Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a social figure center stage that has increasingly become an object of attention whenever questions of economic globalization, increasing transnational mobility, and questions of elite formation at a global scale are discussed: the expatriate manager. It also presents empirical analyses of expatriate managers' professional and everyday lifeworlds by critically discussing several bodies of literature, each of which focuses on a specific aspect of expatriates' working and living abroad. The book offers a differentiated, empirically grounded picture of the emerging paradoxes of the orientations and everyday practices of expatriate managers and their families in the private sphere. It analyzes how expatriates negotiate difference in the professional sphere by focusing on everyday management practices within the multinational corporation (MNC). The book investigates and compares the impact of different host countries and host localities on expatriates' modes of dealing with difference.