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Abstract

This article presents an intertwined performance of being, feeling, and knowing, and critically examines two bodies’ identity formations, subjectivities, and desired becomings within the context of migration. Through the praxis of betweener talk, we shed light on the lived experiences of two cross-border teachers in their adopted countries (China and Australia) and how they have responded to their particular situatedness. This betweener talk offers a liminal space for keeping alive the very visceral and embodied experiences, writing, and performing ourselves into existence. By honouring innermost speech and envisioning possibilities, this article contributes to an understanding of non-linear becomings and the dynamic, open nodes that are always in process. Through tinkering with a bricolage of reparative and empathetic truths, our personal insights provide noteworthy counter-narratives against essentialist representations of teacher-becoming and their aspirations. This article demonstrates how a bricolage of performative writing leads to a situation where (im)migrant bodies are understood as beings with their own histories and social forces.

Keywords

against essentialism betweener autoethnographies bricolage desired becomings (im)migrant teachers migration pedagogy of hope thinking differently

Introduction

Transnational mobility has become a significant research theme in recent decades (Adey, 2017; Angervall & Hammarfelt, 2024; Fresnoza-Flot, 2021; Przytula, 2024). Most scholarship in education tends to focus on international students, cross-border teachers, or expatriate academics (Cheng et al., 2020; Kim & Reichmuth, 2021; Soong & Stahl, 2023; Terhart, 2022; Wang, 2022). Synthesising existing literature, this article explores what motivates ordinary people to move across geographies over time. Rather than capturing a single moment of fixed identity markers, we examine the life course of moving between countries. We present and contrast the lived experiences of the two authors, who have pursued their teaching careers across borders and, in the later stages, have either become or are in the process of becoming academics. This article contributes to the literature by focusing on the ‘becoming’ process and how it affects individual identities, specifically the transition from ‘(im)migrant teacher’ to academic.

We use the term ‘cross-border teacher’ deliberately to encompass various types of teacher movement, including individuals who relocate temporarily for work in non-immigration countries, such as China, as well as teachers who have permanently moved or intend to live in the West. Notably, the migration policies that shape these experiences vary significantly between regions (Forsyth, 2024; Hackl, 2023). Asian migration policies seldom focus on naturalization, typically expecting foreign-born residents to stay for predetermined durations and restricting them to specific jobs, wages, and roles in social reproduction. Conversely, Western migration policies are designed to attract and retain immigrants with particular skill sets by offering pathways to permanent residency. Given these significant differences, it is important to explore the similarities and differences in the process of teacher-becoming within this transnational context.

Through our ongoing dialogues and academic collaborations (Yan et al., 2023; Yan & Poole, 2024, 2025), we have realized that our lived experiences belong to distinct scholarships: one as international school teachers (Poole & Bunnell, 2024) and the other as immigrant teachers (Yip & Saito, 2024). As Yan (2020) observed, various terms—including minority teachers, non-local teachers, and expat teachers—have been used across different disciplines to describe a range of transnational subjects, complicating comparative studies of these diverse scholarly works. There is also an assumption that these categories are largely fixed. However, Koh and Sin (2020) argue that it is necessary to examine the commonalities between these two ‘middling’ mobility groups. Here, ‘middling’ refers to the intermediate status of teachers within the transnational context, positioned between the extremes of business elites and seasonal migrant workers.

Based on Koh and Sin’s (2020) argument, we reflect on our experiences as foreign-born teachers and emerging academics in transnational contexts. To enhance scholarly understanding of migrant mobilities, we explore desire as an ongoing process of spatio-temporal differentiation (Collins, 2020). This helps us understand our initial motivations to move abroad and our efforts to achieve desired new identities in new countries. By articulating our inner speech and possibility thinking, this article portrays our (im)migrant bodies as beings with unique histories and social forces (Nail, 2015). Most importantly, these desired becomings allow us to consider our aspirations, desires, and the drivers of migration (Collins & Carling, 2020).

Informed by migration studies, we compare the transition experiences of desired becomings amongst two different migrant groups: a foreign international teacher turned academic in China (Poole) and an Asian immigrant teacher turned aspiring academic in Australia (Yan). In this article, we distinguish between immigrant and migrant teachers. An immigrant teacher has the opportunity to live in a country permanently, whereas an international teacher, considered a migrant professional, typically moves to another country without the intention or opportunity to settle down in the host country. These differences arise due to variations in ethno-national and socio-economic backgrounds, state regulations, and cultural perceptions of (in)compatibility. Hence, we use the term ‘(im)migrant’ bodies to characterize these subtle yet significant differences.

By attending to the bodily experiences and the purposes of learning and academic pursuit across places, we offer a deeper and more complex understanding of movements and our desired-becomings. Through creative engagements with bricolage as method, we explore the practice of betweener talk (Diversi & Moreira, 2009) to articulate our situated knowledges across times. By examining transnational mobilities, a concept rarely associated with the dichotomy of ‘Anglo-Western teachers’ and ‘Asian immigrant teachers,’ this article unites these two literatures through our intertwined narratives. Using betweener talk, we problematize the transition—a form of symbolic mobility—from becoming teachers to becoming academics.

Extending our work¹ (Yan & Poole, 2025), this article promotes the use of creative research methodologies by contrasting styles of researching, theorizing, and writing differently about experiences. Our betweener talk shows that individuals do not simply transition from one group to another (e.g., from teacher to academic); instead, they exist in a state of perpetual becoming, possessing a hybrid identity. Reflecting on our trajectories, we contribute to interdisciplinary literature by challenging binary thinking. Our lived experiences break down these binaries, emphasizing both differences and similarities. This discursive process involves continuous negotiation of individual desires, class, positioning, and social contexts.

