at alternative place for human flourishing.

And yet, the motivations to leave our home countries differ significantly: as a Chinese citizen, Pynchøn was propelled by the allure of inaccessible overseas experience; in contrast, Adam was disillusioned with his current career and enticed by the prospect of being overqualified. Such narratives are soon tinged with irony: one uses financial constraints as a launchpad to achieve their aspirations and the other, ironically, finds value in superficial criteria abroad.

Aren’t dreams wonderful? They allow us to bear with unbearable sorrow. They enable us to live in the fantasy of achieving something, believing we can beat the odds. But at what cost? Some of us didn’t ask for any privilege; we were born with wealth and resources, while others keep dreaming of such access. It is within this condition that certain people gradually lose their self-esteem, obscuring what it means for ordinary people to form their aspirations within the context of an ‘austere meritocracy’ (Mendick et al., 2018).

Pynchøn: Upon my arrival in New Zealand in October 2009, I quickly found a volunteer position as a Mandarin teacher at a local school. Despite my best efforts, securing part-time work proved challenging due to the three-month limit imposed by my working holiday visa. This restriction, common for roles like fruit picking, was intended to provide ‘field’ experience.

However, necessity sparked creativity. I devised a plan to pursue a master’s degree in language teaching at a top university in New Zealand (Xue & Yan, 2015). With only $2,000 in my bank account, I was fortunate to meet two generous Chinese migrants in Auckland who offered to finance my tuition. Their kindness enabled me to chase my dreams, and I diligently repaid their support.

Adam: Stepping off the plane, I am hit by the sights, smells and sounds of rural Nanchang. A cocktail of motion, cacophony and putrefaction. The smell of the street that first day was so vile I almost threw up. So, this was to be home for the next two years. Teaching English to classes of 60 undergraduates in one of the poorest provinces in China. My instinct was to pack my bag and get on the next plane back home. But the faces of my family and their mantra of ‘three months’ were enough to keep me from fleeing like I had done before. Somehow, I made it work. I was able to see out my two-year contract and, in the process, accumulate teaching experience which I could cash in for a better position in Shanghai.

Chorus: Differential Migrations of Teaching-Becoming

Our movement as migrant subjects and our decisions are driven by personal desires and influenced by our specific circumstances. There is a stark contrast between our professional experiences in our adopted countries—Pynchøn, a qualified teacher in his home country, is unable to teach in the West, while Adam easily obtains a work permit to teach in the East due to his embodied Western whiteness. Despite this advantage, Adam still feels uneasy in situations where he is ‘othered’ because of his white skin. It highlights the complex dynamics of becoming a teacher and pursuing other individual aspirations.

Through our interwoven stories, we challenge the prevailing view of mobility, often seen as a privilege linked to upward social mobility in both literature and public discourse (Luczaj, 2023; Shahrokni, 2018). As observed by Yan et al. (2025a), individuals navigate not only geographical borders in teaching but also the complex interplay of multiple identities, personal goals, and desired becomings in diverse contexts. In such a context, it is crucial to consider the complexities of navigating different socio-cultural landscapes and societies. Through an affective lens, we see that mobility is not always a positive experience and often comes at a great hidden cost. For some individuals, this may involve the need for biographical transformation, such as becoming someone else (Jensen, 2012).

Perhaps Kristeva (2010) is correct in stating that culture determines the dynamics of sublimation from the beginning, as culture is underpinned by language. In this context, Adam’s narrative provokes an awareness of the complex conceptualizations of foreignness and the tension of living in a society where he cannot speak the local language. This is the “oddness of this stranger’s condition,” as Kristeva (1991) explained “his origin certainly haunts him, for better and for worse, but it is indeed elsewhere that he has set his hopes, that his struggles take place, that his life holds together today” (p. 29).

At this stage, Pynchøn was moved by the kindness of strangers and appeared grateful for the potential opportunities to grow in this new environment. However, Cole (2020) cautions that while we are often moved by kindness, it can also be discomfiting, anxiety-provoking, and even shameful. From the perspective of Haraway’s (1988) “situated knowledges,” the other will soon be disturbed by an impersonal understanding of what personal history might be and how it might be experienced in the first place. This “raised critical consciousness” activates their hidden chronic pain (Newman, 2013, p. 247), likely leading to a politics of resentment (Cramer, 2016).

Pynchøn: Post-graduation from a New Zealand university, I confront a stark reality: my master’s degree in language teaching is unrecognized for K–12 settings. Having Chinese teaching credentials recognized by local councils is a costly labyrinth.

