2: The Normal Negative Sociology: The Condition of Precarity and Insecurity

Chapter 1 showed that the arena of English-speaking international schooling has both grown enormously and changed substantially since the 1990s (to reiterate, this story is well told by two previous books; see Bunnell, 2014, 2019a). However, one should be careful not to over-exaggerate the changes, and one constant theme remains. Moreover, there is still one assumption to be made that is true; the field continues, in spite of enormous change and geographical spread, to be dominated by educators born-and-trained in Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking nations such as Britain and North America. This over-reliance on educators from a few nations is a long-standing issue. It was first explored by Glenn Canterford in 2003 who had recognised that the segmented-market dominance of ISTs from a few nations shows an on-going discrimination in favour of certain actors possessing the ‘right’ cultural capital (see Bunnell & Atkinson, 2020, for a fuller and up-to-date analysis of this continuous phenomenon).