Betweener Autoethnographies

Through thoughtful analysis informed by existing theory and scholarly writings (Manning & Adams, 2015), personal lived experience can be understood as meaningful and culturally significant. Chang et al. (2013) emphasize the importance of collaboration in autoethnography, where researchers share their personal stories to find “commonalities and differences” (p. 17). This process involves “collective meaning-making” within sociocultural contexts (p. 110), allowing each researcher to contribute uniquely while maintaining their independent voices. They argue that “without dialogue,” the effort would simply be a collection of individual autoethnographies rather than a cohesive collaborative work (p. 24).

Engaging in duo-autoethnography, we draw upon Diversi and Moreira’s (2009, 2018) praxis of betweener talk as a liberating way to articulate our situated knowledge against essentialist understandings of cross-border subjects in contrasting socio-political contexts. Betweener autoethnographies are a type of performance autoethnography that respond to the perceived limitations of traditional qualitative research writing, highlighting how our situated knowledges are formed and reshaped. From an epistemological perspective, performance autoethnographies produce “dialogical liminality” (Yan et al., 2023), challenging our core beliefs about research “on whom it is done, how it is done, who does it, and how it is reported. At their very core, such venues challenge those who believe they are in the locus of control of research”(S. McMillan & Price, 2010, p. 145).

In this context, our betweener talk “does not tell the whole story about who we are” but “gives us a starting point for the dialogic thinking in which we want to engage with readers” (Diversi & Moreira, 2009, p. 19). We consider ourselves ‘betweeners,’ situating ourselves in a liminal space from which we read, write, and think, embracing (im)migrant bodies experiencing life in and between multiple cultures. Through a layered account of scholarly writings, we inform the praxis and writing at play by incorporating “interdisciplinarity, representational blurriness, and the politics of knowledge production” (Diversi & Moreira, 2009, p. 19).

As we got to know each other through our first collaboration (Yan & Poole, 2024), we have discovered a voice that we did not have in our work alone—a voice that seems, to both of us, more generative and transgressive despite our differing experiences and identity markers. While recognizing our significantly different epistemologies, each of us—the ‘I’—writes ‘the self’ into ‘the other self’(Yan et al., 2024), situated in the in-between spaces of doing, reading, and writing. In this betweener talk, we write and re-write certain life events to examine, deconstruct, and challenge our reflections within the politics of knowledge production (Diversi & Moreira, 2016). In doing so, we articulate diverse epistemologies and experiences within particular cultural settings (Akehurst & Scott, 2023; Lahiri-Roy et al., 2023; Phillips et al., 2022; Simovska et al., 2019).

The cultural design of this betweener talk aims to cultivate a liminal space where speech and reality intersect (Yan et al., 2025b), aligning and differentiating the human experiences of migration within diverse socio-cultural settings. In doing so, this article highlights our desired transformations across various times and locales. Rooted in an ethical framework based on human rights and freedom of speech, we use betweener autoethnographies to inspire people to struggle against and resist oppression (Diversi & Moreira, 2018).

In particular, we construct educational and academic spaces as sites for struggle and desired becomings, where we theorize creative methodologies and explore the role of decolonizing inquiry in knowledge production. In this context, we explore the experiences of living on the margins from the perspectives of two ‘betweeners’—a Western-born schoolteacher in China and an Asian immigrant teacher in Oceania.

Bricolage as a Form of Betweener Talk

To compose our betweener autoethnographies, we draw on the concepts of the bricolage and the bricoleur. The origins of the term ‘bricoleur’ come from anthropologist Lévi-Strauss’s (1962/1966) work, The Savage Mind and was intended as a metaphor to assist in the development of a structuralist analysis of events (Yardley, 2019a). As Lévi-Strauss (1962/1966) posits, art occupies “an intermediate position between science and bricolage” and it “synthesizes intrinsic properties with those that depend on spatial and temporal contexts” (p. 25). This involves deconstructing and reconstructing “sets of events” to form new configurations on “psychical, socio-historical, or technical plane” (Lévi-Strauss, 1962/1966, p. 33).

The bricoleur (or bricoleuse) is someone who draws upon what is at hand due to resource scarcity and who re-combines available materials in a creative manner (Johnson, 2012). Developing the notion of the bricoleur, Denzin and Lincoln (2000) applied this idea to qualitative research to challenge the positivist belief in objective certainty in an ever-changing world through interdisciplinarity. The term ‘bricolage’ is now a term that encompasses a diverse collection of methods and theoretical positions used in qualitative inquiry across a wide range of research disciplines, encompassing critical pedagogy, social ecology, biology, and remix studies (Yardley, 2019b).

Informed by Lévi-Strauss and more contemporary uses of the bricolage (e.g., Kincheloe et al., 2017), we utilise bricolage to fuse fragments of memories and experiences through personal communications (such as email) and by reading each other’s work and mashing them up to create a new form of inquiry. At its heart, our bricolage practice is about “avoiding the reductionistic knowledge of externally imposed methods” and “sidestepping monological forms of knowledge” (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 326). We apply the concept of bricolage to contemplation, intertwining specific events and shifting towards emphasizing transient social phenomena to explore “its rich potential in understanding the multifaceted landscapes of human experience” (Santiago Sanchez et al., 2024).

