Welfare Management of Corporate Transnational High-Skilled Labor Migrants and their Families

by Marta Padovan-Özdemir

In the late 1960s the Danish government invited Southern European, Turkish and Pakistani manual labour migrants to cover the labour shortages in the Danish industry during the economic boom. They were expected to stay as long as work was available to them, but in the time of economic crisis during the 1970s many of them settled and brought their families to Denmark, which seemed to have caused the so-called integration problem. During the last ten years, new high-skilled labour migrants have been welcomed in Denmark by government officials as well as by private corporations – the so-called 'international talents'. The ambitions and efforts to recruit and retain 'international talents' have effected a whole business of private consultancy businesses and public offices that offer special services in the accommodation of corporate labour migrants and their families.

This recasting of labour migrants has affected the welfare management regime. In this regime, I see a shift from welfare management through 'integration' to welfare management through 'retention' of talents.

When studying welfare management of corporate high-skilled transnational labour migrants and their families, place as a socially, culturally, politically, judicially and economically bounded space seems to appear quite crucial to take into considerations. Therefore, this research project will be designed as a comparative case study of the welfare management of corporate high-skilled transnational labour migrants and their families from the same global corporation at three different sites (places).

The ambition of this research project is to 1) contribute with new understandings of the complex cross-sectorial efforts and investments in managing the welfare of corporate high-skilled labour migrants and their families, 2) develop our understanding of the organization and management of transnational livelihoods, and 3) broaden our understanding of the on-going (trans)formation of the modern welfare nation-state in a globalizing world, where places of center and periphery continuously changes.