“Neither from here nor from there”: Return migrants accessing job opportunities as English teachers at a high cost.

With the current socio-political relationship between Mexico and the United States, more and more young adults have returned to Mexico after living extensively in the United States. They try to resettle in a new country for them, but they find different barriers such as discrimination, otherization and exclusion. The participants speak both languages but they do not completely meet the social expectations of both educational communities on either side of the border. When they are back in Mexico they are aware of this cultural and linguistic capital they possess. Participants make sense of this particular phenomenon of returnees in Mexico and draw connections to broader border-crossing work all educators are called to do (Elenes, 2001; Giroux, 2005) when incorporating transnational students in pre-service English teaching programs. Methodologically the research approach was qualitative in nature, utilizing narrative inquiry. We focus on how 22 pre-service English teachers in two Mexican public universities, studying a BA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), reflected on issues such as identity and ethnicity. Results show that these transnational migrants returned with language skills that are in demand in the Mexican educational system. They are perceived as having an edge over their counterparts; specifically, their linguistic ability in English denotes a ‘native-like’ proficiency and transnationals are immediately classified as ‘native speakers of English.’ These discourses of native-speakerism can produce “realities of exclusion, discrimination and rationalisations for intervention and ‘cultural correction’” (Kabel, 2009, p. 17). We provide an argument for recruiting more return migrants as a manner to provide educational opportunities for them. This implies a need to readdress the concepts of migratory movement and transition between countries because it is no longer a one time event. People’s dynamic movements across borders parallel the need to approach educational discourse as temporary and organic.