MIGRANT WORKERS AND EXPATRIATE ASSIGNMENTS

Migrant labor involves the movement of people from one country to another primarily for employment related reasons.

Migrant workers are used extensively for crop harvesting, For example Workers’ migration in China. Global crisis affects migrant workers China has about 242 million rural residents who work off the farm, and about 153 million of them are migrants who work outside their home towns, including tens of millions in export zones making cheap goods for the rest of the world (Buckley and Wills 2011).  

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Expatriate means to exile oneself from one's native country or cause another to go into. Expatriate assignment and overseas experience its becoming more important in a globalized World and they both are an excellent way of acquiring international expertise and knowledge, but are they the same?

The origin of the confusion is that they both involve an individual going abroad to live a prolonged period of time in a foreign country. Usually the objective is to gain some experience from the people, environment and culture of the other country. In general terms, they both are a common source for improving someones capability to face the new international challenges.

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The initiation of a EA is caused by a company who wants an employee to travel abroad to learn or teach in a foreign subsidiary, meanwhile the OE is a personal decision.

This means that the goals are inherently different.

In the first case is the company that establishes the goals, and they are set in a specific way to fit the company's perspective to send someone abroad and to make sure that the resources they are investing aren't a waste of money. In the OE since the individual is the one that initiates the travel he sets its own goals; meaning goals like "see the world," "try something different" (Inkson et al. 1999).

As to the funding of an OE, it is undertaken by the one who is making the travel overseas, as opposed to the EA, in which the company is the one that pays for all the expenses of the ex-pat. This gives much more flexibility to the OE since you are the one who controls your expenses, and can find a temporary job to gain more funding.

In a OE the career is "Boundaryless" meaning that this experience generates in the individual the skills of a general market, instead of the promotion and status improvements looked for in the EA.

The Creative Class are workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms, in which Employers see creativity as a channel for self-expression and job satisfaction in their employees.

Explain how easy is it for Colombian companies to employ expatriates locally? Give examples.

It is not easy for Colombian companies to employ expatriates locally, because although Colombia is a great country and has worked a lot to improve its old image about violence and drugs, it is not completely forgotten. In Colombia is not very common to employ expatriates, for example when you go to the U.S., let´s say new York, you can be aware of the quantity of people from other nationalities, in fact, there´s a Chinese neighborhood. In comparison to Colombia which the only Chinese people you can find is at the Chinese restaurants. 

Migrant workers are not very common within our culture, but in the future things may change thank to globalization. Maybe, we can find people from another regions due to violence of towns that are located near the forest with guerrilla, so those families go to the big cities looking for a save place to live and work, but desafortunately, they aren’t prepared for the fast and technological life of those big cities, and there´s where poverty and people without home start to grow.

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Bibliography

•  Buckley C. and Wills K. (2011) China's Wen puts social stability at heart of economy.

Retrieved from March 20, 2011, from Reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/27/us-china-economy-wen-

idUSTRE71Q07F20110227?pageNumber=2

•  Expatriate. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved March 11, 2011, from

Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/expatriate

•  Florida, R. (2002) The rise of the creative class. The Washington Monthly, 34(5), 15.

Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213679959?accountid=45662

•  Institute for Public Policy Research (2004) Labour migration to the UK: an ippr

FactFile. 

•  Kram, K.E. (1985) Mentoring At Work, Scott, Foresman: Glenview.

•  Mezias, J.M and Scandura, T.A. (2005) A Needs-Driven Approach to Expatriate

Adjustment and Career Development: A Multiple Mentoring Perspective, Journal of

International Business Studies, Vol. 36, No. 5 (Sep.), pp. 519-538

•  Scandura, T.A. and Von Glinow, M.A. (1997) 'Development of the international

manager: the role of mentoring', Business and the Contemporar