Visa uncertainties loom, plunging me into despair. Yet, I secure an ESL teaching position at a language school. Six years of immigrant life have given me a New Zealander identity, an unforeseen asset (Yan, 2020). My dual identity, once ambiguous, becomes advantageous, unlocking a Mandarin teaching role in an Australian public school. Unexpected opportunities abound—a government scholarship for further studies, a privilege tied to my emerging Australian identity.

This legal status lays the foundation for my flourishing. My Chinese heritage opens doors to teaching Mandarin in Australia. Now I stand on the brink of an epiphany, poised to unravel the cosmic joke of why an ordinary person like myself has wandered through the ages to chase a quintessentially human dream. I belong to “a different world” from that in which I find myself (Freire, 1970/1993, p. 33).

Adam: With two years of teaching under my belt, I am able to find an international school teaching job in Shanghai. Initially, I am assigned to the middle school, teaching English and history. I had hoped to be placed in the high school, but a poor demo class (which I had to give to just 2 people) clearly did not go that well. Despite this, I work hard and make the best of the situation.

By the second year, I am able to move to the high school to teach International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme English. One of the IBDP English teachers is leaving and recommended me as his replacement. Even though he described my literary tastes as ‘traditional’, I could still hold my own discussing the likes of Joyce and Kundera. I recall one of our final exchanges. He informed me that I had ‘big shoes to fill’. I glanced down at his feet and immediately replied that ‘your feet are the same size as mine.’ Perhaps now I would find somewhere I could fit in.

Chorus: Race, Education, and Socio-Linguistic Power

Before venturing abroad, we carry identities shaped by race, social class, language, culture, and education. Pynchøn navigates numerous challenges in New Zealand to build a career using his accumulated assets, while Adam, a white working-class expatriate teacher, establishes his professional path in China. Both of us experience a profound sense of dislocation, described by Said (2000) as ‘out of placeness.’ Despite this, our “cultural differences” dissolve into an “ether of prolonged, deferred, and individuating” aspirations (Berlant, 2001, p. 127).

For Pynchøn, he naively believed that education in the West was “the only chance” to “learn the skills needed to ‘go ahead,’ and work in the better-paid middle class” (Jensen, 2012, p. 112). He occupies a liminal space of being and belonging, gaining certain socio-cultural privileges in New Zealand. This privilege may not guarantee a specific status, but it provides access to resources that would otherwise be inaccessible (Yan & Poole, 2024), such as scholarships, medical services, and retirement funds. Possibly linked to the growing influence of his home country, China, this cultural background also provides him with both distinction and visibility, potentially leading to a valuable form of capital. However, this capital subjects him to a sense of otherness in the adopted country.

As a Briton, Adam exemplifies what Camenisch (2022) calls ‘middling whiteness,’ a devalued form of white-skin privilege that nevertheless remains potent. While white privilege no longer carries its historical weight (Lan, 2022a), these Western-born teachers and academics represent an emerging type of precarious whiteness, creating a paradoxical situation (Poole, 2019). Their white skin grants them both privilege and conspicuousness, leading to a “fetishization of whiteness” that is still considered valuable social capital (Lan, 2022a, p. 124). However, this same visibility renders them silent and unseen, effectively othered despite their privileged status.

Pynchøn: The government scholarship I received confines me to a course-based master’s program, preventing me from pursuing the research path I desire for a PhD. Undeterred, I carve out my niche by initiating my own research projects, which blossom into publications and conference presentations. However, the grind of a full teaching schedule, with no time for research, leaves me drained. I gamble on my aspiration of becoming an academic researcher, sacrificing 30% of my salary to work part-time so I can delve into research activities (Yan, 2021, 2022). Amidst the sacrifice, I often ponder the value of this pursuit, questioning the cost of chasing a dream.

Despite my master’s degree not being a golden ticket to a PhD, I pursue a Graduate Certificate in Educational Research (GCER), acing it with a 94%. Confident and ready to conquer academia, I hit a bureaucratic snag—the admissions office admitted to a blunder in the handbook, which falsely promised PhD entry post-GCER. And let’s be clear, this isn’t just any university; it’s a top-tier, world-class establishment, not some degree factory. Such non-accountability of higher education institutions, particularly those dubbed ‘elite’, is a significant issue contributing to the professional precarity inherent in academic spaces (Ashadi et al., 2025; Halliwell & Limpus, 2025). I become “a silenced student” in the neoliberal university (Suoranta & FitzSimmons, 2017).

