Unpacking the Power and Spatial Dynamics Within the Global Mobility Literature: Towards a More Critical Theorizing

Defining Key Concepts and Their Interrelationships

In this section, we introduce three interrelated concepts from Massey’s (1994) power geometry framework—power of mobility, hierarchy of mobility, and control over mobility—and explain how they intersect together to shape who gets to move, under what conditions, and with what consequences. By unpacking these dynamics, we demonstrate that mobility is not a neutral process, but one that actively reflects and reproduces global power asymmetries.

Power of mobility emphasizes who can move and how. It represents an individual’s ability to move freely across borders, choose their destination, and possess the necessary qualifications and legal rights to move across boundaries (Bélanger & Silvey, 2020; Hammer & Adham, 2023; Skeggs, 2004; Zheng & Smith, 2024). It’s about access to mobility itself — often shaped by socioeconomic status, nationality, gender, race, and other structural factors. For example, a highly skilled expatriate with a global employment package and visa sponsorship has a high power of mobility; a low-wage migrant worker with limited documentation does not.

Hierarchy of mobility refers to the structured ranking of individuals based on their access to mobility (Gustafsson & Engblom, 2024; Tesfahuney, 1998). It refers to the social value and legitimacy assigned to different types of mobility. Some forms of movement (e.g., international corporate assignments) are celebrated and rewarded, while others (e.g., refugee movements or low-wage labor migration) are stigmatized or criminalized. It is important to note that while power of mobility is about the ability to move, hierarchy of mobility is about how different mobilities are socially ranked, regardless of whether people can move freely or not. For example, a corporate relocation is viewed as strategic and desirable; a domestic worker crossing borders may be perceived as a security threat or economic burden.

Control over mobility reflects and reinforces multiple agents’ power over movements. It refers to who governs, regulates, or restricts movement — including states, organizations, and institutions that enable or constrain mobility through policies, borders, contracts, and surveillance. This focuses on the agents and mechanisms that structure mobility, not on the mover themselves. For example, a multinational corporation deciding who is eligible for global assignments exerts control over employee mobility. Governments controlling visas and border crossings also exercise this form of power.

Recognizing the differences, while understanding the interconnectedness between these three concepts, is essential in unpacking the complexity of global mobility within GTM. In sum, the power of mobility, as we will show next, is not evenly distributed, leading to a hierarchy of mobility where certain roles, skill sets, or individual characteristics have greater freedom and opportunity to navigate global work opportunities. This hierarchy is, in turn, a reflection of the multi-actors’ (e.g. individual, organizations, state) control over mobility—how it strategizes the placement and movement of labor to align with individual, business, and national objectives. We tease the intricacies of our framework as it relates to GTM further below.

Conceptual Connections to GTM Research

As shown in Figure 1, our conceptual framework highlights that global mobility can be facilitated or hindered by the interaction of various power relations within a designated time & place, and with constraints on movements (space) - which are rarely accounted for in the GTM literature. The spatial organization of the figure further reinforces these interdependencies. The three key dimensions—power of mobility (ranging from low (e.g., individuals facing restricted movement) to high (e.g., those freely mobile, typically emphasized in GTM literature), hierarchy of mobility (which reflects societal perceptions—ranging from positive (e.g., corporate elites) to negative (e.g., refugees or displaced persons), and control over mobility (conceptualized through relational power and networks operating at macro (e.g., states, UN), meso (e.g., organizations), and micro (e.g., individuals) levels) —are depicted as interlocking forces rather than isolated variables. Arrows in the figure illustrate the dynamic and recursive nature of these relationships, while the encompassing circular frame is meant to evoke Massey’s (1994) notion of power-geometry, emphasizing that mobility is always spatially and temporally situated, and that immobility is not the absence of movement but the outcome of systemic constraints. Our framework extends this by centering the relational and situated nature of mobility—demonstrating that GTM strategies cannot be meaningfully designed or assessed without accounting for the spatial and temporal power dynamics that enable or restrict movement.