By “disrupting essentialist representations and interpretations of lived experiences” (Diversi & Moreira, 2016, p. 582), bricolage as method gives our experiences immediacy, placing the reader amidst the flux and flow of our unfolding lives. The freeing and empowering element of bricolage opens the “door to a mosaic of stories” (Green, 2018, p. 325), revealing how power regulates and shapes our (imagined) lives and our sense-making across various temporal and spatial contexts. To do so, we use a variety of methodological, epistemological, and cultural traditions, making previously repressed features of academic disciplines (Kincheloe et al., 2017) and the social world (Kaomea, 2016) visible and seek to challenge the hegemonic status quo.

To explore new meanings and challenge established structures, we write ourselves into “the history-in-the-making of our times,” sidestepping monological forms of knowledge (Diversi & Moreira, 2016, p. 583). By donning the guise of the bricoleur, we can free ourselves from a restrictive academic self. The bricoleur becomes an identity through which we may speak candidly, authentically, unapologetically. In order for us to speak as bricoleurs, “multitheoretical, multimethodological, and multidisciplinary approaches” are needed to “foster knowledge from multiple frames of reference” (K. McMillan, 2015, p. 3).

The intention of our practice is to capture the emotional dynamics and nuances of lived experiences by refracting past events through our positionality as bricoleurs. In doing so, we “challenge oppression and tell both more critical and more empowering stories” about the places in which we have lived, worked, and dreamed (Kaomea, 2016, p. 99). Bricolage also provides us with a grammar for doing performative writing that interrogates and repurposes “dominant epistemologies to foster a bricolage of reparative and empathetic truths” (Poole, 2023, p. 522), Such a grammar encompasses many literary techniques, including allusion, juxtaposition, the figurative and fragmented.

In what follows, our betweener talk is a mode of bricolage-making akin to “artistic creation,” giving rise to “aesthetic emotion” (Lévi-Strauss, 1962/1966, p. 27). The narrative text stubbornly refuses to abstract and explain. Instead, we tinker with literary techniques and complement our irreverent tinkering with scholarly discourse. In crafting our betweener autoethnographies (Diversi & Moreira, 2018), our methodological decisions are guided by a commitment to bricolage to enhance, rather than smother or reify, our lived experiences. Bricolage as method encourages and empowers us to think with difference and write with contention.

[V.O.] As you (audience) engage with the following betweener autoethnographies, you will gradually understand who we are and what we are becoming.

The house lights dim and into the spotlight on the stage steps a white British male (Bricoleur) in his early 40s and an Asian male figure in his late 30s (The Obscure).² The Chorus, dressed in a formal academic gown, stands just off stage but still within sight eagerly waiting to provide context and explanation.

Prologue: the Ballad of East and West

Bricoleur: Growing up in the 1990s, I aspired to become a musician or a poet.³ Later, I considered becoming an English teacher, but a poor grade in GCSE maths (that D still haunts me) deterred me from pursuing a formal teaching career in the UK. In the 2000s, with China’s rise on the world stage, I was drawn eastward to realize my unfulfilled dream of becoming an educator.

The Obscure: When I was growing up in the 1990s, I wanted to study in the UK. Later, in the 2000s, I wished to go to the US. Now I realize that my desires were influenced by shifts in global dominance and cultural influence. I once asked my mum how I could become the President of my home country. Instead of telling me the harsh truth that such dreams might not come true, she said, ‘One day, if you go to Harvard, you might have a chance.’ That’s why I came to the West.

ACT I: 1980s and 1990s

Bricoleur: Cradled in cosy suburban sheen,

life begins,

a father, mother, brother and sister,

a smiling family machine.

The idyll soon shattered,

the nest scattered.

Mother flees with brother and me,

whilst father keeps the sister,

only one mouth to feed.

Carted from quiet sleepy streets

to cramped cold council grey.

As I grow up, I become acutely aware of not fitting in, of being Other. My brother and I are labelled ‘thick’ by our absent dad, who would only occasionally deign to visit to dispense fatherly advice. His fatherly advice at age 11: join the army. At the same time, we are seen by our neighbours as ‘posh’ because we don't have thick, Plymothian accents.

At the age of 18, I find myself being driven to a university in the midlands to study English literature and philosophy. I choose these subjects because I excelled at English literature during my A’ Levels and considered philosophy to be a ‘cool’ subject that would involve talking about the ‘meaning of life.’

The Obscure: Solo child of the ’80s / born under China’s birth control / An only child am I, with unique traits to signify. / I speak not for all my countrymen, but 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 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. Now, it is Death that gives me so much jouissance (Kristeva, 1982).

You may understand my pain, or you may not. You may understand what I mean, or you may not. I realized what domestic abuse can do to a child.

In 2003, I no longer have to worry about my mum being beaten because she has passed away. I cry regularly and have no one to talk to. Fortunately, I am accepted by a provincial university. I pack all my clothes, hoping to leave my childhood behind and become independent. However, during school holidays, the campus closes, and I have to return to my hometown to see my dad. I have nowhere else to go.

My relatives, seeing my loathing, say, ‘Your father’s life is not easy, being a widower and supporting your tertiary studies.’ Their words burden me with guilt, as if I am to blame for the suffocation of this life. Heraclitus (1987) is right that my character is my fate: “Once born, they consent to live and face their fate” (p. 21). Almost every time somebody gives me a piece of advice, it ends up making me sad. I can’t explain why. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.

