Negotiating Legitimacy Across Borders: A Systematic Literature Review of the Lived Experiences of Filipino Teachers Teaching Abroad

Although the Philippines exports many teachers, little data exists to describe their experiences abroad. This review aimed to integrate research on Filipino teachers overseas to understand the situation, assess its implications, and develop research priorities. The review followed PRISMA 2020 and ENTREQ guidelines, and the data were retrieved from 4,617 publications in Scopus. The studies that were included were chosen through eligibility criteria. The papers reviewed were analyzed using the CASP qualitative checklist to assess their quality and thematic synthesis to integrate the results. This study used GRADE-CERQual to assess the quality of the output. Half of the reviewed studies took place in Thailand, while others were conducted in the USA, China, Indonesia, Singapore, and Qatar. Six themes were identified in the review, and they include: (1) migration as a planned family and career strategy; (2) pedagogical and cultural dislocation; (3) positioning from the racial viewpoint and disputable legitimacy; (4) precariousness, contracts, and disposability; (5) emotional labor, faith, and transplanted community; (6) agentive legitimacy and self-reconstruction. People's decisions and experiences of migration are shaped by factors such as sexuality, kinship obligations, and religious affiliation. The themes were combined into the theoretical framework of negotiated legitimacy, in which people turn structural disadvantages stemming from native-speakerism, racial hierarchy, and labor-exporting systems into similarity. Overall, the review offers an integrated model for research on teachers from the Philippines.