Transnational Professionals Research Articles

“Half of myself is—feels German”: Storying Migrationshintergrund teachers’ hybrid identities

Romeo Garavaglia (a pseudonym), whose East German mother married his Italian father and later his Bosnian Muslim stepfather, did not look un-German; and, in fact he was German—or a perpetual foreigner—depending on the circumstances of his daily interactions. In this article, the authors story a suite of in-depth interviews to theorize how Garavaglia’s Migrationshintergrund [immigrant background] identity played out in his professional trajectory into teaching. Our analysis suggests that foreignness in a German context does not only entail the color of one’s skin. Rather, the construct of Migrationshintergrund also implies the hereditary impossibility of entering the educated middle class. Leveraging Garavaglia’s story as a synecdoche for the complex experiences of other transnational professionals in and outside Germany, we argue the role of schools and schooling in perpetuating economic marginalization and social imaginaries of difference in “post-racial” contemporary societies.

Language and symbolic boundaries among transnational elites: A qualitative case study of European Commission officials

AbstractPrevious research has asked whether European integration leads to the formation of a new kind of ‘transnational class’ or ‘elite’ in and around the European institutions in Brussels. This paper focuses instead on intra‐group distinctions and symbolic boundaries between EU professionals from different countries. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of language as a marker of distinction, it argues that language continues to be a resource for symbolic boundary making. Empirically, this paper builds on in‐depth interviews with officials of the European Commission, who are at the heart of an emerging transnational elite of EU professionals. It shows that while Commission officials are multilingual and use multilingualism to construct themselves as a transnational group, intra‐group symbolic boundaries continue to be drawn based on competence in the Commission’s two main working languages, English and French. Overall, this paper points out the overlooked importance of language differences for transnational professionals’ symbolic boundary making.

Where is the backbone of the transnational corporate elite?

The transnationalization of corporate activities has contributed to a rise in the number of transnational professionals and transnational corporate elite members. These transnational actors establish ties within and across national borders and contribute to the formation of a more connected global corporate network. And yet little is known about the geographical locations through which these transnational corporate elites operate, both nationally and internationally. This article aims to fill this gap by applying the network backbone detection algorithm to detect the global cities that are connected through the operations of the transnational corporate board members. The article detects the backbone of around 300 global cities, centered around London, New York and Hong Kong. The findings show that the backbone is currently structuring over a set of border‐crossing communities and expanding to the locations beyond the Anglophone corporate world. The study interprets the presence of these new communities as the first signs toward the convergence of practices, norms and possibly identities of national elite members.

Housing for highly mobile transnational professionals: evolving forms of housing practices in Moscow and London

ABSTRACT Most housing forms and living arrangements in contemporary cities are designed for settled populations, and housing markets poorly address the needs of mobile population groups. This paper explores the housing forms and living arrangements which emerge from the conditions of temporality and mobility and are practised by the middle-income group of high-skilled transnational professionals. The study is based on 65 semi-structured interviews with migrants from Western countries in Moscow and London. Three inter-related factors of highly mobile living are found to shape the particular housing demands of this migrant group. Firstly, the need for economic flexibility determines the preference for sharing options rather than for individual renting. Secondly, the travelling pattern of their jobs imposes time-related housing limitations, and their life-course stage may require flexibility. Thirdly, this migrant group expresses requirements for physical and functional comfort of housing, as well as access to amenities and a sense of community, despite their detached lifestyles. However, although most of these housing needs are known in the literature, they have not yet been examined in relation to the mobile living of transnational professionals, and this paper illuminates this research gap.

Transnational Professionals

This review answers recent calls to consider the transformative role of transnational professionals in contemporary globalization. It departs from the dominant perspective, which views professions as constrained by states’ geographical boundaries and by organizations such as nationally based professional associations. Transnational professionals have particular characteristics: they combine high-level abstract knowledge, high mobility across national and organizational settings, social and cultural capital, and distributed agency to shape global practices. Over the past two decades, a vibrant research stream has emerged on these professionals and their boundary-crossing work, raising new questions about agency, territoriality, and power. We examine transnational professionals across a range of occupations and sectors, as well as world regions, extracting the implications for sociological theory and methods. We outline a scholarly agenda highlighting the opportunity structures and likely trajectories for those who locate themselves in transnational professional spaces, suggesting how they can be investigated in future research.