Chorus: Reflecting on Origins

Understanding our protagonists’ childhoods is crucial to comprehending their later mobility decisions. Despite growing up in different cultural societies, both endured varying degrees of trauma, not merely seeking new beginnings but also escaping painful pasts. Berlant (2011, p. 23) cautions that “all attachments [for one’s future] are optimistic,” and when people “talk about an object of desire,” they may not realize that they are actually “talking about a cluster of [false] promises” such as the belief that by working hard, they can live a better life.

Our protagonists’ stories are similar, yet stark contrasts emerge. Bricoleur’s father is achingly absent; The Obscure’s is painfully present. Many of the issues encountered later in their narratives can be traced back to these formative years. Mobility transcends personal resilience; it is also influenced by factors such as race, education, culture, nationality, and social class. Berlant (2011, p. 24) describes this as a form of cruel optimism, where “the subject leans toward promises contained within the present moment of the encounter with [his or] her object.” Both narratives are permeated with the action of leaving, highlighting not only the new destinations individuals seek but also the painful realities from with they are fleeing.

ACT II: Life at the Crossroads (Early 2000s)

Bricoleur: I quit university after just a few months. I just don’t fit in. Everyone else is so articulate and polished, and I am so ‘thick’ (dad’s words echo). My family berate me, constantly calling me ‘quitter’ and telling me I have ‘fucked up my life.’ I find myself ‘signing on’ and then working as a part-time job cleaner before returning to university and finally graduating. I then find a job working for Royal Mail, a black hole for graduates. The job entails mechanically inputting postcodes into a computer. PL4, SA7, L8, M3…The postcodes of other countries promise so much more. Why do I stay? I am fearful of stepping out due to past failures and no financial safety net.

It is now 2008. After being told by some of my foreign colleagues that I would make a good English teacher, I wonder if I might yet realise a career as an educator. I attempt to apply for some language schools in Europe; however, they do not recognise my TEFL certificate. I start to go off the idea. Then I receive an email from a former Royal Mail colleague who left a year earlier and moved to China to teach English at a university:

Subject: Come to China

Hey B,

I’m teaching English in China. Want to be a king? Get on a plane. All you need is a degree, a TEFL (any will do) and a white face!

Cheers,

Laowai.⁴

Armed with a TEFL and a Master’s degree, I find myself trading black hole postal blues for the adventure and allure of rural Nanchang. Why are you going there? They were the first to respond to my email and some Chinese colleagues tell me it’s a beautiful place. So, I stuff my life, and my doubting family’s proclamation that ‘you’ll be back within 3 months’, into a beat-up backpack and board a flight to teach College English someplace where they have a six-digit postcode.

The Obscure: As a product of China’s 80s, my thirst for personal aspiration is stronger than ever, like a tree reaching for sunlight. It is as unquenchable as the country’s love for economic reforms.

In 2007, I find myself paradoxically teaching at a Canadian school in Shenzhen, a modern metropolis linking Hong Kong to mainland China, where the air is charged with ambition. 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 a future, not for its lush landscapes, but for its 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 a modest upbringing, a satirical twist where financial constraints become the wings of my overseas aspirations. This decision will transform my life, for better or worse, but binary thinking does not aid in the analysis of experience, as Heraclitus (1987) contended, “experiential knowledge is important to the conscientious investigator into the real, sense-experience is a better guide than random conjecturing” (p. 119).

Chorus—Divergent Aspirations

Both of our protagonists, approaching their late twenties, are driven by a desire for change and personal growth. Bricoleur feels undervalued in the UK and is lured to China by the promise of a better life, where qualifications seem secondary to racial appearance. The Obscure, on the other hand, seeks to escape the limitations of his bleak future by finding opportunities in New Zealand.

In Cruel Optimism, Berlant (2011) points out that compromised conditions of possibility can be impossible, sheer fantasy, or possible and toxic. Despite this, the motivations of both our protagonists to leave their home countries differ significantly: Bricoleur is disillusioned with his current career and enticed by the prospect of being overqualified, while The Obscure is propelled by the allure of inaccessible overseas experience.

Through bricolage, we see how their intertwined narratives are tinged with irony: one finds value in superficial criteria abroad—China, and the other uses financial constraints to become a working holiday maker as a launchpad to achieve their aspirations. But as Heraclitus (1987) warned, the senses can deceive, and if one’s psyche does not understand the language spoken by reality, they will soon awaken feeling foolish.

ACT III: Fresh off the Boat

Bricoleur: It’s September 2008. I find myself in one of the poorest provinces in China. The first year of ‘pretending’ to be a teacher involves keeping my head above water. By the second year, it becomes clear to me that my function is not to teach, but rather to embody ‘western whiteness’ (Stanley, 2014). I am required to be a counterpoint to the Chinese teachers; they are professional and serious whilst I am to be fun and exotic. Being fun is a lot easier than teaching, but it requires being complicit in my own Othering. At the same time, being too serious ‘others’ me the other way! Once again, I find myself occupying a liminal space. I am simultaneously visible (marked out by my white skin) yet invisible (I am just a foreign teacher).

The Obscure: Upon my arrival in New Zealand in October 2009, I quickly take up volunteer work as a Mandarin teacher at a local school. Despite my efforts, securing part-time positions proves futile. My working holiday visa restricts me to three months with any single employer, a limitation designed for roles like fruit picking—modern-day slavery, I muse.

