Middling Migrants in an Asian Periphery: Filipino Teachers and Alternative Mobility Pathways in Southern Thailand

This article explores the experiences of Filipino schoolteachers in Southern Thailand, focusing on their migration within the peripheries of Global South countries—a topic that remains underexplored in migration studies. Their mobility pathways diverge from those typically discussed in research on middling migration. As middling migrants, Filipino teachers enjoy better working conditions than working-class migrants, yet their circumstances do not align with those of elite migrants, as they continue to face precarity. Nonetheless, despite these insecurities, their roles as teachers—particularly in peripheral areas—serve as an adaptive preference, enabling them to construct a professional identity and engage in an alternative form of cosmopolitanism.