The proposed presentation is about migrant teachers’ professional transition while moving their professional belonging from one national context to another. Professional transition involves a shift in professional belonging to a situation where this belonging is re-contextualised into a new institutional context. For migrant teachers, this involves processes of re-learning institutional structures connected to professional practices in everyday work in school. The study aims at exploring this process by interviews with migrant teachers who have recently re-entered the teaching profession in Sweden.

Sweden has, in an international perspective, well established and formally organized pathways for migrant teachers. However, besides being formally accredited, entering into a profession also concerns institutional norms and values about what a professional is or should be. This especially as the teaching profession can be said to be a strongly normatively driven profession (Scott, 2008).  Consequently, obtaining legitimacy within the teaching profession requires more than formal accreditation. For migrant teachers, processes of professional transition take place in the space between the previous professional belonging and being recognized in the new.

The importance of professional integration of migrants is today emphasised in countries throughout Europe (European Parliament, 2016). Even so, it is well known that migrants face higher barriers for establishing themselves in the labour market than their native-born counterparts, and that they are underemployed to a greater extent (OECD 2018). Even if several European policy incentives encourage professional movements and simplified travel across country borders, some areas of professions, such as in healthcare and schools, are still characterized by a low degree of mobility due to national institutional settings and regulations for professional belonging.

The process (and the possibility) of validating former teacher education is often a complex procedure and migrants with a professional background is likely to find themselves in lower positions within their occupational group than their native counterparts, for example, nurses and teachers being validated as assistants in hospitals or schools (Andersson & Osman 2008; Irastorza & Bevelander 2021). As Abbott (ref) amongst others stress, principally, the very idea of professions is in many aspects about inclusion and exclusion – who is accepted as a part of the profession and who is not. Above this, there are also hierarchies within the groups of professions. These are not necessarily based on the same logics as who is included or excluded as part of the profession itself, but construct institutional boundaries for professional recognition.

Professionalism is traditionally understood as something you acquire through higher education and its following competences, by which you gain societal trust to make independent decisions and find solutions to problems that arise in your professional practice (Abbott,1988; Evetts 2006). Professionalism is about enacting professional virtues in a specific occupational context where “common experiences, understanding and expertise, shared ways of perceiving problems and their possible solutions” (Evetts, 2006, p. 134) are enacted. In order to be recognised as part of a profession, these decisions and actions need to be consistent with what is institutionally perceived as desirable and appropriate in the specific context (Scott 2008). In this way of reasoning, migrant teachers with a professional background from another country, have to relearn several institutionally defined conditions for professional recognition through occupational and professional sociali­sation.

In this study of migrant teachers’ professional transition, professionalism is used and comprehended as 1) contextually bounded (hence not universal or manifest), 2) something you enact, 3) dependent on formal regulations, trust and legitimacy, 4) re-produced by professional socialisation in workplaces, but also 5) constantly negotiated and changeable over time and place.

The present study concerns migrant teachers who have or are in the process of establishing themselves as teachers in Sweden. Migrant teachers are interviewed in focus groups where they discussed their experiences of entering the Swedish teaching profession. In the discussions in the focus groups the teachers lived-experiences provides an opportunity to gain knowledge about how they understand and navigate the process of professional transition from one institutional context to another. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in full length. Each focus group consisted of 3-5 teachers, with a duration of the interviews for 60-90 minutes. The teachers have their teacher training from different countries and most of the teachers have also worked as teachers in their countries of origin. All of them have attended the Complementary Teacher Education in Sweden. Focus group interviews aim at identifying trends and patterns about a common issue and can provide an occasion for a group to articulate norms and provide empirical data of group meanings and social behaviours (Bloor et al., 2001). Even if some highlight the disadvantage that critical or sensitive aspects may be silenced by the group (Kamberelis & Dimitriadis 2011) I foremost experienced the group to function as a support for the teachers in the discussions. When more sensitive and difficult experiences were raised, it was more likely that the others confirmed the feeling or showed support towards the person speaking, rather than discouraging or questioning his or her experiences. The interviews were analysed in different steps starting with reading through the transcripts, followed by a process of identification of significant themes that emerged in the discussions in the focus groups. Since I moderated and listened to the focus groups myself I already had an overall familiarity when reading the transcriptions. However, regularities in the discussions and themes that reappeared on several occasions became more visible through the transcripts. In the analysis I searched for how they understand and handle new institutional demands for teacher professionalism and how they navigate the process of professional transition. I was especially interested in their understanding of how to enact teacher professionalism in a new institutional context, and their reasoning about the boundaries of gaining recognition as professional teachers in a Swedish school context.

Migrant teachers’ professional transition into the Swedish teaching profession is a complex, multi-layered process that extends beyond formal accreditation. Even if the Swedish educational system offers well-structured institutional pathways for complementing foreign teacher education, professional recognition is deeply embedded in normative, cultural, and relational dimensions of professionalism that migrant teachers must understand and negotiate in practice. Formal inclusion in the profession does not automatically translate into professional legitimacy in everyday school work. The interviews reveal a tension between being formally accredited and being recognized as professional by colleagues, principals and pupils. Language proficiency stands out as a key boundary for professional recognition. Teachers describe how communication in Swedish permeates all aspects of professional practice, from classroom interaction to collegial collaboration. Even when pedagogical competence is high, linguistic insecurity, or the presence of an accent, can undermine professional status. As a result, some teachers strategically position themselves in teacher positions such as mother tongue teachers as the puils (and their parents) share the same first language. The findings further show that professional socialisation in the workplace plays a decisive role. Colleagues have a double function function as both role-models and gatekeepers informally mediating institutional norms, expectations, and boundaries. Consequently, professional transition is primarily enacted in the “doing” of everyday work. The study showed how professional transition may also involve deeply personal adjustments. Teachers described pressures to modify outward markers of identity such as their names or how they dress to avoid misrecognition. This underscores how professional legitimacy is intertwined with broader processes of inclusion, exclusion, and societal belonging. Overall, migrant teachers’ professionalism is not simply validated but negotiated in practice, shaped by institutional conditions, social interactions, and normative ideas of what a teacher should be.

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