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

Abstract

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