The Economics of Color:
Inside China’s Racialized ESL market
byMarina Ionela Pîslaru Student ID: 15202528
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION AND SOCIAL COHESION
University College Dublin May, 2016
Supervisors:
University College Dublin – Alice Feldman (alice.feldman@ucd.ie) University of Amsterdam – Shanshan Lan (s.lan@uva.nl)
University of Deusto – Aitor Ibarrola (aitor.ibarrola@deusto.es)
Statutory Declaration
I hereby declare that I have developed and written the enclosed Master Thesis completely by myself, and have not used sources or means without declaration in the text. Any thoughts from others or literal quotations are clearly marked. The Master Thesis was not used in the same or in a similar version to achieve an academic grading or is being published elsewhere.
I also declare that I have been informed of the completion and assessment rules of the MISOCO program.
May 3, 2016
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………2 1. LITERATURE REVIEW………8 Conceptual Framework ……….…………..……8 ‘Race’ in China ……….….………….……15 Africans in China ……….………….………..20 Conclusion ……….……….22 2. METHODOLOGY ……….………23
A case study of racialization in China ………....…..…..23
Data collection ………..…..24
Sampling ……….…26
Coding and Analysis ……….…………..31
Conclusion ………..33
3. ESL INDUSTRY IN CHINA. BUSINESS AS USUAL ………35
Agent chains and recruitment processes ……….……36
Expectations vs. reality ……….………..38
Illegalities and control ……….………….……..41
Conclusion ……….……….45
4. THE IDEALIZED ENGLISH TEACHER ……….47
Racialization of hiring practices in China ……….47
Stereotypes at work: ‘white face jobs’ vs ‘black and poor’ ………...52
Stereotypes and encounters with local Chinese ……….…..55
Stereotypes and encounters with local police …………..…….…58
Performing ‘nativeness’ ……….……..…...61
Conclusion………..….………66
CONCLUSION………..………69
BIBLIOGRAPHY ……….………73
ANNEXES ………80
Profiles of the interviewees………80
Preface
I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the foreign teachers who agreed to share their knowledge and experiences for the purpose of this research, knowing it was not easy for most of them to recall certain painful memories. Their contribution is acknowledged and greatly appreciated.
I also thank my supervisors, especially Prof. Shanshan Lan and Prof. Alice Feldman for their guidance throughout the process of conducting and writing this research. Your support, input and feedback have helped me achieve greater insight into the topic and higher overall quality of the study.
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The economics of color:
Inside China’s racialized ESL market
Abstract
Determined by increased globalization and economic development, China’s ESL market is booming. The internet is abundant in ads calling for foreign native English teachers while some recruiters openly state their preference for white teachers. Using a Western theoretical framework on ‘race’, my research seeks to analyze the racialization of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ inside China’s ESL market, taking into account contextual specificities. Drawing on eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews with foreign teachers in China, I begin my study by showing how the general climate of recruitment agencies and other intermediary agents in China is defined by exploitation, control and manipulation, which all teachers, regardless of their ‘race’ or nationality, fall victim to. I then continue by showing how the social construction of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ is shaped by deeply ingrained stereotypes of various groups of foreigners in China. These stereotypes find their roots in China’s historical encounter with the powerful West, which allowed Darwinist ideas on ‘race’ and global racial hierarchies to penetrate the Chinese society, as well as in contemporary westernizing projects in China and the influence of Western social media. Finally, I show how ‘nationality’ and ‘nativeness’ complicate the white-black binary of ‘race’ in the ESL industry and how Chinese stakeholders use ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ and the meanings these categories encompass as benchmarks in the production of the ‘Self’.
Keywords: race, racialization, English language, racialization of nonnative speaker, whiteness, blackness,
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Introduction
In the past decades, China’s rapid economic development has transformed the realities of migration both from and to the country. In addition to large flows of emigrants leaving in search of opportunities elsewhere for which China is known, we are witnessing now a new trend of immigration to the fast-developing country (Skeldon, 2011). Traditionally an emigration country, China is now facing the struggles of an immigration country, and has recently passed a new immigration law, very similar in many aspects to that of Western countries. The most striking similarity is the underlying distinction between desirable and undesirable immigrants, which is seen in China as a tool for modernization (Haugen, 2015). “The important thing for China is to set standards for foreigners in terms of educational attainment, occupation, salary and other aspects, just as developed countries do”, a legislator stated upon passing the law, which came into force in July 2013 (Haugen, 2015). This new immigration law privileges foreign professionals in sectors facing skills scarcity, such as the ESL sector.
China’s accession to WTO, on December 11, 2001 came as a natural result of the country’s efforts to undergo political reforms which would open its economy to the rest of the world. Since the economic opening, China continued having a booming, highly competitive economy. According to the 2015 World Investment Report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, China had become the largest Foreign Direct Investment recipient, surpassing the United States. The recent rise of China’s economy has also paved the way for China’s ambition to compete with the West for global hegemony. Ever since the current president Xi Jinping came to power, the headlines of Western newspapers have flooded with ideas of a
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Chinese ideological campaign against the West and Western cultural ideas. But it seems that this ideological campaign, however, is not aimed to be an anti-Western effort but a defensive measure to help the Communist Party maintain political stability (Su, 2015). In a speech that president Jinping gave on a trip to Southern China, he associated the collapse of the USSR with the collapse of its ideals and beliefs (Su, 2015). So, from an ideological stand, the Chinese president uses nationalism and cultural identity as a strategy to counter the influence of foreign ideology. The idea of a ‘Chinese dream’ that refers to prosperity and improvement in people’s lives puts greater emphasis on national rejuvenation (Su, 2015). So China is striving to further develop and improve using elements from the West, while maintaining its national specificity as well, in its attempt to become a real global power.
In spite of the president’s effort to build ethnocentrism and counter Western cultural influences, the number of Chinese young people who are influenced by Western cultural ideas and who want to get a Western education is rising. In 2015, Chinese students were officially ranking number 1 in the USA alone, accounting for 31.2% of all foreign students enrolled in an American university.1 The fast paced economic advancement of Chinese middle and upper class made it possible for the parents to provide for their children the best possible education, at any cost.
As a result of the economic boom and of a widespread Western influence in China, acquiring English as a second language is a must for every Chinese who wants to take advantage of the growing educational and professional opportunities. This is the reason why the ESL industry has taken so much ground in the past few years. English Language Centers appear to be a great
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business in China nowadays and the number of recruiting agencies is growing as well, in an attempt to cater the need for foreign teachers.