Contracting development: managerialism and consultants in intergovernmental organizations

Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are now managed with an eye to managerial trends associated with transnational professionals, a view that has ramifications for how IGOs govern their policies and processes. Drawing on interviews and focus groups with staff in IGOs, we trace how managerialism in IGOs is changing how staff perceive work practices. We find that IGOs increasingly rely on consultants to enact policy scripts and to evaluate program success. This signals a subtle yet significant shift from expertise and bureaucratic impartiality, grounded in particular types of knowledge, to skills and flexibility to meet client demands and advance best practice norms according to prevailing world cultural frames. This managerial trend in IGOs is partly driven by stakeholder dynamics but is primarily a normative change in who is seen as having the authority to make claims over professional best practices. Such managerialism is contracting the development policy space. This contraction is partly driven by consultants, who defer to their peers and to donors rather than IGO staff and concerned member states. This work also depletes institutional memory for IGO operations. We trace how IGO staff perceive managerial trends and changes in work practices.

The History and International Relations of American and French missionary universities in the Middle East and East Asia as a case of transnational professional relations

ABSTRACT This article combines History (the discipline) research with International Relations (sub-discipline of Political Science, my point of departure) for transnational studies research on long-term developments of transnational professional relations between the USA/Europe and the Middle East and East Asia through missionary universities. American Protestant and French Catholic missionaries were important transnational intellectuals and professionals who founded universities in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These universities continue to educate generations of transnational professionals. The article seeks to contribute in particular to the transnational studies dimension of International Relations drawing on educational, social and cultural history.

Transnational professionals’ socio-spatial venturing out to the Tokyo global city-region

ABSTRACTGlobal-city research has focused primarily on considering transnational corporations and transnational professionals (TNPs) in economic terms, neglecting the role of TNPs’ specific socio-spatial practices in constituting the transnational space. Although researchers on global city-regions (GCRs) have pointed to the relevance of the larger regions for global cities, little is known about the TNPs moving into such regions, and their socio-spatial patterns within them. On the basis of novel empirical results derived from 45 in-depth interviews with TNPs, this paper sheds a light on patterns of socio-spatial practices in Tokyo, Japan – a well-established, yet unexplored, global city – and its larger GCR. Results show two distinct patterns within the TNPs, that is, the gaijin ghetto and the Pro-Tokyoite patterns. The gaijin ghetto is characterized by a Western-dominated culture and is spatially concentrated within a very small area in the core of Tokyo, with limited extra-urban spots in the GCR. The Pro-Tokyoite pattern is spatially more varied and spread within the larger metropolitan area, reaching into the wider GCR, with social practices and interactions closer to the local peer group. This paper discusses how these socio-spatial patterns are embedded in the global, regional and local spatial settings and it demonstrates that TNPs are in fact venturing out of the city centre into the broader GCR.

Azerbaijani Engineers in the Global Economy: Transnational Professionals Versus “Button-Pushers”

This article examines the changes in the engineering profession in Azerbaijan after the inflow of foreign investment into Azerbaijan’s oil industry since 1990s. The integration of Azerbaijan’s oil industry into global economy has led to a significant reshaping of the engineering profession, both within and outside of the oil industry. Multinational companies, which have been the main agents of this integration, have introduced advanced technologies and helped many Azerbaijani engineers to gain access to the international labor market, often serving as credentializing institutions. At the same time, the presence of these multinational companies have also opened the way for new inequalities. They have indirectly created an important division within the engineering profession—a division between internationally mobile engineers from the oil industry and engineers in other industries. Outside of the oil industry, engineering work has in many cases been reduced to routine tasks of assembly and operations, while research, design, and manufacturing were made redundant in the context of the oil-driven development promoted by Azerbaijan’s government.

