“It’s Like You Don’t Have an Identity”: A Narrative Inquiry into a Precarious English Language Teacher’s Professional Identity Negotiations

Under prevailing neoliberal policies and job market conditions, language teachers often face job precarity, characterized by flexible, insecure, and low-wage conditions. Despite this trend, the research on language teacher identity in relation to job precarity is limited. This study employs critical perspectives to explore the impact of precarious job conditions on the professional identity negotiation of an English language teacher, Pelin, through narrative inquiry conducted in Türkiye. Confronted with the realities of the job market, such as job insecurity and underpayment, Pelin’s negotiation of language teacher identities was negatively influenced. Her identity negotiation process was particularly intertwined with frustration, uncertainty, temporariness, and otherization. While navigating neoliberal work conditions and ethics, Pelin also occasionally found herself aligning with some neoliberal discourses, primarily in pursuit of economic and professional advancement. Based on these findings, we made several suggestions for key stakeholders such as administrators, policymakers, teacher educators, and student teachers.