AMD: Migration Management

AMD Submission Issue: MIGRATION ‘MANAGEMENT’: Tensions, Challenges, and Opportunities for Inclusion 

Submission deadline: 1 June 2020

Guest Editors:

• Dimitria Groutsis (The University of Sydney)
• Joana Vassilopoulou (Brunel University & Rotterdam School of Management)
• Mustafa Ozbilgin (Brunel University & Dauphine University)
• Yuka Fujimoto (Sunway University Business School)
• Michàlle E. Mor Barak (University of Southern California)
• Royston Greenwood (University of Alberta)
• Junqi Shi (Sun Yat-Sen University)
  

The term ‘migration management’ (Ghosh, 1993; 2012) has grown from and been used at the macro policy level: drawing attention to the need to rationally adjust migration flows while evoking images of a controlled,linear and coordinated process and system of international mobility. This special issue focuses on acknowledging, critiquing and investigating the global challenges and opportunities surrounding (international) migration management, providing fertile ground for empirical and theoretical exploration and discovery at multiple levels of analysis and within multiple contexts and therefore taking a broader and critical view of the coupling of migration and management.

The terms ‘migrant’, ‘refugee’ and more recently ‘self-initiated expatriate’ are loaded with multifaceted and multilayered imagery which has an ambiguous reality around the individual desire for economic and social opportunity, freedom and safety; the organizational drivers for capitalizing on skills, exploiting vulnerabilities and managing multicultural teams and ethnic minority differences; and the national and supranational drivers for regulating the number and quality of flows or mobilities of workers (migrants or refugees), while driving either social/organizational exclusion or social/organizational inclusion (de la Chaux et. al., 2018; Mor Barak, 2018; Villadsen & Wulff, 2018). These considerations capture aspects of questions raised by business and management scholars examining various dimensions of migration and inclusion from sociological, organizational and managerial perspectives (Al Ariss & Ozbilgin., 2010; Al Ariss et al., 2013; Mor Barak, 2017). However, the management of the opportunities and the barriers experienced by migrant women and men, remain poorly understood (Kofman et. al., 2015; Pio & Essers, 2014), particularly the agency and voice of migrants at work, the role of organizations and various institutional stakeholders in the process of migration management, and the role of stakeholders in the process of workplace inclusion. Each of these focal points remains largely limited to a single level of analysis (Mor Barak, 2018).

Notably, our scoping of extant scholarship highlights that migration and management are rarely studied together, particularly in terms of business and management scholarship. In rare instances when this is done, the examination often remains at a single level of analysis (see for instance O’Connor & Crowley-Henry, 2019), neglecting the deeper and broader complexities, interconnections, challenges and paradoxical dualities that are involved in examining multiple levels of analysis. Given that migration remains poorly understood from the perspective of management and organizations, and that extant theory may be limited as a basis for guiding further understanding, this special issue aims to use empirical exploration and abductive approaches to provide a basis for down-the-road theorizing on this important topic. Additionally, this special issue aims to transcend a single level treatment of migration management and to empirically capture the complexity and rational irrationality of the phenomenon from multiple perspectives. Accordingly, in the spirit of AMD we welcome contributions which engage in ‘exploratory research at the pre-theory stage of knowledge development’

Furthermore, as we see it, the process of, and approach to, migration management also involves investigation of the opportunities and challenges surrounding inclusion. This includes paying attention to: individual/experiential aspects of migration; organizational/management issues associated with the migration process, migrant absorption/integration, socialization and adjustment; and policy-level issues associated with the management of migration including labor-market issues and questions relating to business policy and strategy.

Accordingly, we invite manuscripts which approach the topic of migration management and the prospects for inclusion from multiple levels of analysis (micro, meso, and macro level) and perspectives with a broad and innovative range of methodological and theoretical choices. Within these multiple and intersecting levels of analysis lie the cross-cutting tensions between inclusionary and exclusionary approaches to migration management (Mor Barak, 2018). For example, whose interests do management interventions serve? How is migrant voice and agency considered and empowered? What are the implications of cultural differences, ethnic-minority status, identity and belonging? Partly due to the obvious and urgent crises and contradictions of globalization, inequalities have resurfaced as key concerns of organizational enquiries over the past few years. Most recently, the question of how the interplay between differences and inequalities is structured by political agency and discourses has risen on the agenda. For example, studies have examined migration regimes, focusing on the impact migrants have on the multicultural and multiracial dimensions of the receiving country labor market (Vassilopoulou et. al., 2014; Groutsis et al, 2015; van den Broek et al, 2016). Politics plays a crucial dual role here where, on the one hand, countries voice the humanitarian and cosmopolitan politics of inclusion of migrants, demonstrated by a plethora of integration and social inclusion policies, while on the other hand, these same societies and workplaces practice exclusion. Within such a context, managing migration in its broadest sense potentially incorporates activities that reinforce and maintain the current social and economic order, with profound visible and invisible implications at the workplace level.

The following questions are indicative (but not exhaustive) of the areas of focus for this call for papers.

Micro level:

• How do individuals from diverse backgrounds experience migration? How do the diversity categories intersect with each other and the management of migration?
• How do migrants manage their aspirations, challenges and struggles as individuals and in collectives as part of trade unions, teams and solidarity networks?
• How do migrants manage the process of migration and labor market inclusion given the different migration pathways available to them including for instance: skilled stream migration, temporary visa arrangements and family reunion?
• How does migration affect individuals in terms of their choices and chances of career, work-life interface; well-being; and identity formation for instance; and how does migration link to stigmatized work and workforces? How are these forces managed?
• How does the agency of migrants manifest at work and in the management of migration?
• Whose responsibility is it to manage migration? Who are the change agents and how do they affect change in the process of managing migration at the organizational level?
  

Meso level:

• How do organisations manage the absorption, integration and socialization of migrants and their workplace adjustment?
• How is migration managed at the work/human capital interface? What are the implications of migration on enterprises’ human capital and talent management strategies?
• How do organizations manage the inclusion of migrants at the workplace? What HR policies and practices are more effective at boosting migrant inclusion and facilitating migrant absorption and adjustment?
• What are the complexities, challenges and dualities that stakeholders at the meso level of analysis must address in the process of migration management at the organizational level?
• Are the processes of inclusion/exclusion and stigmatization in the study of the work trajectories of migrant women and men different in different institutional and organizational contexts? How do these processes converge and diverge in different contexts?
• What is the nature of migrant entrepreneurship and how are migrant’s entrepreneurial experiences unique?
  

Macro level:

• What are the differences in the nature and implications of macro level frames such as legal vs. illegal/documented vs. undocumented migration; internal vs. international migration on the management of migration at the organizational level?
• What is the role of global recruitment agencies? How do they operate in perpetuating inclusionary or exclusionary forms of controlled and managed migration?
• What is the role of governments and international organizations in the management of migration at the organizational level?
• How can we formulate global migration management policies in organizations, such as for example in MNCs ?
• How do national policies surrounding social integration impact on and shape workplace integration, inclusion and interactions between organizational members?
  

Prior to submitting your manuscript, please ensure that it is consistent with the mission of the journal by reviewing AMD’s guidelines for authors (http://aom.org/Publications/AMD/AMD-Information-for-Contributors.aspx). To submit a manuscript, please make sure that visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/AMD When submitting, please remember to select Manuscript Type as Special Issue: Migration from the drop down menu. Manuscripts should be formatted according to the AMD Style Guide.

For a list of the sources cited in this Call for Papers, please contact Dimitria Groutsis