The characteristics of the mover—such as their nationality, class, profession, gender, and caregiving status—shape their [power of mobility] and position within the [hierarchy of mobility], determining not just whether they can move, but also how that movement is perceived and valued. These individual-level attributes do not operate in isolation; they intersect with structural factors that exert [control over mobility], such as state immigration policies, employer selection processes, and global labor market hierarchies. This intersection reinforces existing inequalities. Those who already possess privileged characteristics—for example, a highly skilled male professional from the Global North with no care responsibilities—are more likely to be offered mobility opportunities by multinational firms, have their visas fast-tracked by states, and be celebrated as globally mobile “talent” ([high power of mobility] and [high position in the hierarchy of mobility]). In contrast, those with disadvantaged characteristics—such as low-wage migrant workers from the Global South, women with caregiving duties, or individuals from politically unstable countries—face layers of structural control that restrict their movement ([low power of mobility] intersecting with [strong control over mobility]): limited visa pathways, exploitative migration regimes, and employer sponsorship schemes that tie them to precarious conditions. These intersecting dynamics mean that those with [low power of mobility] are often subjected to the most restrictive [control over mobility], while their mobility is devalued or rendered invisible within organizational and policy frameworks ([low position in the hierarchy of mobility]) (Anderson, 2010; Bloch & McKay, 2016). Meanwhile, those with [high power of mobility] and [high hierarchical status] are granted facilitated, supported, and prestigious forms of movement.

However, what is key here—and, where our framework most directly speaks to global talent management strategies—is the recognition that these mobility dynamics are not neutral or incidental. While the GTM literature often focuses on the deployment of ‘global talent,’ it tends to treat mobility as an unproblematic process—failing to interrogate how access to mobility is unevenly distributed and conditioned by intersecting power structures. Our framework makes visible the underlying dynamics—power of mobility, hierarchy of mobility, and control over mobility—that influence who can move, under what conditions, and how that movement is socially and institutionally valued. In doing so, the framework introduces two critical pathways depicted in the figure through directional arrows. On the one hand, if these mobility dynamics are recognized and taken seriously, they can inform and influence GTM strategies, pushing them to become more reflexive, equitable, and inclusive. On the other hand, when these dynamics remain invisible, as they often do in mainstream GTM literature and practice, the strategies that emerge tend to reflect and reproduce dominant power hierarchies. They privilege already-mobile, elite professionals—typically from the Global North—while rendering invisible the constrained, precarious, or devalued mobilities of others, such as migrant workers, individuals with caregiving responsibilities, or individuals from conflict-affected regions. Understanding how power, hierarchy, and control intersect to shape global mobility is essential for designing GTM strategies that are equitable and inclusive. If these dynamics remain unacknowledged, GTM practices risk reproducing—and, even legitimizing—the very hierarchies they often claim to transcend. In this way, our framework challenges GTM to move beyond a managerial focus on efficiency and alignment with corporate goals, toward a more critical understanding of how global mobility is itself shaped by and embedded in power. We unpack this framework as it relates to GTM in more details below:

Power of Mobility and GTM

Contemporary global talent management debates rarely address the power asymmetries that shape talent mobility, as there are assumptions that strategic GTM operations are based on free movement and free choices, and glosses over issues of power relations in work engagement (Guttormsen & Lauring, 2022; Hajro et al., 2022). The current literature further downplays other diverse mobilization forms, characterized by displacement, refugee overflows, and migrationary movements of lower skilled persons (Bris et al., 2023). This, in turn, highlights how scholars of global mobility foreground the extreme socio-spatial constraints encountered by labor migrants, undocumented people, asylum seekers, and refugees, as well as the modalities of agency these people can exert in the face of limited choices, immobility, and waiting (notable exception; Guttormsen & Lauring, 2022). Instead, most of the literature assumes employees have the freedom to move and select the destination they want to work in, possess high level of education, and have the legal right to enter the foreign country (Jooss, McDonnell, & Conroy, 2021, 2022; Renshaw et al., 2021). Failing to acknowledge that many forms of labor across the global economy are constrained by limited mobility—and that intersecting signifiers of gender, race, and class further complicate mobility research—undermines a comprehensive understanding of GTM.

