Abstract

Keywords

۱٫ Global migrants, the context of work, and IB/IM research

۲٫ Individual-level research on migration in IB and IM

۳٫ The future of migration research: breaking away from disciplinary closure and integrating different levels of analysis

۴٫ Concluding remarks and further implications for future research

References

Abstract

Global migration has always impacted individuals, organizations, and societies, but the attention given to migration in international business and management (IB/IM) has not been commensurate with its importance. In this article we detail why a focus on migration is needed, how this topic has been addressed so far in the field, and especially how it could contribute to generating knowledge and relevant insights for practice and policy. We underline the relevance and significance of the phenomenon by introducing a collection of studies in a special issue on global migration and its implication for IB/IM.

Global migration touches nearly all corners of the world. At the time this article was written, 272 million people were residing in a country other than that of their birth (International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2020). This number was a significant increase from the 258 million just three years earlier (US-DESA, 2017), when we saw the need to call for a deliberate focus on global migration in international business (IB) and management (IM) —to both acknowledge and further stimulate work on this important phenomenon. Indeed, the migrant stock has been on an upward trend for decades: The number of migrants in 2019 was almost quadruple the 75 million counted in 1965 and almost triple the 105 million recorded in 1985 (International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2020; King, 2012). The growth in migrants has begun to outpace population growth (United Nations & Department of Economic & Social Affairs, 2019), leading to important demographic changes. In some countries, migrants have become more than a negligible minority (e.g., 21 % of the population in the Oceania region, and 16 % in North America) and in some they have even become a majority (e.g., Gulf Cooperation Council States). Therefore, some unsurprisingly argue that we live in the “Age of Migration” (Castles & Miller, 1993, 2009), a period during which international migration has globalized, diversified, and become increasingly politicized (2009).

However, this situation can also be viewed from another perspective: The world’s “stock” of 272 million international migrants represents only 3.5 % of the global population. In other words, most of the world’s population is not composed of migrants. Moreover, the COVID-19 global pandemic that began in 2020 and is ongoing at the time of writing this article may further change the migration landscape. Lockdowns and quarantines have prompted legitimate questions about the future of migration, at least in the short-term. Nevertheless, economic hardship or inequalities, along with social and political changes triggered by different approaches to dealing with COVID-19, may initiate new flows of migration in the long-term. Migration has always been connected to acute and long-term economic and social events but its direction has never been easy to predict (International Organization for Migration (IOM, 2020).