Necessity breeds ingenuity, and I devise a contingency plan: pursuing a master’s degree in language teaching at a top university. With only 2k in my bank account, fortune smiles upon me when I meet two generous Chinese immigrants in Auckland who offer to finance my tuition—a debt I have diligently honored and repaid. In possibility thinking, I see the “possible” as “suggesting a movement culminating in creation and change” (Madison, 2003, p. 471).

Chorus—Differential Teacher Migrations

The increasing trend of global mobility highlights the intricate dynamics of becoming a teacher and pursuing individual aspirations (L. Lambert, 2019; Lanas & Kiilakoski, 2013; Nakata et al., 2022). The narratives presented here are set within this context, highlighting the complexities that cross-border teachers face when navigating different socio-cultural landscapes and societies. Through the interwoven stories of Bricoleur and The Obscure, the prevailing view of mobility as a privileged and upward social movement is challenged, both in literature and public discourse. The movements and decisions of both (im)migrant subjects are driven by personal desires and shaped by their unique contexts and identities, interacting with the historical and sociocultural environment to reconstruct localized terrains of being.

However, there is a stark contrast between their professional experiences in adopted countries. The Obscure, despite being a qualified teacher in his home country—China, cannot teach in the West (Yan, 2020). In contrast, Bricoleur obtains a work permit to teach in the East due to his embodied Western whiteness (Moosavi, 2022). Nevertheless, Bricoleur still feels uneasy in situations where he feels ‘othered’ because of his white skin. As Kristeva (2010) explains, culture, underpinned by language, determines the dynamics of sublimation from the beginning.

In this betweener talk, Bricoleur’s narrative highlights the complexities of foreignness and the tension of living in a society where one cannot speak the local language. Kristeva (1991) refers to this as the “oddness of this stranger’s condition”— “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, The Obscure’s feelings about his sense of otherness remain unknown. However, he seems grateful for the opportunities, despite any potential obstacles, presenting “a blurred account of the real” (Heraclitus, 1987, p. 76).

ACT IV: The Becoming of a Classroom Teacher

Bricoleur: Despite the relative status of being a ‘white’ foreigner in China, not being accepted as a ‘real’ teacher begins to frustrate me. I am neither ‘Devil’ or ‘Superstar’ (Leonard, 2019). It is now I recall the advice from an ‘old China hand’: Listen, B, get some IBDP (International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme) teaching on the CV, right?

Right, I start to look for international school teaching positions. Despite not being a ‘qualified’ teacher, I am able to find an international school position in Shanghai as a middle school English teacher. The requirements are a master’s degree, some form of teaching qualification (your TEFL will suffice) and, most crucially, two years of teaching experience. Being the ‘fun foreigner’ has provided me with the necessary experience to take a step up the ladder and sneak in through the backdoor of international school teaching.

By the second year, I have managed to move to the high school, where I teach IBDP English. One of the IBDP English teachers is leaving and having had many discussions about English literature with him, he recommends me as his replacement. He remarks that I have ‘big shoes to fill.’ Without missing a beat, I look down at his feet and observe that his feet are the same size as mine.

The Obscure: Post-graduation from a top university in New Zealand, I face a stark reality: my master’s degree in language teaching doesn’t meet teaching standards for K–12 settings. Despite my credentials from China, they hold no sway with the local councils, and the path to re-accreditation is a costly maze.

Visa uncertainties cast a shadow, plunging me into despair. Yet, I secure an ESL teaching position at a language school. I stand on the brink of an epiphany, ready to unravel the cosmic joke of why an ordinary person like me has journeyed through time to chase a dream that defines my destiny. I belong to “a different world” from the one I inhabit in this country (Freire, 1970/1993, p. 33).

Six years of living in New Zealand have woven a Kiwi thread into my identity, an asset I hadn’t anticipated. My dual identity as a Chinese-New Zealander, once ambiguous, becomes advantageous, unlocking a Mandarin teaching role in an Australian public school.

Unexpected opportunities abound—I receive a government scholarship for further studies, a privilege tied to my emerging Australian identity. This legal, privileged status lays the foundation for my human flourishing. My Chinese heritage opens doors for teaching Mandarin in Australian schools.

Chorus—Breaking away

Before departing for foreign shores, Bricoleur and The Obscure possess identities shaped by race, social class, economic resources, language, culture, and education.⁵ Bricoleur, a white working-class male expatriate teacher, builds a career in China, while The Obscure aims to establish a life in New Zealand before leveraging his accumulated assets to become a teacher in Australia. Both experience a profound sense of dislocation, described by Said (2000) as “out of placeness.” Despite this, their cultural differences dissolve into an “ether of prolonged, deferred, and individuating” aspirations (Berlant, 2011, p. 127).

Bricoleur embodies what Camenisch (2022) called ‘middling whiteness,’ which denotes a devalued form of white-skin privilege that nevertheless still remains potent. As Lan (2022) observes, white privilege no longer carries its historical weight. Western-born teachers and academics now represent an emerging type of precarious whiteness, creating a paradoxical situation of precarious privilege (Poole, 2024). Their white skin grants them both privilege and conspicuousness, leading to a ‘fetishization of whiteness’ that is still considered valuable social capital (Lan, 2022, p. 124). However, this same visibility renders them silent and unseen, effectively othered despite their privileged status.

