Professional Identity and Context-Specific Legitimacy: Filipino English Teachers in South Korea

In global English Language Teaching (ELT), who is considered qualified to teach and which English varieties are deemed legitimate remain tied to race, nationality, and institutional power. Despite the visibility of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), little is known about how educators from the Global South construct professional identities in stratified contexts. This study examines how Filipino English teachers (FETs) in South Korea construct context-specific legitimacy as they navigate institutional hierarchies, visa policies, and native-speakerist ideologies across universities, public schools, and private academies. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with thirty teachers and document analysis, findings show that legitimacy is constructed differently across institutional contexts: credential-based in universities, relational in public schools, and market-oriented in private academies. Teachers exercised agency through credentialing, linguistic advocacy, accent negotiation, and pakikisama, a Filipino value emphasizing relational harmony. By integrating raciolinguistic perspectives with Filipino cultural psychology, this study shows how legitimacy is co-constructed through structural inequality and cultural agency. Findings have implications for equitable classroom practices, recognition of diverse English varieties, and policy supporting Global South educators in international ELT contexts.