Search results

This paper shows the benefits of multi-sited ethnography for global migration studies in management, in particular when cosmopolitan self-initiated expatriates meet a local setting.

The author conducted a multi-sited ethnography to trace how a local East German research organization’s well-intended approach to integration becomes condescending.

Highly skilled non-Western migrant employees who represent English-language cosmopolitanism are framed as negatively “foreign” by corporate discourses and practices. This phenomenon can only be understood if one follows the interconnections of language power, White subalternity and compressed modernity and if one considers the immediate surroundings, the historical context of East German identity and wider migration frames in Germany.

Multi-sited ethnography, if power-sensitive and historically-aware, is suitable for understanding the multi-level phenomenon of global migration and identifying limiting framing-effects on management and organizations. Researcher standpoint is both its strength and its limitation.

Managers and companies can “imagine otherwise” and move beyond the unquestioned dominant frames limiting their problem analyses and, consequently, their strategies and actions.

Managers and companies are enabled to move beyond individual- and corporate-level approaches to managing migration at work and can thus take up full social responsibility in the sense of good corporate citizenship on a global level. Global mobility researchers can work towards an inclusive migration theory.

Multi-sited ethnography, in particular, one that is power-sensitive and historically aware, is an approach not yet applied to migration in the context of management and organization. By means of an example, this paper illustrates the value of this approach and enables researchers to understand its main principles. Compressed modernity and White subalternity are introduced as novel concepts structuring migration, and language power emerges as relevant far beyond the scope of the multinational corporation.

In this chapter, we purport that “excessive entitlement” is directly linked to concepts of self/identity with the belief that how we come to regard self in relation to the Other is implicitly and explicitly taught. We view excessive entitlement as a manifestation of the privilege and infallibility of educators who take for granted the correctness of their actions. Through a critical examination of personal stories, theoretical literature, and common school practices, we create a collage of thoughts that highlight some of the complex factors that intersect with excessive entitlement, albeit considering what may be determined “excessive” and by whom.

We use a dialogic format, in this chapter, but do not engage in an actual duoethnography. We address the following questions: How does one (a) create an ethical habitus, constantly being aware of one's responsibility toward the Other, (b) reflexively and humbly practice self-accountability in a manner that recognizes one's positionality and status that is grounded in historical privileged, personal power dynamics, and systems of oppression, (c) develop dialogic ways of being in a neoliberal ethos of systemic accountability within prescriptive curricula, and (d) as teacher educators, assist students in understanding and practicing such dispositions.

We discuss how developing dialogic ways of being, treating others with respect, practicing humility in the face of other people, and learning to respect and build on difference disrupt excessive entitlement. We also explore complexities around the attempt to create “safe spaces” for students, given risks of self-deception and appropriation of students' meaning-making.