In contrast, The Obscure occupies a liminal space of being and belonging (Perez Murcia, 2019), gaining certain socio-cultural privileges in New Zealand. While these privileges do not guarantee a specific status, they provide access to otherwise inaccessible resources, such as scholarships, medical services, and superannuation (Yan & Poole, 2024). Although he may struggle to teach English as a second language (ESL) in New Zealand, his native language brings unexpected achievements, likely due to the growing influence of his home country, China (Ding & Saunders, 2006). This cultural background grants him both distinction and visibility, leading to valuable social and cultural capital. However, this capital also subjects him to a sense of otherness in his adopted country.

ACT V: Of Mice and Men

Bricoleur: It’s 2015. I’m married, and my son is born.⁶ While teaching is economically rewarding, it feels increasingly hollow and insufficient to sustain me for a lifetime. The perks of international schooling—salary, housing, my son’s tuition—are hard to forsake, but a doctorate might unlock life beyond the classroom.

Pursuing a full-time PhD is out of the question with a family to support. Fortunately, the University of Nottingham Ningbo offers a lifeline: a part-time doctorate in education.

The programme doesn’t require a research proposal, as the topic is developed over two years while learning the fundamentals of doctoral research. We don’t need to move to Ningbo, just attend weekend seminars every few months. Just as I broke into international teaching, I can now use the doctorate to sneak into academia.

The Obscure: The government scholarship I’ve been awarded shackles me to a course-based master’s program, barring the research path I crave for: a PhD. Undeterred, I carve out my niche, launching my own research projects that blossom into publications and conference presentations.

Yet, the grind of a full teaching schedule, with no respite for research, leaves me drained. I naively gamble on my aspiration of becoming an academic, trading 30% of my salary for time to delve into research. 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 (GCEER), acing it with a 94%. Confident and ready to conquer academia, I hit a bureaucratic snag.

There is a blunder in the handbook, which falsely promised PhD entry post-GCER at this higher institution. And let’s be clear, this isn’t just any university; it’s a top-tier, world-class establishment, not some degree factory, in Australia.

This time, I say ‘Fuck You, Melbourne’ and decide not to pursue the privilege of studying at this top university. Instead, I move to the one where I’ve been awarded two scholarships recognizing me as a high-achieving student, to pursue a PhD.

Bricoleur: My doctoral studies progress. With the help of my family, I balance doctoral studies whilst holding down a full-time job as an English teacher in an international school in Shanghai. However, increasingly, teaching starts to feel like a chore, time spent not doing research. It is emotional labour. Recalling the vestiges of the absent father of my childhood—‘you are both thick!’ —I vow never to be like him and must justify every second spent away from my son. This reckoning of conscience compels (or propels) me to use time spent away from my family as productively as possible. Thus, I am able to graduate from my doctorate on schedule in early 2019. In fact, I am the first in my cohort to graduate.

The Obscure: After two years of juggling part-time study, full-time teaching, and the marathon of writing for publication during my second master’s (2020–2022), I felt more shipwrecked than scholarly. The truth is, I’ve been chasing this doctoral dream for over a decade in the West. I toil and trouble, proving my worth in academia’s hallowed halls, only to find the goalposts keep moving.

Sometimes, I feel that the path to a doctorate is as unreliable as a politician’s promise. 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. But as a classroom teacher, my research activities are not counted as part of my usual workload; they are added on top of it (Yan, 2021, 2022). I also realize that it is more challenging to write and publish work from the perspective of an ordinary classroom teacher (Yan, 2024a). I see myself as an academic outsider (Yan, 2023, 2025).

Chorus—The Temporal Logic of Attachments

Our two (im)migrant subjects become attached to and embrace different aspects of their desired identities. In States of Injury, 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). While Bricoleur takes pride in his achievements, such as spending time with his family, being a good father, and earning a doctorate, The Obscure cultivates a temporal logic of resentment. As he progresses towards the completion of his PhD, The Obscure clings to, or even fetishizes, a wound created by a series of inequalities and unfairness across various times.

If we believe that “the traumatized self is the true self,” Berlant (2001) worries that this suggests “a particular facet of subjective experience is where the truth of history lies” (p. 148). In this context, the clarity of pain should have marked a political map for The Obscure to achieve the good life, if only he would read it. However, it is misleading to suggest that in the good life, there will be no pain. One avenue of exploration may lie in the virtues of “forgetting,” as Brown (1995, p. 74) suggests and, if “identity structured in part by ressentiment resubjugates itself through its investment in its own pain,” it is the refusal to make itself in the present that perpetuates this cycle of painful memory.

Epilogue—The Utopia of Intimacy and Equity

ACT VI: “Slow it down, whataya want from me?”⁷

Bricoleur: After graduating from my doctoral programme, I end up working at a Chinese university as a ‘real’ academic. No one in the department is aggressive. No one is unwelcoming. Everyone is positive. But I am unable to integrate. My Chinese is rubbish. I’m feeling like an outsider. Despite broader prospects in international teaching, I resolve to succeed in academia, even if it means staying within China’s closed pandemic borders.

In early 2023, I receive an unexpected email from The Education University of Hong Kong. Would I be interested in applying for the position of Assistant Professor? And so, I apply. And so you now find me coming to the end of my second year at this university in Hong Kong as an Assistant Professor.

The Obscure: Years of invisible exclusion during my doctoral applications have revealed academia’s true nature. Academic research writing, it seems, demands a sanitized version of my experiences, forcing me to filter and modify my inner thoughts. I suspect readers might detect a hint of bitterness in my self-censored performance.

