‘Expatriates’: Gender, Race and Class Distinctions in International Management

Abstract

In the international management (IM) literature, 'expatriate' is used as a verb in reference to the transnational movement of employees by multinational corporations (MNCs) and as a noun in reference to the people who are so moved across borders to work. IM's resulting expatriate analyses apply only to a specific minority of relatively privileged people. However, as is clear in other bodies of literature, many others ('migrants') in less privileged class positions move themselves across national boundaries for work. In this majority are often women and men -people of diverse races, ethnicities, economic and social means -who have less education and who work in lower level jobs, also often in or for MNCs. Their invisibility in the IM literature sustains and reinforces gender, race and class-based disparities in globalization processes and work to the detriment of poor women of colour around the world. We call for gendering change that would make visible the invisible in IM scholarship related to expatriation.

Human resource management of international migrants: current theories and future research

“…Although women's international careers have been examined in traditional expatriation literature, we know little about the role of gender or gender relations in migration processes (Berry & Bell, 2012;Iredale, 2005;Tharenou, 2008). This is a significant omission especially given that women now count for about half of the total number of migrants worldwide (OECD, 2013), and women migrants almost exclusively constitute the majority of the workforce in professions such as nursing and teaching (Kofman, 2000).…”

“…Often, they are obliged to delay the application for recognition of their qualifications until their spouse or partner completes the process (Iredale, 2005). Therefore, it is not surprising that skilled women migrants often work in unskilled positions such as domestic work upon their arrival in the host country (Berry & Bell, 2012).…”

High-skilled female immigrants: career strategies and experiences

“…; van den Bergh and Du Plessis, 2012). The literature on SIEs often excludes consideration of individuals from developing countries and prescribes to implicit assumptions related to why and how white skilled individuals from developed, Western countries migrate (Al Ariss et al, 2012;Berry and Bell, 2011). While bringing conceptual clarity to this ongoing debate is beyond the scope of this paper, our definition is consistent with existing literature on skilled migration; and we focus on this broad category of global workers because they possess levels of human capital comparable to corporate expatriates and thus, deserve further attention from international management scholars.…”

Career Mobility in a Global Era: Advances in Managing Expatriation and Repatriation

“…The academic E&R literature is surprisingly silent on race/ethnicity in international assignments with some notable exceptions (Berry & Bell, 2012;Tung, 2008;Tung & Haq, 2012). In her studies of executives in China and South Korea, Tung (2008) found that while a highly qualified African-American female was deemed appropriate for appointment to head the subsidiaries of a US multinational in China, she was not in the case of the Korean sample.…”