This is why we find the internet abundant with ads looking for foreign English teachers. Although being a native from one of the English speaking countries (USA, UK, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand) seems to be a ‘must’ in almost all of them, at a quick glance one would stumble against some ads that openly state the preference for Caucasian looking teachers. A deeper look into the subject reveals that this practice is not uncommon at all among Chinese employers who often give preference to white, Caucasian looking teachers, a practice detrimental to prospective teachers, such as Blacks or Asians. My research is thus aimed at analyzing how the ESL market in China is characterized by racialized hiring practices used to sort potential teachers into groups with unequal access to job benefits and rewards. I find this approach particularly interesting since China has long denied the existence of any forms of ‘racism’ within its borders (Dikötter, 1997), on the basis that the English word ‘race’ does not have an equivalent in Mandarin, and thus ‘race’ is not a Chinese concept. It is true that academic studies on ‘race’ and ‘racialization’ have pertained almost exclusively to Western scholarship, so the specific research question of this study will be how does ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ become racialized in China’s ESL market and will be used against the interesting problematique of how to study ‘race’/ ‘racialization’ in the Chinese context. My research also aims to problematize the ‘racial’ white-black binary, by analyzing and examining how teachers’ nationality and nativity in English alters the neat division between ‘black’ and ‘white’ in the process of constructing ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’. Moreover, it will bring an additional understanding of how the edification of White Westerner teachers links to the wider ethnocentric ideology proposed by Jinping. I therefor examine the cross-cultural application of Western social science framework on ‘race’ using a migration lens.
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Since this particular topic has been understudied, there is no full-fledged theory to address it properly. This is the reason why I construct my theoretical foundation by picking and choosing concepts from the Western theoretical framework on ‘race’. The main concept used will be ‘racialization’, defined as the processes by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be regarded as meaningful, and are acted upon (Murji & Solomos, 2005). Thus, racialization produces and legitimates difference among social groups based on perceived biological or ancestral characteristics, resulting in a hierarchy where some groups are considered superior to other. The second concept used is that of “whiteness’, which came to be understood as a global signifier of privilege (Leonardo, 2002), but its invisible nature found in everyday practices and discourses makes it difficult to detect at times. The third and probably the most interesting one is ‘nativeness’, a concept found at the intersection of ‘race’ and language. Drawing on Shuck’s (2006) theory on the racialization of the non-native speaker and Romney’s (2010) theory of the idealized native speaker, I will assess how Chinese employers and other stakeholders place potential teachers on a language-race-nationality matrix, rendering ‘whiteness’, ‘nativeness’ in English and coming from a native English speaking country (e.g. USA, UK, Australia and others) as the norm, the taken for granted way to be. Those teachers who do not fit this matrix entirely are automatically ‘othered’, and thus rendered inferior and undeserving, suffering various negative material and everyday life consequences as a result.
The methodology used consisted of qualitative research methods, building a case study of seven English teachers and one French professional of African descent. I conducted a total of eight in-depth, semi-structured interviews, where every respondent shared her/his understanding of her/his own experience as an English teacher in China. This allowed me to explore the different ways in which ‘race’ is experienced and takes up meaning inside China’s ESL market, and also
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allowed my interviewees to speak back to the Communist Party’s official discourse on ‘race’ not finding its place in China. I will expand more on the reasons why I chose this particular methodology and its specificities in the Methodology section.
The findings of this research reveal that the blatant racialized attitudes of Chinese agents and employers determine non-white teachers to experience deep inequalities within the ESL industry. At the same time, these specific practices are enabled by a prominent prejudice against non-white groups found in the Chinese society, prejudice that allows White, Caucasian looking teachers to have a full set of advantages over other ‘racial’ groups. I think the findings of this research are of particular importance and relevance both as an added value to the scholarship on ‘race’ and social sciences in general, as well as from a societal point of view. The present study aims to fill the gap identified in social fields such as migration and ‘race’ studies, since little literature has been provided on social and racial relations between foreign migrants in China and their host society.
The thesis is divided into four main chapters. The first chapter deals with current literature on the topic and will expand on the conceptual framework used to sustain my research theoretically. Here I overview Western and Chinese literature on ‘race’ in China and the main opinions on the topic, as well as studies done on immigrants in China, especially on the African community found predominantly in Southern China. The second chapter focuses on the methodological aspect of the research. Here, I will explain in depth the methods used to collect primary and secondary data, as well as sampling methods and analysis and the reasons behind these particular choices of methods. The third chapter gives an overview of how recruiting agencies in agents in China take advantage of the lack of regulation of the ESL market and turn the industry into a highly exploitative one for all teachers involved, regardless of their ‘race’. The
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fourth chapter presents the core findings of this research and aims to answer the research question. Here, I show how deeply ingrained stereotypes of certain groups of foreigners in China materialize themselves into racialized hiring practices, and how nationality and ‘nativeness’ complicate the issue of ‘race’ in China. I end this study with a Conclusion, summing up the results of the analysis, and a discussion and limitation section where I will assess the theoretical and methodological limitations of this research, as well as encouraging to further academic exploration of the topic.
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Chapter 1
Literature Review & Conceptual framework
This chapter will cover the conceptual framework used as a theoretical basis for my research as well as literature review on topics such as ‘race’ in China or previous body of knowledge developed around immigrant communities in China. The chapter will be divided in three main sections. The first one will consist of the main theoretical concepts used to tackle the research question, concepts picked and chose from the Western theoretical framework on ‘race’. I will also explain the reasons why they will prove themselves useful in making sense of the particular phenomenon I am studying. The second section will cover literature on ‘race’ in China, which provide different accounts, opinions and empirical examples over how this particular concept unfolds itself in different contexts in China. The last section will overview some of the main body of literature developed around African immigrants in China and the ways the authors tackled this topic. The last two sections will constitute a clear example of how the body of knowledge around the topic of racial dynamics inside China’s ESL market is defined by a gap in the literature which I aim to address through this research.