Building on this, global mobility debate tends to exist in a contextual vacuum, seemingly untouched by socio-historical and geo-political processes of colonialism, and their continuing global implications (Jooss et al., 2022). The term ‘coloniality’ is used here since global mobility literature is written from a Global North perspective, an epistemological privilege that assumes to be speaking for most expatriates and migrants, thus marginalizing the many types of labor and laboring (Guttormsen & Lauring, 2022), and the knowledge and experiences of employees from the Global South. This is underpinned by assumptions of a neoliberal political economy that is the dominant model most adhered to across the globe. This position and approach have been associated with the building of greater labor inequalities in developed economies, which tends to also support the notion of ‘managerialist philosophy’, thereby requiring organizations to allocate talent leaders and disconnect from myriad labor mobility categories (Isichei & Collings, 2018; Tung, 2016). As we realize the interconnectedness of power of mobility with the hierarchy that it ensues, we discuss this in more detail next.

Hierarchy of Mobility and GTM

In essence, global talent management is a way of ranking and rating employees. This acknowledges the presence of hierarchies of mobility and differentiated mobilities, which occur due to where one is positioned, and where there are avenues, or not, of being able to move, or whether someone is rendered immobile. These dynamics are particularly evident in the typologies of foreign labor, where distinctions between the global laborers shape their mobility. We will discuss this in more details next.

Control Over Mobility and GTM

Decisions over mobility are exercised across multi-scalar levels, incorporating international organizations, like the UN, MNCs, state governments, and various civil society organizations (Isichei & Collings, 2018). Business organizations and human resources policies have been the primary focus of expatriate management research (Isichei & Collings, 2018), local and global political processes, and governmental institutions, such as immigration and taxation authorities, also guide the admittance of individuals from different countries, creating possibilities and limitations (Guttormsen & Lauring, 2022). Compliance with tax, immigration, and other legal requirements are major challenges involved in managing the global workforce (Isichei & Collings, 2018; Valk, 2019). As an example, frameworks, such as visas and permits, serve as a macro-level control mechanism that directly influences individual mobility at the meso - and micro-levels, constraining or facilitating access to work. Work authorization is most associated with skilled migrants’ access to qualification-matched employment, employment mobility, and even professional development and salary negotiations (Shirmohammadi et al., 2019). Additionally, barriers within more tangible structures, such as restrictions on travel routes to and from certain countries, can significantly shape the flow of expatriate populations (Guttormsen & Lauring, 2022). Beyond legal restrictions, corporate actors also exercise a significant degree of control over mobility, shaping not only who moves, but also where, when, and under what conditions mobility occurs.

The supporting infrastructure for global work can similarly be structured along physical and temporal lines. Physically, Bloch and McKay (2016) note ‘uneven opportunities to migrate, with border controls aimed at excluding some groups while the global elite can move freely; the growth of forced migration as a consequence of North/South relations and the need of capitalism for low-paid and often precarious workers’ (p. 5). Along with organizational structures and managerial preferences, recruitment biases, for example, can as well shape an individual’s ability to move across borders or advance within the organization. For instance, employers’ selection biases against countries of origin decreases skilled migrants’ access to potential qualification-matched employment (Shirmohammadi et al., 2019). Temporally, mobility is regulated through time-sensitive mechanisms, such as contract lengths and business travel schedules, which determine not only how long an individual can stay in each location, but also the frequency and flexibility of their movement. For globally mobile professionals, for example, decisions about when to travel are often dictated by their line manager (Isichei & Collings, 2018), demonstrating how organizational agents impose temporal constraints on mobility. The described dynamics further illustrate the multifaceted nature of responsibilities for flows, movements, and mobilities, shaped by intersecting macro and meso-level actors. As such, the responsibilities for flows, movements, and mobilities, are multi-faceted and emanate, not just from governments and international agencies, they are also managed and controlled via MNCs, who play a crucial role in the selection and employment of labor (Hajro et al., 2022; Jooss, McDonnell, & Conroy, 2021). Hence, the interplay between the agency of migrants and the structural context within, which they maneuver, should remain at the heart of how we understand talent mobility.