Saving the Saviors: Security Practices and Professional Struggles in the Humanitarian Space

Tracing transformations in the way that humanitarian organizations respond to insecurity in the field, this article examines the bureaucratization and professionalization of security in relation to intraorganizational struggles between humanitarian professionals. Whereas some advocate for the triumph of remoteness and bunkerization as organizing principles of humanitarian action, others challenge the imposition of security as a humanitarian logic of practice through acts of nonconformity. These tensions are illustrative of professional struggles over how to do and think humanitarian action. In articulating a sociological and transversal reading, this article points to the heterogeneity and divisions structuring the humanitarian space. To provide empirical insights into the bureaucratic work practices of headquarters professionals and the everyday practices of frontline humanitarian professionals, this article draws upon an analysis of humanitarian security manuals, interviews with humanitarian professionals, and field observations in Port-au-Prince. The article sheds light on the development of the humanitarian profession and on the novelty of the work practices of humanitarian security professionals, while contributing to debates on bunkerization and the literature on transnational professionals.

Imagining ‘non-nationality’: Cosmopolitanism as a source of identity and belonging

Current literature tends to see cosmopolitan identity formation as an individual endeavour of developing a stance of openness, and transcending discourses of national and other cultural identities. This article challenges the essentialism inherent in this model by proposing a different framing of cosmopolitan identity formation that shifts the focus to how people collectively mobilize cosmopolitanism as a resource for cultural identity construction. The article is based on an anthropological study of transnational professionals who are part of a diverse expatriate community in Amsterdam. The analysis shows how these professionals draw on cosmopolitanism to define themselves as ‘non-nationals’. This involves downplaying national affiliations and cultural differences while also marking national identity categories and ‘cultural features’ to maintain the difference they collectively embrace. This, however, does not imply openness to all otherness. Boundary drawing to demarcate the cosmopolitan ‘us’ in relation to national (mono)culture is equally important. The article argues that cosmopolitan identities are socially accomplished as particular modes of collective belonging that are part of – not beyond – a global discursive sphere of identity politics.

The contradictory condition of ‘homelessness’ in the life of the transnational professional

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the condition of ‘homelessness’ as self-represented by a particular category of skilled professionals, who in the pursuit of work have relocated internationally more than once. The argument proposed is that, as a result of their highly mobile lifestyle, these transnational professionals experience ambiguous feelings regarding their notion of home, considered as a source of direction and stability associated with a given place or culture. Drawing on 48 personal narratives, this paper examines how the notion of home is manifested as part of the life of the transnational professional. The analysis follows the approach of intertextuality to identify associations with certain archetypal tales and novels associated with individual displacement. The findings show contradictory references to a sense of homelessness, which in the context of work is perceived as an ideal attitude, whereas in the private sphere generates negative feelings of self-alienation.

Corporate global nomadism: The role of the transnational professional as consumer of popular management discourses

An increasing body of research has paid particular attention to the role of different organizational actors in the consumption of popular management ideas, including their local diffusion, adaptation and enactment. However, with a few exceptions, these studies mostly focus on the organizational setting, thus neglecting the consumption of these kinds of discourses in other environments. Drawing on narrative analysis, this study follows this line of research by examining the ways in which a category of transnational professionals perceive and represent the discourse of corporate ‘global nomadism’ as part of their everyday life. This article contributes to management education by providing a critical approach to the ambiguous experiences involved in the ‘nomadic’ lifestyle that generally conflict with the idealized and glamourous views of corporate global mobility. In this way, a more rounded, critical and ultimately ethical type of management education for transnational mobility can be produced than currently is the case.

The golden handcuffs? Choice, compliance and relocation amongst transnational professionals and executives

ABSTRACTPeople who routinely cross borders for their jobs are often cast as beneficiaries of globalisation. But in a world of economic downturns, un- or underemployment as well as political unrest access to an increasingly global market becomes the personal and organisational solution to a host of unwanted happenings. In these circumstances, it therefore becomes less clear whether the heightened mobility of transnational workers is a benefit or indeed a choice. This article examines the onus placed on employees to be geographically mobile for their jobs. Relocation enables organisations to operate in expanding transnational markets and fields; it is therefore a prerequisite of jobs in an increasing number of sectors. Through systematic comparison of the attitudes to mobility of highly skilled employees in a ‘market’ (corporate) and a ‘moral’ (UN) case-study organisation, this article makes a contribution to our understanding of work orientations in transnational institutions. It interrogates the myth of choice of highly skilled movers and identifies the aspirations, contradictions and dilemmas that are associated with relocating for their jobs. Analysis of biographical interviews in tandem with online survey data elucidates the complex ways that the competing repertoires of choice and compliance are woven into transnational narratives.