1. Conceptual Framework
Since the formation of social categories along racial lines is the main theoretical underpinning of my research, the main concept I will use to analyze the data gathered from my fieldwork will be racialization. Many sociologists agree that when we talk about ‘race’, we should
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think of the process of ‘race making’ instead (Knowles, 2004), as ‘race’ is not a natural category, but a socially constructed one, which changes its meaning throughout time, in different places (Omi & Winant, 1994; Wacquant, 1997; Brubaker et al., 2004; Desmond, 2009; Garner, 2010). The process of ‘race making’ turns on the dynamic of relationality, which is a central conceptual tool used to analyze the formation of race and racial categories. Both Wacquant (1994) and Brubaker et al. (2004) have stressed the importance of shifting the analytical attention in race studies from things to perspectives, from groups to group making and group activities, which are all outcomes of intra- and intergroup interaction. So for a better understanding of the phenomenon, we need to focus more on the process dynamics, rather than taking things and concepts for granted.
Racialization as a concept is based on the idea that the object of study should not be “race” itself, but the process by which it becomes meaningful in a particular context (Garner, 2010). Racialization is something detrimental that is done to others as part of a power relationship, so it involves actions guided by meanings given to a certain group of people. Underlying the categorization is the discourse supported by a specific power dynamic that excludes certain racialized groups as the inferior “Other”, while maintaining the status quo of the “Self”. Racialization can be defined as racial categorization, “a dialectical process by which meaning is attributed to particular biological features of human beings, as a result of which individuals may be assigned to a general category of persons that reproduces itself biologically” (Miles & Brown, 2003, in Kubota and Lin, 2006). It is a core concept in the analysis of racial phenomena, particularly to signal the processes by which ideas about race are constructed, come to be regarded as meaningful, and are acted upon (Murji & Solomos, 2005, in Kubota & Lin, 2006). Thus, racialization produces and legitimates difference among social groups based on perceived
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biological or ancestral characteristics, yet it is a dynamic and historically situated process in which racial significations are always shifting.
To better understand how this concept operates in the particular social context chosen for my research I will complement this general theory of racialization with studies of racial identities and racial categorization in China (Dikotter, 1992; Dikotter, 1994; Sautman 1997; Cheng, 2011). Literature on this particular social context will also provide insight into the process of racialization in general. Since any form of racial categorization and classification was banned by the Chinese communist party, ‘race’ is a highly contested concept by its members. They claim that notions of racial superiority are at the root of the push by foreigners to impose their human rights values on China (Sautman, 1997). So the studies on Chinese racial identities and racial formation will give me a sociohistorical overview of how, despite this discourse that ‘race’ as a concept, and consequently ‘racism’ does not exist in China, myths of origins, ideologies of blood, conceptions of racial hierarchy and narratives of biological descent played a central part in the cultural construction of identity in China, and were used to divide the Chinese society into racial groups. Moreover, it is going to help shed light over how racial categorization and classification takes place nowadays in the context tackled through my research, that of foreign English teachers. I will expand more on this topic in the second section of this chapter, talking about limitations and things we should consider while analyzing this particular concept in China.
Another important concept which I will use in my research is nativeness. Studies on the meaning and signification of the term ‘native speaker’ often invoke nationality, ethnicity, accent, or other characteristics apart from expertise and fluency (Aneja, 2014). Depending on context a ‘native speaker of English’ may refer to someone who has spoken English and only English since infancy, who has a North American or British accent (Liu, 1999), who is phenotypically Caucasian
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(Amin, 1999), who began learning English before six years of age and communicates primarily in English, or any combination of these factors. However, Pierre Bourdieu (1991) concluded that social acceptance rather than grammatical competence contextually defines a native speaker. Bonfiglio (2010) ties the construct of ‘native speaker’ to the discourses of nationalist language ideologies and formation of a national identity. He demonstrates that the existence of a ‘native language’ is the product of the rise of the nation state in Europe, and at this point in time, the conceptualization of language as local and rooted in the homeland emerged (Bonfiglio, 2013). Thus, native language and nationality were seen in close connection with the physical environment and because national identity rather than citizenship signifies a ‘folkloric notion of its biological nationality’ (Bonfiglio, 2013), it is often realized as a racialized construction that grants a legitimate national and linguistic ownership to those who have particular phenotypic characteristics (Bonfiglio, 2013).
‘Native speaker’ as an ideological construct is to be found in Shuck’s (2006) study as well. This concept is created at the intersection of language and race, and it relies on the notion of ‘place’ as a dimension along which native and nonnative English speakers may be imagined (Shuck, 2006). Underlying the intersection of language and race is a language ideology, which Shuck calls ‘ideology of nativeness’. At the core of this ideological model is a view of the world’s speech communities as naturally monolingual and mono-cultural, whereby one language is symbolically associated with one nation. In his study, Shuck (2006) shows how the racialization of the nonnative English speakers is done through discursive processes by which White, middle-class, native-English-speaking, US-born college students draw on a monolingualist ideology and position themselves and others within a language-race-nationality matrix. These processes construct Whiteness and nativeness in English as normal, taken for granted, while nonnative
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speakers of English are marked as non-white and foreign. US-born citizens, which are native English speakers and Caucasians maintain privilege widely perceived to be a natural outcome of certain characteristics thought to be intrinsic to American-ness, nativeness, or Whiteness (Shuck, 2006).
An empirical example that draws on the language-race-nationality matrix is Sung’s article on Race and native speakers in ELT: parents’ perspectives in Hong Kong (2011). He shows how native English speakers are still widely preferred as teachers by employers in China, as evidence by their online advertisements, where they clearly state the preference for a ‘native English speaker’. What is more striking though is that not only are ‘native’ English speakers required, but native speakers of a particular ‘race’, are considered preferable. So in the eyes of employers and the larger population, ‘race’, particularly ‘white, Caucasian’ is associated with the perception of native speaker. Although ‘race’ is not considered to be a criterion of a ‘native speaker’ in the literature, both ‘race’ and ‘nativeness’ are part of the idealized native speaker (Romney, 2010 in Sung, 2011) , who fits the language-race-nationality matrix. Accounting of his personal experience working for an English language institute in Hong Kong, Sung recalls how parents had a strong preference for ‘white, foreign’ teachers (even though some were nonnative and not proficient in English), while at the same time they were showing distrust of native English speaker teachers (US-born, UK-born) of Asian, Indian or African descent. Shortly, they were considered less desirable than ‘white, foreign’ teachers, although for most of them English was the only language they knew, but they did not seem to be able to tick the ‘race’ box in the matrix, which marked them as the inferior ‘Other’.
