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

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.