Guest editorial: Living in a “bubble”: global working communities and insulation in mobile contexts

Gaggiotti, Hugo; Case, Peter; Lauring, Jakob

doi:10.1108/jgm-03-2023-101

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This uneasy tension between inclusivity and exclusivity arises in part from international schools’ traditional links to privileged expatriate enclaves. There is an expanding literature exploring the ways in which globally mobile communities insulate themselves from the local sociocultural community: the so-called expatriate ‘bubble’ (Gaggiotti et al, 2023). In part, this may act as a mechanism whereby people protect themselves from encountering otherness and othering (Guttormsen, 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In part, this may act as a mechanism whereby people protect themselves from encountering otherness and othering (Guttormsen, 2018). The transient nature of the communities thereby created is captured by the metaphor of an ephemeral bubble (Gaggiotti et al, 2023). An emerging literature has critically analysed the claimed inclusivity of international schooling, suggesting instead that such institutions are elitist and Westernised.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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International Schools and De-globalisation: Exploring the tensions during the Covid-19 crisis

Bailey,

Gibson

2024

Jnl of Research in Internatl Education

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This paper explores the thesis of de-globalisation in relation to international education. Through interrogating accounts of international school leadership during the Covid-19 crisis, the tension between international expectations and localised realities is charted, with four central tenets of internationalism undermined by the pandemic experience. It is argued that the Covid-19 crisis, ostensibly a single global event, resulted in the fractalisation of international education; the conceptualisation of unified internationalism was undermined by the inherently localised material effects of the pandemic. In place of an internationalism that is unified, transcendent, inclusive and connected, international school leaders’ accounts of leading through the pandemic focused on their sense that their schools were fractured, rooted, privileged and isolated. It is suggested that this international crisis demonstrates the precarious nature of the respatialising of the global that is intrinsic to international schooling.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

International Schools and De-globalisation: Exploring the tensions during the Covid-19 crisis

Bailey,

Gibson

2024

Jnl of Research in Internatl Education

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“…As the call for papers for this special issue of the Journal of Global Mobility asserts, “anecdotal evidence suggests that internationally mobile workers often form isolated nation-based communities that shield them from the otherness of their foreign surroundings” (Gaggiotti et al ., 2021). The phenomenon of insulated communities of globally mobile professionals and employees is typically referred to as the existence of so-called expatriate bubbles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A bubble in the making: symbolic boundaries in a Finnish expatriate community

Peltonen

Huhtinen

2023

JGM

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PurposeWhile there is anecdotal evidence that internationally mobile workers often form isolated nation-based communities or “expatriate bubbles,” previous academic scholarship on the expatriate communities and their subjective boundaries is limited. The primary purpose of this article is to advance the theoretical or conceptual understanding of expatriate communities as bubbles.Design/methodology/approachAs developed by Lamont and Molnár (2002), the theory of symbolic boundaries is applied and set to scrutinize the production and maintenance of insulated expatriate communities. Empirically, an ethnographic study of a community of Finnish expatriates in a Southeast Asian country is undertaken to describe how symbolic boundaries are constructed.FindingsThe main theoretical implication of the paper is the recognition that expatriates themselves are involved in creating the “bubble.” The boundaries separating the national expatriate community are not externally imposed but can be viewed as consequences of the active boundary work of the expatriates. The empirical study demonstrates how the Finnish expatriates negotiated the symbolic boundaries of their community, drawing on cultural, moral and spatial modalities in different levels of boundary work.Originality/valueThere need to be more systematic attempts to develop a theoretically grounded understanding of insulated expatriate communities and their boundaries. This article contributes to the sociological conceptualization of expatriate bubbles by utilizing the symbolic boundary approach, which adds perspective to the embryonic theory of the subjective boundaries of expatriate communities. The multiplicity of different types of symbolic boundaries and their modalities suggests that an expatriate bubble is rarely a finished state or structure.

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Global talent responses to city internationalization: Expatriate strategies of navigating institutional practices of macro talent management

Bjerregaard

2024

Journal of Management & Organization

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This article advances research at the intersection of macro talent management (TM) and the career capital of expatriates. It does so by reporting the findings of a qualitative study of self-initiated expatriates’ strategies of engaging the practices of a city-level TM institution to facilitate career capital formation. Strategies of engaging city-level practices of TM have diverse, at times paradoxical implications. Self-initiated expatriates employ strategies of engaging institutional practices to (1) support global career mobility without considerable adjustment, (2) develop local networks and careers in the host country, and (3) even actively escaping an expanding sphere of international institutions. The article explains how dynamics of career capital formation occur as (un)anticipated consequences of being exposed to institutional logics of adopted TM practices. Corporate and market-oriented logics of TM realized in an international city institution ambiguously combined with community logics, for some self-initiated expatriates resembling those of traditional expatriate institutions.

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Guest editorial: Living in a “bubble”: global working communities and insulation in mobile contexts

Cited by 3 publications

References 21 publications

International Schools and De-globalisation: Exploring the tensions during the Covid-19 crisis

International Schools and De-globalisation: Exploring the tensions during the Covid-19 crisis

A bubble in the making: symbolic boundaries in a Finnish expatriate community

Global talent responses to city internationalization: Expatriate strategies of navigating institutional practices of macro talent management

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