The language-race-nationality matrix illuminates two problems in my broader theory of racialization. One problem lies in the tendency of Chinese employers and parents to equate the
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native English speaker with White, Caucasian teacher coming from the USA, UK or other native English speaking countries. This can serve as an indicator of the marginalization and discrimination experienced by teachers who do not fit the above mentioned matrix in terms of ‘race’, for example Asian or Black native English speakers from those countries, or even from British ex-colonies in Africa. This situation reveals that ‘nativeness’ acts as a signifier of one’s abilities to teach his/her native language in Chinese parents’ imaginary. But if a prospective teacher is a native English speaker but of Asian or Black descent, his/her phenotype and skin color will cast a shadow of doubt over his/her ‘nativeness’ and thus over his/her teaching skills, making the person less desirable for a teaching job. Another issue stems from Sung’s empirical example of the parents’ preference for White, foreign teachers, even though they are not-native English speakers. This example clearly shows how fitting the desirable ‘race’ category in the matrix (Caucasian) can silence the need to fit for ‘nativeness’ as well, since Whiteness is associated with ‘nativeness’ in most of the parents’ understandings. In other words, although being a native is the main quality required by all employers, in real life non-native White people can pass as native due the association Chinese parents make between being White and being a native English speaker. If I were to stretch out this idea conceptually, I would say ‘nativeness’ can be performed by non-native English speakers, if they have the privilege of embodying ‘whiteness’.
The third and last concept I will be using in my theoretical framework is ‘whiteness’, as it stems from my previous paragraph. Whiteness studies investigate the social construction of Whiteness (e.g., how Irish, Jewish, Italian, Greek people came to be labeled as white), White privilege (McIntosh, 1997) and the normative yet invisible nature of Whiteness observed in everyday practices and discourses. According to McIntosh (1997) social, political and cultural advantages are given to whites in the global society. The globalization of ‘white privilege’ has also
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been discussed by Leonardo (2002) in his article The Souls of White Folk: Critical Pedagogy, Whiteness studies, and globalization discourse, where he also argues in favor of Whiteness as a socially constructed concept and as a ‘privilege signifier that has become global’ (Leonardo, 2002). Whiteness in the globalization discourse is particularly significant for my study, since it collides with the global spread of English and English language teaching. Also in relation with the concept of ‘nativeness’ mentioned above, we could see from Sung’s accounts that fitting only the ‘race’ category, being White (Caucasian) bears more weight on people’s perceptions of one’s abilities of speaking and teaching English. The globalization of ‘white privilege’ which operates in invisible ways around and across societies can influence significantly employer’s hiring habits in China, as well as students’ and/or parents’ preference for ‘white, foreign’ teachers. In addition to this, the white teachers I interviewed come from developing countries which occupy lower ranks in the global hierarchy, countries with an official language other than English. Given this diversity, it is interesting to see how ‘whiteness’ is perceived and acted upon in the Chinese context. Goldberg (2001) shows in his book, The Racial State, how in all colonies, all Europeans were considered more or less white. The identification of European-ness and ‘whiteness’ was considered a state of being, desirable habits and customs, projected patterns of thinking and living (Goldberg, 2001). Built into ‘whiteness’ was and still is a set of elevated moral dispositions, social customs and norms. Goldberg (2001) further shows how colonies elevated the European proletariat to the property of ‘whiteness’ by making the semblance of privileges and power, customs and behaviors available to them. This is an interesting parallel I can draw in my analysis between Western colonies and the Chinese context, in which ‘white privilege’ can help elevate the status of people whose nationality ranks lower in the global hierarchy.
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The conceptual framework I have created for this research will constitute a helpful analytical tool which I can use to investigate how China’s ESL market become racialized. The concept of ‘racialization’ will be used to make sense of the dynamics between Chinese stakeholders in the ESL market and foreign teachers, by analyzing the processes by which ideas about ‘race’ are constructed in this particular context, become meaningful and are acted upon, thus influencing hiring practices. Using the concept of ‘nativeness’ retrieved from the idealized native speaker theory (Romney, 2010) and the racialized non-native speaker theory (Shuck, 2006) will add up to the understanding of how non-white, non-native teachers become racialized, while the concept of ‘whiteness’ which embodies global privilege helps blur the line of racialization for those white teachers who are non-native English speakers, coming from countries other than USA, UK, Australia, Ireland or New Zealand. These mechanisms can be used to give a plausible explanation for how English teachers of different social, ethnic, national background are sorted out into different positions, with unequal access to rewards, resources and opportunities in the Chinese context. It seems so far by overlapping Sung’s (2011) account over Shuck’s study, that the process of recruiting and placing English teachers recreates those racialized Western patterns, influenced by Western ideas of race. Teachers become in this sense both victims of racialization, as well as agents in the process of it, that further reproduce this reality in a different context.
2. ‘Race’ in China
Literature on racism in China is not abundant. The use of racial discourse was officially banned by the Communist regime, while in the early 1990s, delegates of the Chinese communist Party at meetings of the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in Geneva uphold precisely the same argument, a rhetorical strategy used to delay the introduction of clear
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definitions of racial discrimination and racial prejudice into the country’s legal system (Dikötter, 1997).
The most renowned work on ‘race’ in China pertains to Frank Dikötter, a Dutch historian who wrote extensively on modern China. In the following I am going to present Dikötter’s ideas on the history and evolution of racial notions in China, being aware of the fact that his work on China has often been criticized for assuming that Chinese culture is inherently racist and that translations from Mandarin to English might have been flawed, because of the lacking equivalents between the two languages regarding race terminology. Being aware of these limitation, I think his work can help shed light over the penetration of Darwinist ideas inside the Chinese society and their pervasiveness inside the collective mentality.
Dikötter argues that in China, racial categories of analysis started to supersede ethnocentric senses of identity during the last decade of the 19th century. Reformers like Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei, following social Darwinist ideas, ordered mankind into a racial hierarchy of biological groups where “yellows” competed with “whites over degenerate breeds of “browns”, “blacks” and “reds”. Writer Tang Caichang (1867-1900) couched it in evenly balanced clauses: “Yellow and white are wise, red and black are stupid; yellow and white are rulers, red and black are slaves; yellow and white are united, red and black are scattered”.
Race gradually emerged as the most common symbol of cultural identity. The great Dictionary of Zoology (1923), the first reference work of its kind, contended that the “black race” have a “shameful and inferior way of thinking and have no capacity to shine in history”. Racialized senses of identity also filtered down to lower levels of education after the foundation of Republic in 1911 (Dikötter, 1997). The opening sentence of a chapter in “human races” in a 1920 textbook for middle schools declared that “among the world’s races there are strong and weak constitutions,
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there are black and white skins, there is hard and soft hair, there are superior and inferior cultures”. A rapid overview shows that they are not on the same level. Even in primary schools, readings on racial politics became part of the curriculum: “Mankind is divided into five races. The yellow and white races are relatively strong and intelligent. Because the other races are feeble and stupid, they are being exterminated by the white race. Only the yellow race competes with the white race. This is so called evolution… Among the contemporary races that could be called superior, there are only yellow and white races. China is the yellow race.” (Ibid.)