Transnational Fields and Power Elites: Reassembling the International with Bourdieu and Practice Theory

One sociologist who has been particularly central to the development of International Political Sociology (IPS) is Pierre Bourdieu and his reflexive sociology. It is somewhat surprising given that Bourdieu was not especially attuned to international studies himself. His impact on IPS is instead via reinterpretations of his conceptual apparatus by other researchers, many of whom who have been involved in the IPS project from its outset. These post-Bourdieusian scholars have deployed reflexive sociology to explore transnational fields situated at the crossroads of the international and the national. By taking a resolutely sociological starting-point, they have provided a very different reading of the international. They have reconstructed the symbolic categories of transnational fields and notably the importance of the national modes of production vis-a-vis the production of in the making of the international. This theoretical apparatus has also been used as tools for visualising – or mapping – the international in terms of a set of specific transnational fields. The chapter concentrate on the two key notions of post-Bourdieuian IPS scholarship: reflexivity and transnational fields. They are both illustrated with examples drawn from empirical studies of transnational forms of power, elite structuration of the global and question related to transnational professionals. Although it is tempting to present this approach in a more condensed version, ready-made for an IR audience in search of only minor adjustments in the division of labour between soft constructivism and mainstream realism, the paper to guard the originality of the approach. It is the overall argument that the post-Bourdieuian approaches to the object of IR provide a very different look at the international as it assembles the international in a different deeply sociological fashion than most IR approaches.

Houses on Wheels: National Attachment, Belonging, and Cosmopolitanism in Narratives of Transnational Professionals

AbstractThis article contributes to discussions on the relationship between national attachments and cosmopolitanization by unpacking the meanings of national attachments and post‐national identifications in the case of transnational professionals, focusing on narratives of professionals embedded in transnational business networks in two locations; Istanbul and New York City. Using in‐depth interviews, the article argues that in the case of transnational professionals one can talk about ‘rooted’ cosmopolitanism in two senses: first, underlining the continuing role of national attachments as roots; and second, pointing to a process in which the post‐national identity is derived from specific experiences in multiple locations, grounding the respondents in their fluid lives. It is through mobility that the respondents develop a sense of belonging – not in spite of it.

Identity Switching and Transnational Professionals

Transnational professionals maintain their position in the international political economy through the use, rather than possession, of ideational and material resources. One important means of doing so comes from a capacity to build claims to knowing how to govern—claims that can be generated from identity switching between different network domains. This piece sketches how transnational professionals engage in identity switching and how they can play off different pools of professional knowledge, which enables them to engage in acts of “epistemic arbitrage.” When successful over time, such transnational professionals can also become “epistemic arbiters” of what is appropriate knowledge and meaningful action across a range of policy areas. The combination of identity switching and epistemic arbitrage can be used to maintain professional jurisdictional control in transnational policy space, as well as to provide the means and policy content for transnational professional mobilization. The capacity to move between different networks is a great advantage for those who need to muster support to change how matters are governed. How transnational governance is shaped is frequently considered from the viewpoint of processes linked to authority, or attributed to structure or culture. We can step back from such macro-level analysis and zoom in on how transnational professionals are able to get their way. Useful concepts for this purpose can be found in the literature on identity and emergence in social networks, including “identity switching,” “style,” and “network domain.” Harrison White (2008) and others discuss network domains as experiential processes wherein there is a domain of topics and a network of relations. Different network domains can represent kinship, economic, and political ties, where people have relations in multiple network architectures (Padgett and McLean 2006). People embedded in network domains use identity switching to maintain relationships that provide them with the opportunity to deploy ideational and material resources. Such identity switching is an attempt at control within one's various network domains and also over the self (as a search for personality). Switching occurs not only between kinship and economic network domains but can include a whole array of professional arenas, where people develop different profiles and articulate storylines on how things should be done in a particular way (Godart and White 2010). The process of identity switching across network domains leads to what can be referred to as a “style,” which emerges from patterned interactions of individuals observing how to behave within and across network domains, including how to strategically get action (White 2008:134). Those who have a good footing in one network domain, through high social capital, plus high ambitions to do well in other network domains, may develop a style that permits them to act as “intrepid brokers” in making important connections (Burt 2010).

