Emerging patterns in labor, migration, higher education, and post-pandemic life all mean that English may not entail what it used to. For the people who live with the precarity and possibility of global English in their everyday lives, English can now seem less lucrative, less ideologically loaded, and less synonymous with attending a 4-year college. At the same time, these shifts are not just about loss: they are about actively rethinking and reframing English. To examine these shifts, this panel features original research on three emerging contexts where English plays a key role: the Filipino diaspora of overseas contract workers (OCW’s), the South Asian diaspora in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and South Korean students at US community colleges. The panel builds on other emerging scholarship that reassesses how English relates to economic conditions (Park, 2021; Panaligan and Curran, 2022), figured worlds (Li and Hawkins, 2021), and language itself (Canagarajah, 2013; Lee, 2022).

This panel brings together three presenters with expertise in English as a global language, with the Chair of the LSL Global English forum as Presider. Logistically, there will be three 18-minute-maximum presentations, 6 minutes for introductions and transitions, and at least 15 minutes for unstructured discussion.

Leading off, Joyce Milambiling examines how the exodus of bilingual Filipino OCWs has precipitated immense social and economic change. The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light the perils that await wage earners who rely on global economic conditions and the precarious form of cultural capital that proficiency in a dominant language represents. Examination of academic and news articles from within and outside the Philippines from 2020-2023 sheds light on some of the consequences for English-speaking Filipino OCWs. While there have been advantages for workers in fields such as healthcare, those working in other industries may have paid a heavier price. What was the impact of COVID-19 on Filipino workers abroad and what options did they have during and after the pandemic? Beyond Filipino overseas workers, a broader issue is what measures can be taken to protect those who rely, at least in part, on their linguistic skills to secure and retain employment outside their home countries.

Next, Suneeta Thomas shifts the focus to transnational migrants in the UAE, for whom English is not so much fraught as it is familiar. While research has examined the Emirati demographic in higher education contexts, investigating the foreign, multilingual populations in the UAE is underexplored. She addresses this gap by investigating the professional identities, English language attitudes, and cultural selves of a segment of the middle-class migrant population. Drawing on survey data, the paper argues that due to their transient and impermanent status in the UAE, this population has a higher propensity towards transnationalism. English (and its various forms) hold/s a default (but not necessarily a modern) space in the lives of the participants. English has shifted from being a marker of modernity to a marker of defaultness, allowing for its heightened hybridization in translingual communication. Controversially, English is seen as an equalizer in communication, while competency in Arabic is valuable yet not indispensable to expatriate life.

To conclude, Justin G. Whitney will turn our attention even more towards agency and identity, in order to complicate the often reductive assumptions made about second language writers. Broader cultural patterns, local context and students’ individual agency all deeply influence what and how students learn, both in their home countries and in the United States. Emerging research using the figured worlds (FWs) theoretical framework (Holland et al. 2001) offers new opportunities for teaching and researching with students from around the globe. Drawing from a multiyear study working with South Korea international community college students, he explores opportunities FWs opens for researching and learning. He discusses how FW’s affordances can add important nuance to research on “ESL Writing Strategies” (see Mu, 2005). Conceptualizing such strategies as cultural artifacts not only highlights their embeddedness within broader cultures and local contexts but also sheds light on the individual agency students realize in and through artifactual performance.