Anti-black bias can in turn be seen in the context of a reinforcement of elitist values that link and denigrate those who are dark and those who are poor. Traditional Chinese culture idealized fair skin and associated it with intellectual endeavor. Fair skin continues to be a standard of female beauty while black is associated with negative qualities. Urban Chinese have long associated the dark complexions of manual laborers or peasants with low economic and cultural status (Sautman, 1994). A survey among primarily Chinese students and intellectuals conducted in 1992 found a similarity between attitudes towards Blacks and towards peasants, as both were regarded as less intelligent, less attractive, less cultured and less civilized in comparison with Americans or British for example. Blacks were considered to be at the bottom end of modernization and development (Ibid.).
The findings of the 1992 study seem to reflect the tendency of many Chinese to regard Africa and the Third World as symbols of China's backward past which they wish to escape in their process to align with the progressive West rather than backwards Africa (Cheng, 2011). Furthermore, Cheng’s analysis of Liu Zhirong’s2 essays on China (“Why are the Chinese
discriminated against in Africa” and “The Chinese in the eyes of African people”) revealed that
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Chinese workers, unlike white Europeans/Americans, are often abused and not respected by local
authorities. The author of the essays concludes that “the whites colonized Africans, and that is why today Africans still treat whites like a servant treats his master. “The face of a white man is his
passport,” Liu asserted. Liu’s answer to “Why are the Chinese discriminated against in Africa?” is
“because we did not colonize them.” Echoing social Darwinism and “might is right” rhetoric, he maintained that “all nations in the world seem to be the same. They admire the strong and despise the weak. It is just like taming a horse: only when you remain tough will it be submissive to you”
(Cheng, 2011).
Zhirong accounts on his experiences in Africa and his opinions on the dynamics between
Chinese and African people are strongly influenced by the dynamics between nations within the
global racial hierarchy. Global racial hierarchy was rooted in Chinese ethnocentrism and
constructed with social Darwinism, but has survived since 1949. Contemporary Chinese
intellectuals are sensitive to the Western “orientalist” attitude towards China, but the Chinese
perception of Africa or Blacks is also essentialized and racialized to perpetuate the negative image
of Africa as the “primitive and inferior Other” (Cheng, 2011).
After reviewing some of studies from an already scarce body of literature of ‘race’ in China,
we can see that the social formation of ‘race’ in this particular context is different from that of the West. Specific historical, social and cultural contexts in China complicate the issue of ‘race’. First
of all, the encounter of China with Western powers, particularly with the British Empire which
forcefully opened China to foreign trade has made China aware of the global racial hierarchy. After
the defeat of Qing troops in the first Opium War (1839-1842), the British government forced China
to agree to an unequal trade agreement, according to which Hong Kong would be ceded to the
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great opening to foreigners under the strong fist of the British, ideas of social Darwinism have
penetrated the society as well and became internalized references for the production of the ‘Self’ and the ‘Other’ in Chinese culture. Those were also the times when, part of the imperialistic expansions in the East, Western missionaries started coming in greater number and make God
known to the locals, preaching in English, thus ‘civilizing’ them and bring them on ‘the right path’. So this particular historical context defined by early encounters with the West rendered Chinese
as a second class population, at the hands of Western powers’ interests. I believe that ideas of ‘race’ which have penetrated the openings created under the British influence have later on changed to become an ‘ideology of race’ used as an argument to boost national rejuvenation, thus
in strong relation with ethnocentrism, rather than becoming a conscious, deliberate systematic
repression of certain ‘races’, as it was the case with Western powers and their colonies. As Wacquant (1997) concludes:
“Mixing homegrown Confucian categories rooted in the dualism between a civilized center and a barbarian periphery, with Western concepts of physical type, this tradition portrayed the Han Chinese as a distinct biological grouping descended from the mythical Yellow Emperor. It anchored a rigid vision of a planetary racial hierarchy featuring yellow and white at the top and black, brown and red at the bottom and it made eugenics into a preeminent instrument of national revival from the overthrown of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 until racial discourse was officially banned by the new communist regime.”
I agree with some of the ideas Cheng (2011) put forward, which highlight the fact that
China seems to be using ‘race’ as an ideology meant to add up and actually support China’s
ethnocentrism and its attempt to align itself with the progressive West. This idea relates very well
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research, where in its quest for the position of global hegemon, China competes with the West,
while using Western elements at the same time to help boost its economy and create more
opportunities for development.
3. Africans in China
The ever growing African community in Guangzhou, made the city be known as the
“Chocolate City”. The presence of numerous African migrants in southern China has led to the emergence of a significant body of knowledge on the topic (Bertoncello & Bredeloup, 2007; Li et
al, 2008; Zhang, 2008; Rennie, 2009; Le Bail, 2009; Li et al, 2009; Bodomo, 2010; Bodomo et al,
2010; Haugen, 2011; Mathews & Yang, 2012; Li et al, 2012; Haugen, 2012; Bodomo, 2012; Lyons
et al, 2012; Han, 2013; Haugen, 2013; Lan, 2014; Castillo, 2014, 2015)3. All these studies tackle
various aspects of the African diaspora in Guangzhou, such as emplacement and belonging,
migration behaviors, healthcare experiences, religious activities, racial profiling or the state
implication in the regulation of undocumented migrants, among others.
In his article ‘Homing’ Guangzhou: Emplacement, belonging and precarity among
Africans in China, Castillo (2015) interviews one African businessman in Guangzhou who states,
in relation to local police who persecute, harass and detain African migrants that he does not see
his actions as proof of racism or discrimination. Instead, “They have built an economy out of this.
For them, it’s not discrimination. It’s business.” (Castillo, 2015). He relates police harassment and persecutions to loopholes in Chinese laws that create spaces for individuals to abuse their authority.
3 For a more complete list of studies on the African population in China, visit http://africansinchina.net/academic-resources/
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Castillo’s findings are of importance to my research in the way he shows that although surveillance in the Chocolate City has increased, together with other measures of state control aimed to hamper
the growth of the immigrant population (Lan, 2014), African people themselves do not directly
associate these measures with ‘racism’.
