Negotiating globalization, transnational corporations and global city financial centres in transient migration studies

Outside population geography, migration as a process 'driving' globalization has remained in the shadows of the globalization literature. Migration has only really been acknowledged by other social scientists as a globalization tendency in conceptualizing global cities. In this paper, we wish to extend our understanding of globalization and migration by linking together studies of transient professional migration, transnational corporations and global city financial centres. The paper is in three parts. First, we discuss transient migration as process in the globalization debate. Second, we review a series of qualitative methods that have extended our knowledge of globalization and transient professional migration. Third, we illustrate the importance of migration as a globalization tendency through an analysis of official international migration statistics and original research undertaken within transnational banks during the 1990s. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.