Moving across time and space: temporal management and structuration of consumption in conditions of global mobility

Abstract

With a focus on highly skilled professionals who have moved and resettled in different countries for reasons related to work, the aim of this paper is to enhance understanding of the role of consumption practices in managing the temporal dimension of global mobility. Two related datasets are used: in-depth long interviews with globally mobile professionals and a multi-sited ethnography with a community of global expatriates. Findings show how these consumers manage their multiple temporal frameworks (through zoning, by developing and using temporal coordinating mechanisms and by projecting themselves into the future) and reveal new temporal frameworks created by global mobility (cycles of mobility, embodied mobility rhythms and distorted timelines). The research raises questions about the way consumption by globally mobile professionals shapes, and is shaped by, processes of globalization and the demands of flexible capitalism in late modernity.