A Critical Perspective on Global Mobility

Massey’s notion of power geometry offers a critical lens through which to interpret the dynamics outlined in our conceptual framework. At its core, power geometry emphasizes how power operates unevenly across space, shaping who moves, who doesn’t, and who controls the conditions of mobility. In Massey’s terms, mobility is not just about movement—it is about the power over movement. Our framework - presented in Figure 1- aligns with Massey’s argument by illustrating that GTM is not a neutral or equal process, but one deeply embedded in hierarchies and systemic power structures. Just as Massey argues that some individuals are “in charge of” mobility (e.g., global business elites), while others are “forced to move” (e.g., migrant laborers), we highlight that the dominant discourse in GTM privileges those at the top of the global hierarchy—typically white, professional, elite expatriates—while rendering the precarious and invisible laborers largely absent. For instance, and circling back to Figure 1, GTM frameworks that focus primarily on “high potentials”, or “global talent pools”, tend to valorize those already positioned with high power of mobility and high societal status—often Western-educated, highly skilled professionals who match dominant corporate ideals. This selective visibility not only sidelines individuals with lower power of mobility (such as migrant care workers, low-wage laborers, or those navigating restrictive visa regimes), but also renders the structural constraints shaping their immobility as irrelevant to GTM discourses. In doing so, GTM strategies may unwittingly reinforce global labor segmentation and deepen inequalities across nationality, gender, and class. Conversely, when GTM strategies are informed by an understanding of how mobility is structured by intersecting power dynamics (as illustrated in Figure 1), they can begin to challenge the exclusionary practices that underpin traditional notions of talent. This might involve rethinking who is recognized as “global talent,” questioning the geographic and demographic assumptions embedded in talent pipelines, and accounting for the social and institutional barriers that constrain access to mobility. Our conceptual framework (Figure 1) thus highlights the interplay between power, hierarchies, and control over global mobility, centralizing power as a key factor influencing mobility dynamics. In many instances, power dynamics intersect with hierarchies to govern the control and distribution of global mobility opportunities. The control over global mobility is not only exercised through organizations, but as we show, it is also through individuals and national/regulatory systems that reinforce existing power imbalances and perpetuate inequalities in access to movement - echoing Massey’s observation that spatial mobility is tightly controlled and politically charged. In this way, Figure 1 serves not only as a conceptual map of mobility, but also as a critical tool for interrogating and reshaping GTM. It calls for a shift from managing mobility as a technical HR process to understanding it as a socially and politically embedded phenomenon—one that has real implications for equity, representation, and justice in the global workforce. We discuss more next.

Broader and Inclusive Conceptualization of Global Mobility in GTM

Our framework (Figure 1) underscores the importance of critically examining the distribution of power and its impacts on global mobility and GTM strategies. Our critique thus draws attention to the exclusionary rhetoric of all that is non-white, precarious, and invisible in the global mobility literature - building up on a point that Massey makes when she discusses how time-space compression works differently for different people, depending on their position in the global power geometry. As demonstrated earlier, the majority of GTM literature focuses on elite prompting us to advocate for a more inclusive discourse in GTM, that encompasses laborers positioned in the lower echelons of the hierarchy, thus revealing disparities in mobility opportunities. By centering the experiences of laborers and precarious workers, our framework not only exposes how spatial mobility is patterned by power but also demands a reconceptualization of GTM to reflect the multi-scalar and asymmetrical nature of global movement—just as Massey urged scholars to consider the uneven geographies of globalization.

Massey’s framework also reveals how talent is positioned differently across global geographies. While executives and high-skilled workers from the global North may be celebrated as “global leaders”, talent from the global South is often framed as supplemental or peripheral. This reinforces colonial hierarchies of knowledge and labor, rather than dismantling them. Further, GTM practices risk reproducing a neoliberal logic that values individuals based on their market adaptability, rather than addressing the systems that restrict others. By seeing mobility as socially constituted, GTM scholars and practitioners can better recognize how race, class, gender, and geography intersect to structure whose mobility is enabled, whose is constrained, and whose is altogether invisible. A broader and inclusive perspective, therefore, calls for GTM to move beyond efficiency-driven approaches, and toward strategies that actively disrupt mobility regimes grounded in racialized and gendered global hierarchies. This means not just expanding access to mobility, but also transforming how value, skill, and potential are defined and by whom.