Adam: Fast forward to 2015. I’ve worked at a few different international schools since moving to Shanghai. I’m now married and have a son on the way. Teaching is economically fulfilling, but starts to feel a little meaningless to me. My interest starts to shift from literature to trying to understand what draws teachers like me to international schools in China. Without realising it, I had become a sociologist or perhaps, as I like to call myself now, a bricoleur. And so I decide to pursue a doctorate. Not only does this enable me to understand the world of international schooling in more detail, but it provides me with more choice. I can remain as a teacher, but I can also consider a career in academia. As I cannot study full-time, as I have a family to support, I undertake a part-time doctorate in education with the University of Nottingham.

Pynchøn: I decide to move to another higher educational institution, where I am awarded two scholarships recognizing me as a high-achieving student. The truth is, I’ve been chasing this doctoral education for nearly a decade in the West.

I toil and trouble, proving my worth in the hallowed halls of academia, only to find the goalposts keep moving. The path to a doctorate, it seems, is as straight as a politician’s promise. Honours? Master’s by research? Just quaint stepping stones in a murky pond where the ‘competitive’ and ‘rigorous’ selection process is as transparent as a brick wall.

While pursuing my PhD, I continue working as a classroom teacher, clinging to the peripheral identity of an immigrant teacher (Yan, 2025). Now, I see myself as a cultural other. After two years of juggling part-time study, full-time teaching, and the literary marathon of writing for publication during my second master’s (2020–2022), I feel more shipwrecked than scholarly.

Pynchøn (looks at Adam): If I can survive this tempest, a PhD should be a breeze?!

Adam: I find balancing work and doctoral study to be relatively easy. This was in part due to my interest and motivation (once again, my previous failures spurred me on), but perhaps most crucially because I have the support of my family. This affords me time on the weekends to focus on reading and writing. Yet I do feel guilty for not being there for my family, even if it is only for the short-term. This reckoning of conscience pushes me to be as productive as possible. Consequently, I am the first of my cohort to graduate in early 2019.

Chorus: Time and Narrative Across Locales

Ricœur (1984) cautions the creation of meaning at the textual level, focusing on narrative rather than metaphor as the primary concern. Looking back now, both of us, as (im)migrant bodies, has been attached to different forms of our desired identities. Adam seems proud of his achievements, such as spending time with his family and being a good father while earning a doctorate. However, Pynchøn cultivates a temporal logic of vulnerability that soon becomes resentment, clinging, or even fetishizing a wound created by a past injustice. This place-based resentment is understood as an extension of place-based identities (Hegewald, 2024).

Memories play a crucial role in our construction of place, serving as an anchor for identity and connecting different temporalities to our encounters with moving bodies. They allow various spaces, pasts, and futures to become embedded in specific locales (Yan et al., 2025b). However, the spontaneous assemblages of meaning that memory enables are not apolitical (Leyshon & Bull, 2011). For Pynchøn, the materiality of memory appears to influence the creation of the present and, consequently, the future. Over the years of experiencing invisible marginalization while pursuing his doctoral studies, he has come to view academia through a different lens.

In State of Injuries, Brown (1995) diagnoses that “a politicized identity enunciates itself and makes claims only by retrenching, restating, dramatizing, and inscribing its pain in politics, and it can envision no future” (p. 74). When we say the “traumatized self” is the “true self,” we might mislead ourselves to believe that the pain and trauma someone experiences reveal the true nature of their history (Berlant, 2001, p. 148). Brown (1995) argues that if an identity is partly built on resentment and continues to focus on its own pain, it remains trapped in the past. Memory, in this context, becomes the place where this ongoing focus on pain and refusal to live in the present resides.

Through performing selves, we understand how focusing on past trauma and pain can shape our identities and suggest that letting go or ‘forgetting’ might be necessary to move forward and create a better life. But what is a better life? Isn’t it the absurdity of wishful thinking, imagining the possibility of a brave new world (Huxley, 1932), where technological advancements and societal control have eradicated pain and suffering, but at the cost of individuality? So you’d better believe I kept my mouth shut!

Pynchøn: As a PhD student, I quickly understood Jason Storm’s (2021) description of our scientific space, where “many scholars unfortunately mistake territorial pissing for rigor and blinkered hyperspecialization for depth” (p. 19). A narrow focus, however, will miss an immense swath of common ground.

Many journals often do not allow for the candid expression of my situated knowledge or experiences, necessitating some filtering and modification of discourse. I am aware that readers might sense some resentment in my self-censored performance.

