Cross-Border Mobility of Self-Initiated and Organizational Expatriates

Globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has been marked by an increase in cross-border mobility of the highly skilled. Though self-initiated expatriation is a widespread phenomenon, it has received relatively little attention in the academic literature. Furthermore, large-scale studies that track self-initiated and organizational expatriates together, over time and across geographies, are noticeably absent from the literature. Consequently, our understanding of these two forms of mobility is relatively limited. This study, which is the first large-scale analysis of the trends in and patterns of the mobility of organization-initiated expatriates and self-initiated expatriates, attempts to fill this gap by analyzing the mobility patterns of 55,915 highly skilled individuals who made 76,660 cross-border moves between 1990 and 2006. Specifically, we analyze patterns of geographic mobility and then examine the rate, duration, and direction of self-initiated and organizational expatriation over time. Finally, we consider demographic differences in mobility between the two groups

Direct foreign investment: a migration push-factor?

The concern is to explore the impact of economic internationalization on the formation of labor migrations. General conditions historically at work in most migrations may continue to operate and even be prevalent. The question is whether the internationalization that characterizes the current period contains additional conditions promoting migrations. Direct foreign investment is used as an indicator for internationalization. The focus is on investment for export manufacturing because (a) the main countries sending the new immigration to the USA are key locations for this growing type of direct foreign investment, (b) export production is a central feature in the economies of these immigrant-sending countries, and (c) being labor intensive, this type of investment has created significant numbers of jobs in the countries where it is concentrated and therefore should act as a deterrent to emigration. The key finding is that intervening processes, such as the feminization of the new proletariat and the disruption of traditional work structures, can contribute to transform a situation of high growth into one promoting emigration.