Presenter(s): Shuxi Wu − Anthropology, Asian Studies, Economics, International Studies
Faculty Mentor(s): Tuong Vu
Oral Session 3S
Research Area: Social Science
Funding: UROP Mini-grant
Anthropological examination of transnational migration up to current day has focused primarily on the clearly disadvantaged (low-skill workers vulnerable to exploitation) or the driving figures of globalization (what has been termed the “transnational capitalist class”), whereas the middle strata of skilled employees has received scant attention. In policy debates, skilled
foreign employees are seen as displacers of American workers. In economic analysis, professional knowledge is regarded as valuable capital. It is imperative to put these fields in dialogue with each other for a non-fractured image of highly skilled foreign workers. This ethnographic study of relocated, highly skilled East and Southeast Asian employees or “global hires” of two Portland-based transnational corporations (Nike, Inc. and Columbia Sportswear Company) examines the experience and agency of global hires in the transnational circuit. I analyze how the status of foreign workers with special knowledge construe both leverages and obstacles in the employees’ relocation experience and result in a variety of strategies for negotiation of better opportunities within their structural position. Drawing theoretical inspirations from global commodity chain (GCC) analysis and discussions of organizational migration, I first attempt to show the methods and rationale with which corporations condition the transnational labor flow in the new knowledge economy. I then discuss global hires’ strategies in negotiating for mobility and workplace niche – strategies informed by agentic considerations of possibilities and limitations attached to their status; Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and practice will be seminal here.