The research project upon which this paper is based seeks to examine the feelings, experiences and understandings of Immigrant Internationally Educated Teachers (IIETs) working in the Irish primary education sector. An increasing body of literature examines the experiences of migrant teachers working in new jurisdictions. Locating constants within and between such complex contexts is a difficult task. General findings would, however, indicate that these teachers experience significant structural barriers in the pursuit of qualification recognition (Beynon, Ilieva &  Dichupaa (2004) and report high rates of both unemployment and underemployment (Deters, 2006). When they find work in schools, these teachers are often appointed to positions for which they are overqualified (Mawhinney & Xu, 1997); are susceptible to the role entrapment experienced by minority ethnic teachers (Kelly, 2007) and experience racialized and gendered discrimination (Flores, 2011).

Recruitment of immigrant teachers must also be considered within the wider context of the, not uncontested, drive to escalate teacher diversity to provide positive role models in increasingly multi-ethnic classrooms (Schmidt & Black, 2010; Epstein & Kheimets, 2000; Carrington & Skelton, 2003). Multi-ethnicity is now a fixed characteristic of the Irish school population with 6% of the post-primary and 10% of the primary pupil cohort come from immigrant backgrounds (Smyth et al, 2009). Furthermore, other jurisdictions have targeted migrant teacher recruitment in response to periods of low teacher supply (Schmidt, Young & Mandzuk, 2010). Ireland experienced a significant shortfall in qualified teachers in the early 2000s (Breakwell, Quigley & McManus, 2005).  Yet, then, and now, new entrants into the profession remain stubbornly mono-ethnic, with a very small number of IIETs providing the only real challenge to this status quo.

The project is guided by the cultural theory work of Bourdieu (1991) on rites of institution. The crossing of the line by IIETs who have received full recognition by the Irish Teaching Council, and thus, may be paid to work in publicly funded Irish primary schools as mainstream teachers, marks a form of transition into legitimacy. Like all rites of institution, this transition establishes a fundamental division in the social order; breaking the continuum and corralling the legitimate teacher, or at least those legitimated by the state. What is interesting in the context of the research participants is the deligitimisation which has taken place as a result of their movement into Ireland. Having successfully crossed the barrier in another jurisdiction, becoming legitimate, they now face a recredentialising, or more specifically adcredentialising in Ireland. While these processes and products are important, following Bourdieu, it is more important to investigate the line, the arbitrary limit, over which they must pass, as this consecrates an arbitrary boundary, which in itself consecrates the line as legitimate. Thus, the paper interrogates the requirements for full recognition as a teacher in Ireland, and questions the experiences of those on both sides of the arbitrary border. 

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