The Work and Life of Corporate Expatriates: New Patterns and Regimes of Mobility in the Knowledge Economy

• Authors: Anthony D’Andrea , Breda Gray
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article examines how the international mobility of corporate professionals is entwined with the rise of the knowledge economy within a ‘flexible’ capitalist system. As telecommunication technologies transform the economy, transnational organizations have been employing mobility strategies that affect the work and life of highly-skilled professionals and their families. Evidence is reviewed through a perspective of mobile labor studies, assuming international professional mobility as a privileged site of analysis. The article outlines the corporate expatriate population as the background for comparing mobility practices and regimes adopted by conventional and information-intensive industries. This comparison seeks to identify what is specific and new about professional mobility in the knowledge economy. The analysis confirms that patterns of mobility in information-intensive industries are more dynamic, unstable and contingent - in a word, more “flexible” - than those found in conventional or mature industries.

Keywords

EN

knowledge economy; flexibility; mobility; international relocation; expatriates; professionals; high-tech; ICT; HR; management

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: International Review of Social Research
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 87-107

Dates

published

2013-02-01

online

2015-05-06

Contributors

author

Anthony D’Andrea

• Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society (ISKS), University of Limerick, Ireland

author

Breda Gray

• Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Ireland

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/irsr-2013-0006