History and Future of Migration in International Business: From River to Tidal Flows

Migration research is commonly the domain of disciplines outside of international business (IB), such as economics, psychology, sociology, and political science. We argue that IB’s limited contributions to migration research so far may be partly due to a limited metaphor for understanding it, which we attempt to update. Akin to the small, unidirectional flow of rivers, IB’s foundational migration-related research was largely about the home-to-host flow of expatriates. Instead, we propose that tidal flows more accurately represent migration with respect to being both multidirectional and larger in scale. This inclusive conceptualization of migrants—referring to anyone who moves across international borders, including refugees, economic immigrants, temporary foreign workers, and expatriates—ought to be central to both the research and practice of IB. We illustrate how the tidal flows metaphor generates new research questions with respect to international flows of social ties, capital, innovation, and knowledge.