Listen to Me,Learn with Me: International Migration and Knowledge Transfer

Existing research on the economic contribution of individual international labour migrants has been couched largely in terms of skills, and has focused on mobility within transnational corporations. This article explores some of the broader links between the literatures on international migration and management, and addresses four main questions: is migrant knowledge selective, is it distinctive, what are the barriers to migrant knowledge transfer and what are the implications for individual migrants and firms. This largely conceptual review is informed by three main premises: the value of adopting a knowledge as opposed to a skills perspective on migration; the importance of examining the cycle of migration rather than static snapshots at particular stages, and the need to consider inter‐firm and extra‐firm migration, as well as intra‐firm mobility.