Fields of Global Governance: How Transnational Power Elites Can Make Global Governance Intelligible

To make global governance intelligible, we need to study a neglected but crucial phenomenon, namely the development of the social division of labor, both in transnational society and more specifically with regard to the fields of politics, law and economics. This notion of a social division of labor has to be distinguished from the mere technical division of labor. The process in question is not merely one of differentiation in an ever more complex world, nor does it take place in a relative power vacuum. Instead, it involves unequal distributions of resources and the use of influence and power. In other words, we need to examine, far more carefully than in the existing literature, the operators of globalization: those individuals and social and professional groups, rooted in evolving national and transnational societies, who govern global governance. Going behind the facade of global institutions and instead focusing on the arguably deeper structures of global governance, we can also start to explain the emergence of new forms of power as they develop around new transnational power elites operating in, around, and beyond a growing number of international institutions (Kauppi and Madsen 2013). This forum brings together scholars from different but related social scientific disciplines, all of whom are engaged in empirical work which focuses on new forms of global power brokers. We all share a basic skepticism towards the tendency to grand theorizing, both in International Relations (IR) and in the sociology of globalization. We argue that a better way ahead for understanding global political phenomena is to devise tangible objects of empirical inquiry. One such object of inquiry is what we generally refer to as transnational power elites: transnational professionals defined not by their institutional affiliation—for example as international civil servants—but as transnational social groupings. To undertake this more empirically …

Epistemic arbitrage: Transnational professional knowledge in action

This article discusses transnational professional knowledge in action and puts forward a conception of how professionals play off different forms of knowledge to provide policy solutions and, in doing so, generate markets for their services. The key concept is ‘epistemic arbitrage’—when professionals exploit opportunities between bodies of professional knowledge. Professionals mediate between knowledge pools for strategic advantage and, if successful, they can become the ‘arbiters’ on what knowledge and practices are most influential in their area of transnational governance. Organizations also have a demand for epistemic arbitrage, as it permits managers to have more influence over what knowledge is dominant and allows greater control of staff. The concept of epistemic arbitrage is situated in the relevant literature from International Relations, Organization Studies, and Sociology, and this interdisciplinary article brings them together to advance the new transnational sociology of professions. I suggest that transnationality matters for how professionals behave and one can draw a distinction between ‘thin’ transnational environments that are especially permissive of epistemic arbitrage and professional mobilization, and ‘thick’ domestic environments where professional jurisdictions can dampen epistemic arbitrage. The article outlines how transnational professionals can be understood as unique groups that have careers and operate in networks where there is a supply of, and demand for, epistemic arbitrage. It also establishes why ‘knowing well’ is crucial to those who have power in shaping how transnational issues are governed.

Multi-contextual lives: Transnational identifications under mediatised conditions

Influenced by the call for ‘non-media-centric media studies’, and based on interviews with transnational professionals and forced migrants, this article scrutinises transnational identifications under mediatised conditions. With the point of departure in space/mobility and everyday life practices – the common denominators in the perspectives of transnationalism and mediatisation – the analysis shows that mediated deterritorialisation is conditional due to migrants’ sociocultural resources and earlier life experiences. Hence, experiences of war and conflict may reduce the potential of mediated mobilities. The article demonstrates how media are an integrated part of migrants’ multiple identifications with the city they reside in and their country of origin. Besides establishing multiple identifications, the article shows how these identities are linked to particular contexts, practices and socialities in the migrants’ everyday lives. The conclusion is that mediatisation and transnationalism are complex matters yet a transdisciplinary, contextual and ‘non-media-centric’ approach seems to be a promising way to grasp these complexities.