While I realize that pursuing a PhD is a privilege not afforded to everyone, I struggle to see how my situated knowledge can fit neatly within the academic 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).

[Chorus Advances Centre Stage and Addresses Bricoleur and the Obscure.]

In your pursuit of doctoral studies, you now have different aspirations for your future. Academic success often relies on mobility, with certain individuals being conditioned to practice it, while others remain inactive (Chou, 2021). Freire (1970/1993) reminds us that “education as the practice of freedom, as opposed to education as the practice of domination, rejects the notion that individuals are abstract, isolated, independent, and detached from the world” (p. 81).

Bricoleur, you were both mobile and immobile, with your mobility being ‘slippery’ and ‘sticky.’ Your value as a teacher and academic hinged on your embodiment of whiteness while living in the East. However, over the years, your whiteness has ‘slipped,’ becoming devalued and is now perceived as ‘middling-whiteness’ (Camenisch, 2022). 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”?

Correspondingly, the professional statuses and experiences of non-members, such as you, The Obscure’s positionality, are invisible within this place, offering insights on immobility (Chou, 2021). Furthermore, we must be cautious when assuming that you belong to the middle class by Western standards. If so, to what extent do you belong to the middle class, as claimed by Bricoleur?

When we reduce experiences to a common narrative, we fail to grasp their deep influence on the potential for moving forward. As Berlant (2001) asserted, viewing pain as something ordinary and unremarkable diminishes its significance. By giving rise to aesthetic emotion, we replace a traumatic identity with one that is subjectively constructed, highlighting an idealized, utopian reality driven by imagined needs or desires, rather than addressing the nature of the trauma.

[Chorus Turns to Face the Audience (aside)]

Conspicuously absent from both Bricoleur and The Obscure’s narratives is any mention of gender. Their failure to consider gender might be attributed to the fact that both authors have taken being male for granted. For example, Brady (2022) provides a personal account of narratives that reveal the experiences of LGBTQ + teachers in the international teaching community, as well as the heteronormative and racial biases present in the hiring process. For both Bricoleur and The Obscure, gender is tacit, assumed, silenced. However, this silence screams unacknowledged privilege.

In this context, Bricoleur was able to secure academic positions due to his ability to write and publish. He had the free time to do so because his wife took on other responsibilities. Bricoleur’s gender, combined with his ethnicity (white, British), created compounded privilege that enabled him to mitigate other forms of marginalization (e.g., early experiences of economic and emotional poverty). If Bricoleur were Bricoleuse, would he have been able to be so productive (Bourabain, 2021)? While the Obscure positions himself as an academic outsider, it is necessary to ask how his gender allows him to be mobile despite this outsider status. He left China, moved to New Zealand as a working holiday maker, and eventually entered a PhD program. How does being male intersect with his dual identity as a Chinese-New Zealander to shape his (im)mobilities? Critical engagement with gender needs to inform the authors’ future writings.

[Chorus Turns to Face Bricoleur and the Obscure once Again]

Through the desired becomings of your two (im)migrant bodies, your betweener talk generates the temporal logic of wounded attachment. While both of you seem stuck and in-progress, place-bound, and situated, you should remind the audience of how the body can extend itself into spaces, creating “contours of inhabitable space,” and how such spaces can be “extensions of bodies” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 11). However, most frustratingly, some spaces “extend certain bodies and simply do not leave room” for others, such as The Obscure (Ahmed, 2006, p. 11). For such transformation to occur, the psychic pain of marginalized populations must be understood as situated knowledge rather than as a comprehensive social theory.

This betweener talk tracks how you both have come to identify life with desired becomings, and how desire, as a form of world-making, has enabled you to be (im)mobile. From the utopia of equity, the world of each life finds the law articulating its subjects as public through your positions, which have been racially, linguistically, culturally, and economically coded toward privilege and power. In this regard, it is necessary to ask why the “practical fragmentations and hierarchies of everyday life” have become “mediated by a discourse of trauma,” which imagines relief and holds out a “promise that it can relieve specific subjects of the pain of their specificity” (Berlant, 2001, p. 149).

[Chorus, Bricoleur and The Obscure Exit Stage Left. Spotlight Dims and House Lights Come up]

After performance discussion, we engage in (re)theorization and contribute to the methodological advancement of understanding (im)migrant experiences.

By employing betweener talk as a form of pedagogical encounter, our unique experiences and attitudes are juxtaposed, while the singularity of each individual voice is amplified through intersubjectivity and multivocality (Hernandez et al., 2017). Instead of “more essentialist representations and interpretations of lived experience,” we write “narratives of lives lived, here and there, in the spaces between fixed identities” (Diversi & Moreira, 2016, p. 586), complexifying what we know and do not know. To achieve this, we explore the concepts of border-crossing and in-betweenness, establishing a liminal space for situated knowledge at the intersections of personal, socio-cultural, and intellectual dimensions.

Using bricolage as a method, writing about oneself and others, introduces complexities in depicting characters’ cultural identities (Hradsky, 2024). This, in turn, generates new opportunities and uncertainties within the composition of betweener talk. To some extent, betweener autoethnographies share commonalities with Chang et al.’s (2013) collaborative autoethnography in producing a “polyphonic or multivocal text” (p. 95). However, the latter does so “collectively and cooperatively within a team of researchers” (Chang et al., 2013, p. 21). In this betweener talk, we see how The Obscure resists the practice of producing knowledge as a researcher, instead speaking out to claim his personhood.

