Taking an Intersectional Approach: Immigrant Women Language Teachers’ Lived Experience of Identity

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This article explores skilled immigrant women language teachers’ lived experience of identity through an intersectional feminist lens. It examines how women teachers speak about themselves and their lives as immigrants and aims to understand the complex implications of identity and power relations by focusing on intersectional understanding of inequities. Data was generated through in-person and virtual individual interviews with six participants living and working across Canada. The findings revealed the following main challenges and ongoing barriers: discrimination, overqualification, financial limitations, a lengthy process of re-credentialing and professional reintegration, and insufficient government support. Furthermore, this study sheds light on how heteronormative frameworks pervade immigrant women’s personal and professional lives, intersecting with their identities vis-à-vis gender, race, ethnicity, country of origin, immigration status, and English as a second language. These categories collectively and individually present systemic barriers and sites of oppression that negatively impact an already marginalized minority group— internationally highly qualified immigrant women language teachers.