While I have come to realize that pursuing a PhD is a privilege not afforded to everyone, I cannot force myself to conform my academic discourse to fit within the dominant tone. I cannot envision my future... The truth is the “reparation of pain does not bring into being a just life” (Berlant, 2001, p. 149).

Adam: After graduating from my doctoral programme, I end up working at a Chinese university as a ‘real academic’—an Assistant Professor. I had previously worked at the same university as ‘Director of Research’ but found out that the company I worked for were not part of the university. I would take regular breaks from the cattle-shed office and walk the winding corridors, enviously staring at the ‘real’ academics’ office doors. I may have been allowed through the gate, but I could not enter the office. I longed to have one of those offices for myself.

Now, I could finally see what lay within those now opened office doors, which previously had been firmly closed to me. I soon realise that I am token ‘white’ face’ yet again, as I had been earlier in my career as an English teacher in Nanchang. I am also treated somewhat differently from my colleagues. Whilst they are referred to as ‘Dr.’ and ‘Professor,’ I am referred to as ‘Adam.’ Perhaps a sign of friendliness but is a reminder of not quite being the same. Despite this, the position provides me with some stability (the contract was three years), and opportunities to teach, and the potential for promotion.

Then, in early 2023, I receive an unexpected email from the Education university of Hong Kong asking if I would be interested in applying for the position of Assistant Professor. I hesitate before replying. Generally, I am committed to fulfilling all my contracts and the prospect of promotion at the Beijing university is very temping. Yet, I decide to apply, as I can see that the position will afford many opportunities for funding and research that the Beijing position cannot provide. For sure, Hong Kong will be harder going. It is known for its hyper competitive nature. But it also allows me to develop academic capital which will be essential for future mobilities and transitions.

[V.O.] You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere. (Le Guin, 1974)

Chorus: The Dispossessed—An Ambitious Utopia

As performative narratives start to impinge on moving bodies, confusion and ambivalence can threaten not only academic success but also the sense of self and identity needed to feel comfortable in one’s own situatedness. This “clashing of cultures” is not only invisible to others but most poignantly to those who bear it (Jensen, 2012, p. 157). Being both middle-class and an academic becomes “a tautology” that typically goes unquestioned or uncontested (Poole, 2023, p. 524). So, what does it mean to be an ‘academic’? Is Pynchøn an academic outsider? It appears that there is no open space to accommodate this other identity and allow it to flourish.

Academic success is contingent on mobility or the ability to be mobile. Active members ‘practise’ it, and non-members are immobile (Chou, 2021). Adam was simultaneously mobile and immobile, in the sense that his mobility was both ‘slippery’ and ‘sticky’. His value as a teacher and an academic seems to hinge on his embodiment of ‘western-whiteness’; yet, over the years, this whiteness has ‘slipped,’ becoming devalued, and is now perceived as a form of ‘middling-whiteness’ (Camenisch, 2022). Although both of us have transformed, our aspirations for our academic futures seem to differ due to our past experiences and identity markers, for instance, ethnicity.

From the utopia of normal intimacy, we find the law articulating its subjects through their actions and positions, which have been racially, linguistically, culturally, and economically coded toward privilege and transformation. Focusing on fixed identities misleads us to believe that moving bodies are constrained by contextual forces, limiting our vision of what might be possible for us (Giardina & Newman, 2011). However, one must be cautious of the “chronic pain” associated with our “pursuit to escape poverty, the intellectual, pedagogical, and theoretical endeavors to eradicate those conditions, and the comforts that intellectual subject-being now affords” (Newman, 2013, p. 256). Beyond the immediate logic of wounded attachment, the psychic pain of marginalized populations must be seen as valuable knowledge rather than a complete social theory for such transformation to occur.

Holding Ourselves to Account

By engaging in critical reflexivity, this article documents and analyzes the geographies of affective knowledge across various times. To compose this betweener talk, we “name our world” into existence (Freire, 1970/1993, p. 33). Through our movements between the UK, China, New Zealand, and Australia, we bring our peripheral experiences to the center in our search for better conditions for human flourishing. As Freire (1970/1993) encourages, “human existence cannot be silent, nor can it be nourished by false words, but only by true words” with which we transform the world (p. 88). To achieve this, each of us must exercise the right to speak our own words, a process that defines both the world and our place within it.