In this context, betweener autoethnographies decolonize knowledge production by highlighting how a specific site can be a battleground against dominant ideologies and methodologies (Diversi & Moreira, 2009). This includes questioning who has the right to speak in this space. By presenting inner experiences as events, we contend that this betweener talk allows us to “name our world” and bring it into existence (Freire, 1970/1993, p. 33). Merging our different worlds into a bricolage of betweener talk, we create “a space for us to explore our memories to understand how we arrived at our current positions as academics of working-class origins” (Davis et al., 2024, p. 4). In this regard, bricolage as method has the potential to serve as a liberatory and empowering practice, enabling individuals to speak out and reappraise research practices.

Through the formation of moving embodiment, this betweener talk shows how ordinary people have the potential to both reproduce and challenge the hegemony of contextually specific knowledge production, demonstrating methodological originality. As Freire (1970/1993) puts it, “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 do so, each of us exercises the right to say their own words, a process of defining the world and the place of the self within it. Performing “a new awareness of self” stirred by “a new hope,” we focus on the situation and condition of that particular feeling and situated knowing about which we want to know more (Freire, 1970/1993, p. 33).

While crafting and performing events, we embody specific sociocultural phenomena from the liminal space, offering us the possibility of hope (Yan, 2024b). The challenges arise between us, creating tension between our research practices and the definition of knowledge production. While Bricoleur views our lived experiences as academic mobilities, The Obscure rejects this exploration because he does not consider himself an academic. Furthermore, while Bricoleur emphasizes the methodological contribution of betweener autoethnographies as knowledge production, The Obscure focuses on articulating their emotional truth as an act of promoting equity and the significance of speaking out as an ordinary individual.

To address these challenges, writing and rewriting this betweener talk has led us to realize that our stories intersect with various academic literature and highlight the lack of representation of (im)migrants’ voices as they navigate the transition from leaving their home country to exploring varied trajectories into, and in the case of The Obscure on the verge of, leaving academia. In this regard, this article offers noteworthy counter-narratives to the prevalent discourse (Yan et al., 2025a), focusing on the aspirations of ordinary people within educational contexts (Davis et al., 2024). Through this project, we have come to learn that we can present diverse epistemologies and differing theoretical frameworks through bricolage.

Our different ways of thinking reflect various negotiations in our personal, social, and professional lives, as we encounter constraints imposed on us as the Other. This betweener talk offers “alternative stories of being and knowing beyond the persistent Us/Them imaginary” (Diversi & Moreira, 2016, p. 584). Our intertwined performances of transitional experiences offer a window through which to view these seemingly different mobilities, which has yet to receive significant attention from researchers. Through performing betweener autoethnographies, we realize that we do not see ourselves merely as cross-border teachers or academics, but as humans with hybrid and complex identities, which are informed by intersecting identity markers, such as age, ethnicity, social class, gender and more than we initially understood.

To produce situatedness and knowledge, bricolage opens a liminal space for us to examine the diverse and often unpredictable paths that ordinary individuals take in both personal and professional lives. In this liminal space, we can empathize with the feeling of being ‘out of place’ and collectively seek pathways to human flourishing. This brings into focus the materiality of the migratory experience. Bricolage as method contributes to rethinking movement and mobility as not simply occurring in or across space and time, but as actively shaping or producing multiple, dynamic spaces and times. If “the personal is theoretical” (Ahmed, 2017, p. 10), then this betweener talk re-theorizes public discourse, contributing to an alternative way of thinking about being and becoming across different times and places.

Through methodological configuration, we break new ground by problematizing and deconstructing assumptions about Western and Chinese migration experiences. Through our betweener autoethnographies, we are able to bring self and other together so that they can question, debate, and challenge one another. This criticality would have been more difficult to achieve and sustain had we had written our narratives as two separate autoethnographic accounts. While its political limits seem to be bound by the spatial and the liminal, “when set in motion,” the moving body evokes “new imaginings of what might be possible” (Giardina & Newman, 2011, p. 393). The affective aspects of being and becoming have allowed us to present tensions within our betweener talk. We are thus able to create multiple dialogic nodes within our narratives, which helps illuminate the experiences of embodied movement.

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Adam Poole

Dave Yan

Funding

The Open Access charge was covered by the first author's insitution, The Education University of Hong Kong, in the form of a Dean's Research Award: Books 2023/2024.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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Bricolage as Method: Performing a Betweener Talk Through the Desired Becomings of Two (Im)migrant Bodies

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Betweener Autoethnographies

Bricolage as a Form of Betweener Talk

Prologue: the Ballad of East and West

ACT I: 1980s and 1990s

Chorus: Reflecting on Origins

ACT II: Life at the Crossroads (Early 2000s)

Chorus—Divergent Aspirations

ACT III: Fresh off the Boat

Chorus—Differential Teacher Migrations

ACT IV: The Becoming of a Classroom Teacher

Chorus—Breaking away

ACT V: Of Mice and Men

Chorus—The Temporal Logic of Attachments

Epilogue—The Utopia of Intimacy and Equity

[Chorus Advances Centre Stage and Addresses Bricoleur and the Obscure.]

[Chorus Turns to Face the Audience (aside)]

[Chorus Turns to Face Bricoleur and the Obscure once Again]

[Chorus, Bricoleur and The Obscure Exit Stage Left. Spotlight Dims and House Lights Come up]

Footnotes

ORCID iDs

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Notes

References