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

Abstract

Abstract: 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.