Freire (1970/1993) states that authentic reflection considers neither abstract individuals nor the world in isolation, but rather people in their relationships with the world. In presenting this betweener talk, we bring self and other together to question, debate, and challenge one another. This allows us to present previously suppressed aspects of academic disciplines (Kincheloe et al., 2017) and the social world (Kaomea, 2016), opening the “door to a mosaic of stories” (Green, 2018, p. 325). This criticality would have been more difficult to achieve and sustain had we written our narratives as two separate autoethnographic accounts.

The unique cultural, social, and political landscapes of our home and host societies have impacted us differently. Within this liminal space, we have creatively engaged with the cultural systems of both our origin and host societies, capturing the transgressive nature of our identities (Marotta, 2025). By examining these locales of conditions, this betweener talk represents the lived experiences of migrant bodies, focusing on “subversion, de-centering, resisting, and eclecticism” (Poole, 2023, p. 524). We see in China, for example, that ‘whiteness’ is coveted as a form of ethnic capital but also makes it difficult to be accepted as an academic. In Australia, immigrants with permanent residency have equal access to resources as Australian citizens. This allows us to break new ground in problematizing and deconstructing assumptions about Western and Chinese experiences of migration.

In its hybrid form and content, our movements reflect a multitude of negotiations about how we live within these places while encountering various constraints. It would be simplistic to reify the migrant experience by categorizing the White experience in China as unchallenged privilege and the Chinese experience in Australia as precarious discrimination. This highlights that certain privileges have unstable aspects (Lan, 2022a, 2022b), resulting in precarious privilege (Bunnell & Poole, 2024). By enacting memories of certain places, we bring personal issues into living history, disrupting essentialist representations and interpretations of lived experiences. This performance gives our geographies of knowledge an immediacy, placing the reader amidst the flux and flow of knowledge-making.

On one hand, our reflexivity is profoundly influenced by our personal, socio-cultural, and political connections to academic precarity. On the other hand, our positionalities further complicate the issue, indicating that it extends beyond just academic precarity. Living within and navigating these complex articulations, marginal individuals may have “ceded authority over their well-being to the expertise and authority of privileged practitioners” (Newman & Giardina, 2014, p. 420). Recognizing how power regulates and shapes our lives and our sense-making, this article showcases how we can push the boundaries of accountability in the presentation of our research (O’Keefe & Courtois, 2024).

Writing and rewriting this betweener talk has led us to address the lack of representation of (im)migrant teachers’ voices as they navigate the transition from teaching into academia. By creating “a space for us to explore our memories,” we came to understand “how we arrived at our current positions as academics of working-class origins” (Davis et al., 2024, p. 4). The critical research practice has enabled us to conduct research differently, mapping out the affective, emotional, and embodied geographies of knowledge. It offers counter-narratives to the dominant discourse on the lived experiences of (im)migrant individuals seeking better conditions for human flourishing.

Through the lens of affective mobilities (Glăveanu & Womersley, 2021), this article has revealed the similarities and differences among ordinary people striving to beat the odds and achieve their desired futures. Performing “a new awareness of self” stirred by “a new hope” (Freire, 1970/1993, p. 33), we examine the situation and condition of this particular feeling, producing situated knowledge. This discussion highlights the complexity of human experiences by considering personal aspirations across different times. Navigating between the physical and the possible, we realize how we have negotiated socio-cultural norms, ethnic features, traits, and the political climate to manage our daily life activities.

As Ahmed (2010) articulates, negative encounters and moments of blockage have a life of their own, and that “we cannot know in advance what different affects will do to the body before we are affected in this or that way” (p. 215). Our emphasis on ambivalence provides a way to recognize “the importance of feeling in knowing,” without privileging either positive or negative affects (Ruez & Cockayne, 2021, p. 103). It is also critical for us to think carefully about how differences can be overlooked in efforts to tell a personal story. Between despair and hope, as well as precarity and privilege, our differences are significant but also reveal moments of congruence.

In this collaborative research, we embrace the idea that “search[ing] for authenticity or purity, or adhering to any binary, either/or philosophy of being and knowing” is both impossible and futile (Diversi & Moreira, 2016, p. 584). From this perspective, we argue that we are not just (im)migrant teachers or academics, but human beings with hybrid identities. This perspective highlights the enduring impact of place on our emotions, memories, and sense of belonging. Within this performance space, we invite you to connect your stories with ours, bridging “personal real-world knowledge and the knowledge gained from written materials” (Jensen, 2012, p. 85). By bringing together various voices and historical parallels, such forms of research practice represent a manifestation of healing and empowerment.