As the final chapter expanded on the new agentic, reflexive subjectivities arising from transnational migration, the focus herein is on cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitans. The first section of the chapter underscores the main tenets of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitans and thereby offers insights into the various ways this notion has been theorized. This sets the stage for empirical examples of cosmopolitanism in research that takes shape at the intersections of global business, work, and difference. These examples challenge the notion of cosmopolitanism as referencing people who have a global mindset and are ‘citizens of everywhere and nowhere’ (Levy et al., 2007)—approaches which dominate cross-cultural management and examinations of difference in a global context. In contrast to this idea of cosmopolitanism, a transnational migration studies offers a multiscalar perspective that uncovers the granularity and performative aspects of this concept inclusive of its ethical dimensions. The third section focuses on the ways ‘global nomad’ as an example of cosmopolitanism challenges financialized notions of diversity in the context of organizations and neoliberalism. The focus herein is on the ways ethics and labor intersect as people construct ways of being and belonging to the world through their agentic economic activities. In concluding this chapter, the final consideration is around the link of cosmopolitanism to an ethics of difference that embodies the epistemic, social, and material aspects of transnational being and belonging. By addressing these concerns in the context of MOS research, the goal is to offer new directions in relation to the quest for theorizing and accounting for various forms of difference in relation to people and work.

Conceptualizing cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitans: agency, tastes and ethics

In the context of globalization, the movement of workers across national borders has received much attention in the international management literature, including research that aims to understand the ways ‘brain circulation’ contributes to the upskilling of organizations and regions (Tung, 2008b). Despite its origin in Saxenian's (2005) seminal work on transnational ties, immigrants and upskilling, ‘brain circulation’ of skilled workers and immigrants in the context of international and cross-cultural management has focused almost explicitly on their ‘value’ for organizations, such as in being cultural intermediaries for Western multinational corporations and Chinese locals (Hartmann et al., 2010), and on understanding the effectiveness of their international careers across cultures (Tams and Arthur, 2007) including ways to differentiate between self and assigned expatriates (Biemann and Andresen, 2010).