The immobility of the mobile teacher: how teachers change jobs in a segregated local school-market

This study examines job-changing patterns of secondary school teachers in a segregated local school market in Sweden. In an initial step, we use information on pupils' resources to hierarchically group schools in four groups, where schools with similar pupil bases are sorted together. By interviewing 29 teachers, the conclusion is that when teachers change employer, they navigate or are recruited to schools that are similar to schools where their professional approach was formed (formative school). The significance of the formative school is important since the teacher synchronises subjective professional beliefs with the institutional conditions and logics that produce the local working conditions. This process means that the mobility of teachers is limited to schools within the same or adjacent school groups. This indicates that teachers might be locked in to limited sectors of the labour market by the same market forces that segregate pupils on the school market.