Corporate Migration and New Immigrant Settlements in the Global South: Korean Expatriates in Southeast Asia

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 12. Highly skilled / white collar migration

Abstract

Corporate migration, driven by the expansion of transnational corporations (TNCs), has become a key mechanism for the international mobility of skilled workers. Much of the existing literature interprets this phenomenon through the global city paradigm, emphasizing advanced producer services in major urban nodes of the Global North. This framework, however, reflects a Western bias, privileging advanced capitalist centers while overlooking the role of corporate actors in generating migration to emerging destinations in the Global South. Moreover, research frequently frames mobility in terms of host-society pull factors rather than as flows actively produced by corporate strategies.
This paper examines South Korean corporate expatriates as key agents in the formation of new immigrant communities in the Global South, drawing on empirical studies of Korean communities in Southeast Asia. Beginning in the 1970s, South Korea’s export-oriented development strategy led major conglomerates to deploy expatriates abroad to oversee subsidiaries, particularly in contexts characterized by weak institutional capacity and limited prior foreign presence. In such destinations, especially where preexisting Korean diasporas were absent, local communities formed around temporary expatriates and their families, despite relatively low rates of long-term settlement or naturalization.
Although expatriates are often portrayed as privileged sojourners, their presence generates lasting urban and social effects. Through institutional demands, class-based practices, and strategies for navigating precarity, they help establish ethnic infrastructure that supports subsequent migration, transforming temporary, firm-driven mobility into more durable settlement pathways. The paper thus reconceptualizes TNC activity as a form of “migration infrastructure” (Xiang and Lindquist 2014) that initiates, organizes, and stabilizes mobility to emerging urban centers in the Global South. Empirical cases of Korean corporate expatriates in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam demonstrate both shared mechanisms and context-specific variations in how TNC activity fosters community formation and reshapes migration dynamics beyond traditional gateways.

Author

• Jeong Taek Lim, University at Albany, SUNY