Global Career Mobility: Turning Perpetual Liminality into a Source of Anxiety

This paper addresses the identity implications of global career mobility by investigating how global professionals, who move from country to country, are able to transform their experience of constant mobility into a source of identity stability rather than fragmentation. For this, the paper draws on the concept of ‘perpetual liminality’ (Ybema et al., 2011), which has so far been framed rather negatively in the literature as infusing uncertainty, anxiety and stress in people’s lives. This paper challenges, however, that liminality is inflicted upon today’s employees by outside forces, namely by showing the ‘moving on narratives’ through which global professionals actively co-produce this condition which prevents identity closure and allows them to re-invent themselves when moving to a new country. Moreover, by exploring the “mobile home making practices” of global professionals, the paper suggests that even in hyper-mobile lifestyles, people reproduce well-rehearsed routines and practices which allow them to check in and out swiftly of any new setting.