Lost in translation? International migration, learning and knowledge

Abstract

There are changing but increasingly important ways in which international migration contributes to knowledge creation and transfer. The paper focuses on four main issues. First, the different ways in which knowledge is conceptualized, and the significance of corporeal mobility in effecting knowledge creation and transfer in relation to each of these types. Second, the significance of international migration in knowledge creation and transfer, and how this is mediated by whether migration is constituted within bounded (by company structures) or boundaryless careers, and as free agent labour migration. Third, the situating of migrants within firms, and the particular obstacles to their engagement in co-learning and knowledge translation: especially positionality, intercultural communication and social identities. Fourth, a focus on the importance of place, which is explored through theories of learning regions and creativity, and notions of the transferability of social learning across different public and private spheres. The need to view migrant learning and knowledge creation/transfer as widely dispersed, rather than as elite practices in privileged regions, is a recurrent theme. © 2006 SAGE Publications.