On the other hand, Frazier & Zhang’s (2014) Ethnic identity and racial contestation in
cyberspace: Deconstructing the Chineseness of Lou Jing brings to light Chinese racialized public
opinion on ‘blackness’. The authors analyze the ‘cyber reaction’ of Chinese citizens to the growing popularity of a mixed-race, Chinese African-American contestant of 2009 Dragon TV’s Let’s go!
Oriental Angel!, Shanghai’s equivalent to the Western television show American Idol. The
popularity of the college student and aspiring singer Lou Jing seems to have stemmed not from the
quality of her singing, but from her skin color which distinguished her from the rest of the
contestants. Although the show hosts referred to her as to “Our chocolate girl”, or “China’s black pearl” and “Halle Berry of the East”, the Chinese public seemed to have had another opinion. A hot debate emerged surrounding Chinese national identity and Chinese perspectives on
‘blackness’. For numerous people, Lou’s skin color marked her as ‘black’, a racial classification that overrode her claims to Chinese nationality being argued that her black parentage prevented
her from being a ‘real’ Chinese national, while some of her worst critics referring to her as ‘black chimpanzee’, ‘black devil’ and as polluting the larger Chinese national body (Frazier & Zhang, 2014). Although the accounts for biased and racialized opinions are evident, the article also
highlights the complexities that surround the issue of ‘blackness’ in China. To add up to the understanding of this multifaceted issue of ‘race’ and how it operates in China, the authors mention the growing presence of African American, Afro-European, and African professional basketball
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players who obtain contracts to play for different teams within the Chinese Basketball Association,
as well as African musicians and producers who have becomes successful in China (Ibid.).
Conclusion
The first section of the first chapter gives a detailed account of the theoretical approach of
my research. I think using a Western conceptual framework on ‘race’ will constitute a solid base for my study, while at the same time will provide an interesting insight into the application of this
particular framework in the Chinese context. The last two sections, “’Race’ in China” and “Africans in China” have informed the reader of the latest developments and findings regarding the topic of ‘race’ in China, while overviewing the latest body of knowledge developed around the topic of the growing African community in China. The last two sections have also clearly shown
the gap in the existing literature on migrants in China and ‘race’, which I aim to address through
my research: the racialization of China’s ESL market. The following chapter is developed around methodology, where I will give a clear description of the methods deployed to gather and analyze
data from the fieldwork. I will also explain the reasons that supported my choices as well as the
limitations of the methods.
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Chapter II
Methodology – Qualitative Research
In this second chapter I will expand on my methodological design and the methods used to gather and analyze data. I will first begin by explaining why I chose to approach my research through a case study method. I will move on by stating my ontological and epistemological stance as a researcher, followed by a detailed account of the main methods of data collection, i.e. semi-structured interviews and content analysis of various written or video resources. Lastly, I will present the method of analysis chosen and how this particular method is going to prove itself helpful in deconstructing and making sense of data gathered from the interviews.
A case study of racialization in China
As stated above, my research will be designed as a study case. The advantages of using a study case for my research is that it offers in-depth understanding of the phenomenon I am studying, of the context and process, and allows for comparison between actors inside a single case (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011). The focus is the process of racialization, related to a particular social context and on the multitude of perspectives in that context. Since the Chinese context is such a controversial one in what the concept of ‘race’ in concerned, I think it is safe to adopt relativism as ontological stance, bearing in mind that we can only know a ‘reality’ through socially constructed meanings and that there is no single shared reality, only a series of alternative constructions (Mason, 2002). In order to understand how the process of racialization operates in
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China, I analyze people as social actors who influence the organization of a society in racialized terms through their perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, behavior and interactions. By investigating their experiences, accounts and narratives, I will be able to understand the nature of social relations between different social and ethnic groups in a particular social and local context and approaching this research as a case study will not only allow for comparison between individual accounts, but will also offer insight into different dimensions of the social phenomenon I am studying. Another reason why I chose to build a case study in order to analyze how China’s ESL market becomes racialized is based on the lack of an organized, coherent body of knowledge developed around this topic. The lack of a full-fledged theory and already formulated hypotheses which can be tested has rendered my study into an explorative research, in an attempt to capture the different nuances and different dimensions of the social phenomenon under investigation, thus producing new knowledge which can prove itself valuable for future research. I am also aware that most of the knowledge this study produces is done through my interpretation of the data available, so I am concerned to explore and understand this social phenomenon using both participants’ and my understanding of it, as well as my understanding of what the participants are saying about it.
Data collection
A. Primary data: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews
Individual interviews will seek to investigate the experiences of foreign teachers in China. The interview structure will provide an opportunity for detailed investigation of teachers’ personal context and perspectives, explore issues in depth in order to understand complex processes, including motivations, decisions, impacts and outcomes. They are also particularly well suited to
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research that requires an understanding of deeply rooted or delicate phenomena such as ‘race’ and ‘racial’ formation (Mason, 2002). Since the respondents were geographically dispersed, all interviews but one were done via Skype, since some of the teachers remained in China after their contracts ended, while others went home, or moved out to other places. The only teacher I managed to interview face-to-face was the Romanian teacher.
The interview structure was developed around five stages, as follows:
1. Recruitment process – assess motivations to go teach in China, teachers’ situation at home, the presence/absence of labor brokers, the length of acquiring a visa and the type of visa etc.;
2. Training week(s) in the company - compulsory training week for all new employees; assessment of Chinese employer's attitudes and behaviors towards her employees in regards to respecting the clauses in the contract and analyze if the behavior was differentiated towards different groups and if so, what were the lines along which differential treatment was applied.
3. Initial placements – assess the interviews between local schools and teachers, trying to find out what seemed to be more important for the school representative (e.g. credentials, experience, gender, skin color etc.); I will also try to assess if there seemed to be a racial hierarchy among foreign teachers and if some racial group was preferred over others; also, if that was the case, in which way was this situation rendered visible to the teachers. 4. Life outside the company – what happens to the teachers after they were assigned a job,
assessment of attitudes towards them and their experiences inside the schools; this part will also assess teachers' living and working conditions and the obstacles or privileges teachers encountered in their attempts to get extra jobs on their own;
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5. Final outcomes – in this final part of the interview, I try to find out what was the life of the interviewees after their contract with the company reached an end. For those who stayed in China: why and what turn did their lives take? Did the privileged ones choose to stay? Assessment of racial dynamics outside the company, when the interviewees went on seeking jobs on their own;
As part of my methodology, I will use the counter-storytelling technique from Critical Race Theory. Delgado and Stefancic (2001) defined counter-storytelling as a method of telling a story that ‘aims to cast doubt on the validity of accepted premises or myths, especially ones held by the majority”. For my research, engaging in counter-storytelling with foreign teachers in China and show how phenotypes influenced their placement and overall experience in the country will speak against the mainstream discourse of Chinese officials who deny ‘racism’ in China. Also, since this method of data gathering allows for in-depth accounts, the interviewees will also have the chance to speak against the other mainstream opinion when it comes to China and ‘race’, that according to which China is inherently a ‘racist society’, uphold by many Westerners. By listening to the teachers’ stories, I am seeking to capture the specificities of such a delicate social issue in the Chinese context, particularly inside the local ESL market.