Hence, the meaning of global mobility, in this context, cannot be fixed in advance, but must emerge through an analysis of the experiences of these invisible and precarious laborers in specific spatial locales (Al Ariss & Syed, 2011; Cerdin et al., 2014; Sarpong & Maclean, 2021). We draw attention to the precarity of mobility, and the widening inequalities in all societies as a contemporary economic feature (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2018; Piketty, 2020), often neglected in the global mobility literature, and posit it as a central axis around how we need to think of mobility and GTM strategy. This, in turn, will have implications for how we analyze the movement of talent (Al Ariss et al., 2014), and by extension, the context in which that mobility is unfolding (Castells, 2000; Sklair, 2002). As such, an inquiry around global talent management will need to focus on the lives of the global laborers, in ways not determined by what the current literature asserts as universal (Metcalfe, 2019) and expand to include those that are marginalized.

Contextualized and Relational Conceptualization of Global Mobility in GTM

An important aspect of using Massey’s power of geometry lens is to highlight assumptions related to socio-cultural and geo-political context. The global mobility writings assume a neoliberal market economy and ignore contextualized factors that are shaping international business systems. Through Massey’s framework, we can appreciate how mobility is socially constituted—not a mere act of geographical transition, but a dynamic process tied to power, privilege, and positionality. The lens allows us to tease out new insights into how different actors are differently positioned within these global flows, based on histories of colonialism, geopolitical marginalization, and socio-economic stratification. For instance, highly skilled expatriates from Western countries often benefit from seamless mobility, corporate sponsorship, and visa privileges, while equally skilled professionals from the Global South—particularly women or racialized individuals—face multiple, intersecting barriers to global career opportunities (Crowley-Henry et al., 2018). Their mobility is not only constrained but also devalued within dominant GTM frameworks that fail to recognize non-elite or non-Western talent as “strategic”. Importantly, this shifts the focus away from static notions of space and territory, challenging us to conceptualize place as relational and constituted through global networks, rather than fixed coordinates on a map. In doing so, this framework opens the door for more critical, inclusive, and intersectional grounded theorizing in GTM.

Massey argues against conceptualizing space as pre-social, closed ‘containers’, in which other processes happen, and instead approaches space as relational, dynamic, and socially produced. Like identities, places or spaces at all scales are precarious achievements constituted through relations and interactions between multiple entities from individuals to institutions. For example, global cities like London, Dubai, or Singapore are frequently portrayed in GTM literature as natural hubs of global talent. However, from Massey’s (1994) perspective, their status as “strategic talent destinations” is not fixed or inherent—it is socially produced through the uneven power relations that shape global flows of people, capital, and ideas. These cities become talent spaces not merely because of their infrastructure or geography, but because of the interactions between powerful actors—such as multinational corporations, state immigration regimes, and elite mobile professionals—who actively shape and benefit from these flows. At the same time, less visible actors, like low-wage migrant workers, are also part of the mobility system, yet occupy a different position in the geometry of power: they are essential to the functioning of these spaces, but lack control over their movement, and are rarely recognized as part of GTM systems. In Massey’s terms, this example illustrates how space is relational—constructed through power-laden mobilities that are deeply stratified—and, how individuals are differently positioned within these spaces depending on their social, economic, and geopolitical status.

Space is thus always under construction, continuously being made; never finished, places and spaces are ‘temporary constellations’, constituted by a heterogeneous set of “raw materials”, such as physical features and the built environment, individuals and social groups, political coalitions, businesses, and economic structures (Pierce et al., 2011, p. 59). Given its co-constitutive relationship with social processes, space or ‘space-making’ is inherently political, and Massey’s work links spaces and places to “the power-geometries they both enact and exist within” (2005, p. 168). The notion of power geometries aims to capture that “not only is space utterly imbued with and a product of relations of power, but power itself has a geography” (Massey, 2009, p. 18). This allows us to appreciate the dynamic way that ‘mobility is socially’ constituted in different geo-political and socio-cultural contexts and tease out important new aspects that are impacting global political economy, and all forms of business development that have never been named, but are central to understanding new insights into the conceptualization of a field of study.

In the next section, we discuss the practical implications of our research.