Critical pedagogies of place: Educators' personal and professional experiences of social (in)justice

•Teachers are generally defined by the content they teach.•Attention to how context shapes teachers' personal and professional identities is often ignored.•Preoccupation with teachers' roles and responsibilities often eclipse their rights.•Contexts can affect teachers' pedagogic styles.

Participating in the education system of a foreign country, or within a new political dispensation presents various challenges for teachers. Understanding the challenges that teachers face as a result of relocation to new geographical and political contexts urges analyzing the contexts, which influence teachers' personal and pedagogic identities. Drawing on Buell's (1995) insights on place and identity; and Fraser's (2008) conceptions of social justice, this paper explores how teachers from South Africa, India, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo reinvent their identities in order to enact their professional and personal lives within different geo-political and socio-cultural contexts.