Sampling
My research sample consists of 8 respondents, extremely variegated in terms of phenotype and nationality. The sample of white teachers consisted of four respondents, three males and one female, their ages ranging from 22 to 40 years old. Three of them were non-native English speakers from Georgia, Brazil and Romania and a native English speaker from South Africa, of Dutch and
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British descent. Two of the respondent chose the option of staying anonymous during the research, due to fears of repercussions. Out of the four respondents, one was back home, in his country of origin, while the rest were still working and living in China, Shenzhen. All respondents, except one, had higher education, consisting of a BA.
For my sample of black interviewees, I chose four people. Three females and one male. Two of them were recruited for the same agency as the white teachers, based in Changchun. They are of Ghanaian and Kenyan nationality. Another respondent was a French student in Shenzhen, originally born in Ivory Coast, who was teaching in China as well. The last one was a French professional of Cameroonian descent, working in Guangzhou. Although she has no tangential connection with the ESL market, I chose to use her testimony, as it reveals important information regarding general attitudes and behaviors of Chinese locals and authorities in day to day interactions. This information is useful in getting a clearer picture of the social and cultural background of the research. All of the black teachers had a BA diploma and two of them decided to stay anonymous during the research. For easier reference during my research, I have created a brief profile for each respondent which can be found in the Annexes.
In addition to that, for an easier reading and understanding of the findings presented in the following chapters, below is a table with the ‘racial’, ‘ethnic’ and citizenship profile of each participant. The ‘racial’ label is confirmed as self-identified by respondents themselves and it was not inflicted upon them by the researcher. The self-identification of the respondents with one of the two ‘racial’ groups became clear during interviews and it matched the labelling done by local Chinese. In addition, it is important for me to mention that I do not personally impute these categories any meanings, nor do I intend to ground them the perceived or attributed meanings that
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transpired from the data. These categories are theoretical instruments used with the sole purpose of conducting the analytical process of the research.
NAME/Nickname ‘RACE’ ETHNICITY CITIZENSHIP
SAMUEL Black Kenya Kenya
TRACEY Black Ghana Ghana
ADRIENNE (n.) Black Ivory Coast France
LASHINDA (n.) Black Cameroon France
HELENA (n.) White Brazilian/Portuguese Brazil
GEORGE White Romania Romania
LEO White Georgia Georgia
JAMES (n.) White Dutch-British South Africa
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Sampling criteria consisted mainly on the respondent’s nationality, phenotype and then gender, and was aimed to be as variegated as possible. The sampling criteria was also strongly influenced by the available human resources at hand, since due to various reasons the research was carried out in my home country, Romania, and access to foreign teachers was possible due to my previous experience as English teacher in China. So the interpretation of the data will based itself on my previous observation of the phenomenon as well, although with the clear intent to remain as unbiased as I possibly can.
Six interviewees come from the company I used to work with, while the other two respondents came from using snowballing or chain sampling technique, having the teachers who had already taken part in the research recommending me respondents willing to participate in the research and who fit the criteria more or less.
I consider the variety of nationalities involved in the research to be a strong point, since respondents presented various phenotypes, correlated to a multitude of countries of origin. Their accounts brought numerous interesting nuances to be analyzed. An important limitation that needs to be addressed is the lack of White Americans and African Americans or British into the research, which would have constituted a great advantage and value in terms of producing and comparing data.
B. Secondary data
Since my interviews will present only the voices and experiences of foreign teachers in China, I will try to fill the gap created by the lack of Chinese counterparts with few previous studies on the topic, although literature is rather scarce in this field.
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One of the studies I will be using is actually a survey conducted in several cities in China in 1992 regarding ‘racial’ views of students and intellectuals, retrieved from Sautman’s article (1994) Anti-Black Racism in Post-Mao China. The survey was carried out among 461 people in 14 diverse sampling populations and its results offer a theory of anti-black prejudice based on an analogous elite disdain for China’s peasants. The first questionnaire asked that seven groups of foreigners (Western Europeans, Africans, Japanese, Americans, South-East Asians, Arabs and Indians) be rated for ten attributes: cultural level, intelligence, industriousness, behavior, role models, attractiveness, interest in education, honesty, capacity to manage their own political affairs and interest in economic development. A second questionnaire asked that Chinese peasants, private entrepreneurs and intellectuals be rated for the same attributes. The survey results show how Africans and Chinese peasants are rated in relation to other foreign people and social groups and allow for comparison of the scoring of Africans and Chinese peasants. Africans were rated worst for nine and peasants worst for eight of the ten attributes. That means that Africans and peasants were considered the least intelligent, attractive, or industrious, compared to their Western European, American and Chinese intellectuals counterparts, who scored the highest for many of the attributes. The interesting fact is that Africans and Chinese peasants scored really well at honesty compared to other groups.
I will further complement data retrieved from the previous survey with information found in Al Jazeera’s Chinese Dreamland documentary, which presents the practice of a Chinese provincial leader hiring out foreign actors to perform fantasies of ‘development’, feeding the real estate bubble. This particular video footage clearly shows how Chinese perceptions of foreigners create a racial hierarchy, with white people placed at the top and asked to perform roles of investors, businessmen and top models, while black foreigners are usually hired to perform tribal
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shows or music entertainment. This situation clearly reflects the results of the survey, where Africans were seen as backwards and lacking culture, while Westerners were seen as progressive, attractive and rich in capital. The agent also clearly affirms that it is cheaper to hire black foreigner, than it is to hire whites. This documentary will be useful in understanding how local perceptions and attitudes collide with the globalization of ‘whiteness’ and ‘white privilege’ and how this situation materialized itself in the Chinese context.
The last two resources I will use as reference tie themselves more to China’s ESL market. The accounts found in Sung’s (2011) study on parents’ perceptions of the ideal English teach in Hong Kong, where the ideal teacher has to be not only native, but preferably white as well give me a preview of the ESL context and a point of reference for my own findings. On top of that, I will analyze certain ESL websites, trying to retrieve online advertisements of institutions or employers seeking foreign teachers. I will look out for those advertisements were explicit preference is given to native English speaking, Caucasian looking foreigners.
These studies reveal some of the attitudes and beliefs of Chinese people/employers/parents on different ethnic and racial groups. These attitudes are important in understanding how the process of racialization operates in China, which might lead in certain cases to the marginalization and discrimination of certain teachers based on their physical appearance, as well as nationality.
Coding and Analysis
In what interviews are concerned, I will apply a narrative and content type of analysis through thematic coding, following Matthews and Ross’ (2010) guidelines. This has the advantage of maintaining the specificities of the narrative and respondents’ own perceptions and
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interpretation of their experience, while allowing for comparison, by finding common or different themes and categories among them. It will also help me identify how themes are presented or treated, and different patterns or typologies occurring across groups.
For the analytical purpose of this research, I will divide my sample into two main analytical group: white teachers and black teachers. The division is done based on their skin color, the way it is understood in common language regarding ‘race’. The reason I do this is because I am interested in exploring the different ways in which ‘race’ understood as phenotype, mainly skin color, is experienced by foreign teachers in China’s ESL market. By using a thematic analysis, I am able to identify major themes that come up from my data and find the correlations both between themes, as well the different ways they relate to the central topic, i.e. racialization. This process will allow me to pinpoint the mechanisms through which ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ become racialized in China’s ESL market. Other important variables I will take into consideration during my analysis will be gender and nationality. Although focusing on the intersectionality of these variables goes beyond the scope of this research, from an analytical point of view it would be interesting to observe how the major themes that occur during and across the five stages of my interview relate to the variables above mentioned. It will also help me assess if gender in particular plays a role or not in further racializing a teacher or a group of teachers.
Regarding data coding, previous observations from my time in China gave me an idea of the main themes which were going to emerge from my data. So I hand coded my data into the following four main themes: 1) accounts of racialized distribution of job assignments and job benefits; 2) accounts on the importance of skin color and country of origin (being a native of not) in obtaining and securing a job as a teacher; 3) accounts of situations when ‘white privilege’ was at play, both inside the ESL market, as well as outside; 4) opinions regarding prejudice and
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discrimination in China. These themes that emerged from the data gathered from my interviews strongly reflect the conceptual framework developed as a theoretical support for my research.
Narrative analysis will further help identify similarities in treatment among all foreign teachers, regardless of their ‘race’, and will reveal respondents’ agency or coping strategies, in order to avoid or change certain treatments, as well as the outcomes of their strategies. Moreover, since the study revolves around a controversial concept in China, content and narrative analysis will offer me insight into specificities or paradoxes that might occur, especially in relation to the main theoretical concepts.
By analyzing the content of my secondary data, I will assess social attitudes of the locals, that might influence hiring and placement practices, which play an important role in the process of racialization.
Conclusion
The second chapter was developed around the methodology of my research and the methods used to gather and analyze data. The research was thought out as a case study, aimed at explaining how the racialization of ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ takes places in China’s ESL market, at a moment of rapid economic growth of the country. Since literature and theory on this topic is relatively scarce, I ought to produce as much information and knowledge as possible through my research, and the best way to do this, as I previously argued, is through semi-structured, in-depth interviews as my main method of data gathering. This method suits best an exploratory research such as mine, as it allows the participants to give an in-depth account on the way they experienced and related to the main topic under investigation. By analyzing my data through
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thematic coding, I break down the information into categories and themes and link them both between each other as well as to the main concepts, identifying various patterns and typologies emerging from these links.
Having presented both my conceptual framework which is going to support my research theoretically and the methods deployed to help me get to the information I need to answer the research question, I am now going to continue with the third chapter of this study, which aims to contextualize and reveal the exploitative nature of intermediary recruitment agencies in China.
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Chapter III
ESL Industry in China. Business as usual
The role of recruitment agencies in shaping China’s ESL market
When one talks about the ESL market in China nowadays, one talks about agents and recruiting agencies. The cultural differences between the teachers and their Chinese employers, mainly the language barrier which can turn the search for a job into a hassle, made it possible for recruiting and placement agencies to develop and expand rapidly around this industry. Recruitment and placement agencies act like intermediaries between potential teachers and schools, arranging the documentation necessary for the teachers, thus lessening the bureaucratic burden of the educational institutions. Before I get to the conceptual core of this study, which is racialization of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ inside this industry, I aim to familiarize the reader with the modus operandi of Chinese recruitment agencies, since all of the respondents, regardless of their ‘race’ identified them as the major factor that negatively influenced their experience in China through their fierce business practices. The ESL industry appeared to be exploitative for all teachers involved in it, but worse for non-white teachers, possibly due to the fact that Chinese employers saw white teachers as a better investment. Furthermore, the structural constraints faced by foreigners in China, such as the lack of rules and regulation of the ESL market reveal a flexible and uncertain labor system which is constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.
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Agent chains and recruitment processes
The lack of proper regulation of China’s ESL market makes it possible for many different types of intermediary agencies to appear and operate in this industry. Although all of the respondents were hired by the same company in China, their recruitment took place in various ways, using different agents.
James, a white 22 years old South African was recruited directly by an agency representative and said this agency was one of the few that got back at him in his attempt to find a job in China, while still in his home city. James said the task of finding a job without yet having a degree was more difficult than he initially thought, but the agency finally confirmed him as a teacher, after an online interview, where they seemed pleased with his appearance and his accent.
The rest of the white teachers from Romania, Georgia and Brazil were recruited by a Netherlands based Chinese agent, who was providing the agency in China with teachers. An interesting aspect identified during the recruitment process of these three teachers was the use of Western language to camouflage the realities of the teaching industry in China. For example, on the Facebook page of the Netherlands based Chinese recruiter, the teachers remember the ads calling for foreign teachers for a volunteer/internship type of job in China. Through the language used, the potential candidates should have understood that the job was underpaid and the tasks were not as difficult, since the recruiter was not looking for professionals. This was also the reason why having a TEFL certificate or any kind of teaching certificate for that matter did not constitute an important aspect of the recruitment process. Looking back at this process, George, a white teacher from Romania recalls:
