GaWC Research Bulletin 8

Globalization is upon us, and we can't escape its unevenness and difference in the world. Geographers, political scientists, sociologists and many others, have been debating the virtues of globalization since the 1990s (e.g. Allen and Hamnett, 1995; Allen and Massey, 1995; Amin and Thrift 1994; Castells, 1996; Cox, 1997; Dicken, 1998; Harvey 1996; Featherstone, 1990; Storper, 1997). Work on international and domestic migration, however, has remained almost transparent in globalization tendencies: at both a theoretical and empirical level (but exceptions do include, for example Castles and Miller, 1993; Petras, 1981). We must acknowledge, that international migration is a powerful process, and outcome, of the ages of internationalization and globalization, especially when we consider the emotive phenomenon of brain drain. It is widely accepted that brain drain, that is settler migration of professional, scientific, technical and/or post-qualified students, has caused severe leakage of skills and wealth generation, from both developed and developing states, and regional blocks of the world (Cohen, 1996a-b). What remains less identified by nation states and policy strategists in their analyses of brain drain, however, are the flows of temporary, or contracted, professional, scientific and technical migrants, who are not settler migrants, but may move quite often between nation states (Appleyard, 1989). Such professional migrants have been termed 'transients', and remain relatively 'invisible' in studies of both skilled international migration and brain drain (Appleyard, 1985, 1989; Findlay, 1988; Salt and Findlay, 1989). Many commentators, have suggested that transient professional migration has not only accelerated between developing and developed countries, but also between developed states, at increasing rates (Salt, 1995).

The importance of transient professional migrants in the world system cannot be underestimated as we attempt to extend our knowledge of brain drain. In short, 'transient' professional migration has been fueled by the organizational strategies of transnational corporations. During the last thirty years, economic restructuring, the rise of the new international division of labour and advances in information technology and travel, have all encouraged transnational corporations to fragment and extend their industrial activities offshore, from their host country (Dicken, 1998). Transient professional migrants are increasingly being used by transnational corporations, through Inter-Company Transfers, to manage, fill skill shortages and, or, represent their clients in the localised market (Brewster, 1988; Salt, 1988; Salt and Findlay, 1989), for periods anywhere between one and five years. It is, however, extremely difficult to obtain official data on professional inter-company transfers, especially with the European Union (Salt et al 1994). To obtain reliable data, one has to focus on firm case studies. For example, ABB, the Swiss-Swedish engineering company, had about 500 global managers working outside of their country of origin in 1997 (Financial Times, 1997). Moreover, as Findlay (1990, 15) suggests "Given the circulatory nature of these high level manpower movements, it has been suggested that these migration moves be seen as 'skill exchanges' rather than a 'brain drain'".

But, this view remains a mooted, and unsubstantiated, point.

The aim of this paper is to shed more knowledge upon the migratory flows of transient professional migration, in order to extend our understanding of both brain drain and 'exchange'. Accordingly, the rest of this paper is divided into seven major inter-linking parts. Part one, 'Extending our Knowledge of Brain Drain', provides a very brief overview of selected brain drain literatures in the 1980s and 1990s, and more importantly, discusses in more depth the role of transient professionals in the migratory system. The organizational strategies of transnational corporations are highlighted, in conjunction with literatures, which focus upon the career paths of transient professionals: both major push and pull factors in the circulation of such migration flows in the world economy. Part two, entitled 'Understanding Transient Professional Migratory Flows', develops a conceptual framework which explains their being, geography and multiplier effects in the global system. In this part, transient professional migration is contextualised as an important process, and outcome, of globalization and, in particular, global city formation and reproduction. The global city represents the major citadel for transient professional migration flows, particularly those in the international service economy, and financial system. Part three, 'Extending our Knowledge of Transient Migratory flows', reviews a series of qualitative methods which have extended our knowledge of transients in both globalization tendencies, and the global city. In this part of the paper, the role of migration geographers are discussed in their quest to: extend both our theoretical and empirical understanding of 'transients', and brain drain; but, also to enhance the methods we can adopt to collect meaningful and reliable data, on such issues. Part four, 'Globalization and Global City Transient Corporate Migration', reports an empirical analysis of transient professional migration within transnational commercial banks' global city office networks, from the mid-1990s. The service sector economies of global cities are responsible for pushing and pulling transient professional migration flows between this city system, however, relatively little is still known about their leakage effects upon country of origin, or brain exchanges in city of destination (Beaverstock, 1994). In this part of the paper, transient brain exchanges, and transients are discussed as 'embedded' cultural capital. Part five, introduces the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council's Transnational Communities Programme, and points to new research being undertaken on globalization and migration by mainly British geographers, political scientists, business specialists, economists and anthropologists, running from 1998 to 2002. The objective of this part of the paper is to inform you of the individual projects, which all have the remit of extending our knowledge, both theoretically and empirically, of migration in this age of globalization. The penultimate part of the paper, acknowledges that there is a lacuna in our knowledge of transient professional migration, as both brain drain and exchange, and suggests a framework to take research forward in this field of migration studies. Finally, part seven, reports several conclusions.

EXTENDING OUR KNOWLEDGE OF BRAIN DRAIN: GLOBALIZATION, TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND 'TRANSIENT' PROFESSIONAL MIGRATORY FLOWS

The intricacies of brain drain, and its effects upon both sending and receiving nation states, has long been debated by academics and policy makers alike (for example see: Adams, 1968; Attafi, 1994; Berger and Webb, 1987; Hague and Kim, 1995; Lien, 1987; Mountford, 1997; Stark et al, 1998; Woolley, 1998). To supplement the official data sources which quantify international migration flows (for example those produced by The World Bank or United Nations), our knowledge of the processes that underpin brain drain has been substantially enriched by the many detailed case study research programmes, which have collected primary trans-state data: in the main from questionnaire surveys and interviews. In very recent times, excluding the general texts on migration which have alluded to brain drain (e.g. Castles and Miller, 1993; Cohen, 1996a-b; King, 1993; Rees, 1996), we have been able to advance our theoretical and empirical knowledge of brain drain events by learning from the conclusions of others. Examples of such studies include: professional brain drain within Latin America, and to the United States of America (McKee, 1983; 1985); return brain drain programmes (Keely, 1986); China, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong's professional brain drain (Chang and Deng, 1992; Chang, 1992; Yoon, 1992; Beng 1990; Wong, 1993; Zweig 1997); brain drain from Africa (Logan, 1992); intellectual and scientific emigration from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Kuska and Gyarfasova, 1997; Morokvasic, 1996; Naumova1996, 1997; Vizi, 1993); and the brain drain phenomena amongst students and academics (Hugo, 1998; Schuster, 1994).

Transient Professional Migration

Many of the studies cited above, and others (e.g. Adir, 1995; Attafi, 1994; Haines et al, 1998; Rule, 1994; Yogev, 1992; Woolley, 1998), have highlighted very graphically the multiplier effects of professional brain drain, on country of origin and destination. I do not want to replicate their arguments, or that of others on brain drain here (Fadayomi, 1996; Mezzana, 1998). Instead, I wish to extend our thoughts and knowledge of brain drain by discussing the phenomenon of 'transient' professional migration, especially initiated within, and between, the global internal labour markets of transnational corporations. The term 'transient', derived from Appleyard (1985, 1989), describes those migrants who do not settle in one country, but move at regular intervals between different countries (also see Findlay, 1988; Findlay and Garrick, 1990).

The transnational corporation is the ripe environment for the production and reproduction, and circulation, of transient professional migration flows in the world system. Research by Salt (1984, 1988, 1992) and others (Beaverstock, 1991; Cormode, 1994; Wiltshire, 1990), and human resources specialists (e.g. Neal, 1998; Perkins, 1997), have discussed in great detail the lengths at which transnational corporations will use transient professional migrant labour in their international office networks, branch plants or primary industrial activities (e.g. mining). Moreover, they have illustrated that transnational corporations will use transient professional migrants for periods anywhere between one year and five years, and beyond, in order to bring human capital and intellectual knowledge to their operations, outside of the host country. Equally, such professionals are encouraged to enhanced their career paths within such organizations by spending time working abroad, again for period between one to five years (Beaverstock, 1996b; Salt, 1988). As Marceau (1989: 14 and 99) comments,

Thus, when we begin to consider brain drain processes amongst very highly-skilled professionals in particular, we must acknowledge the contributions that 'transients' have in the migratory system. Moreover, as globalization processes are continuing to fragment transnational corporations (see Dicken, 1998), and concentrate specialised functions within global cities (see Sassen, 1995), particularly in services (see Beaverstock, Smith and Taylor, in press), any analysis of brain drain must investigate the transient professional, in the context of globalization, and the global city.

In the remainder of this paper, I will attempt to advance our knowledge of brain drain through an analysis of transient professional migration within global city international financial centres. As we shall see, processes of globalization and transient professional migration enjoy a symbiotic relationship in global city formation. Moreover, the globalization strategies of transnational corporations in the advanced producer service sector, and banking in particular, produce and reproduce transient professional migratory flows, between global cities' financial centres. One major caveat to note, however, the substance of this paper does highlight the poverty of data on transient professional migration, which does make it very difficult to report disaggregated flows, within this arena of migration studies (see Salt et al, 1994).

UNDERSTANDING 'TRANSIENT' PROFESSIONAL MIGRATORY FLOWS: NEGOTIATING GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBAL CITIES' FINANCIAL CENTRES IN MIGRATION STUDIES

For many social scientists, discourses regarding globalization have focused on the relationships and inter-connectivity of 'economic', 'political', 'social/cultural' and 'technological' activities between nation-states and societies on a world-wide scale (Cox, 1992, 1997; Hirst and Thompson 1992, 1996; Peck and Tickell, 1994;). For example, Amin and Thrift (1997) point to five globalizing tendencies: (1) the globalization of money and financial capital; (2) the importance of knowledge-structures as a factor of production; (3) the internationalisation of technology; (4) transnational oligopolies; and (5) the rise of transnational diplomacy between firms and states. In the same publication, Geographies of Economies (Lee and Wills, 1997), both Leyshon (1997), and Dicken, Peck and Tickell (1997), review the major approaches, critiques and contradictions in the globalization literatures'. Here, like Amin and Thrift (1997), and in many other key globalization literatures' (e.g. Cox, 1997; Storper, 1997), international migration, and the subject of human capital, as both facilitators and outcomes of globalization tendencies, remains relatively transparent and under-theorised in ongoing globalization debates (though, see the exception of Herod, 1997). However, as we shall see in the following section, transient professional migration is a globalization process too, both driving and responding to geographies of globalization in the world economy.

(Re)packing Transient Professional Migration in Globalization Studies

Very little progress has been made in acknowledging the role of transient professional migration as an integral tendency in geographies of globalization (however, for exceptions see the very recent work of Cohen (1996a-b, 1997) on International Studies of Migration, and Global Diaspora's, respectively; Hannerz, 1996). This lack of progress is rather surprising considering the volume of work undertaken in migration and brain drain studies. Moreover, if we open this debate to include all population and migration specialists, for the last twenty years or so, many have been discussing the human facets of both internationalisation and globalization in the developed and developing country, contexts. In very recent times, for example, this has been demonstrated by the abundance of detailed material on: low-waged immigrant labour in developing countries' export processing zones; skilled international migration; and, gender relations (see. Chant and Radcliffe 1992; Cormode 1994; Findlay 1988, 1990; Findlay and Garrick, 1990; Hardhill, Green, Dudleston and Owen, 1997; Hardhill and MacDonald, 1998; Lin, 1987).
There is now clear evidence, however, that globalization tendencies are beginning to be discussed in the context of transient professional migration flows, by migration geographers and sociologists (e.g. Conway and Cohen 1997; Findlay, 1996; Hui, 1997; Lim, 1992, 1995; Maguire, 1994; 1996; Morris, 1997; Wong, 1997). Whilst we still are waiting for other social sciences to acknowledge the important role that transient professional migration plays in globalization processes, geographers, and others, are at the forefront of conceptualising the role of such migration flows, as process, in global city formation, and reproduction.

Globalization, Transient Professional Migration and Global Cities

Migration, as process, has been central to the global city debate. Both Friedmann and Wolff (1982) and Friedmann (1986), placed migration as an important factor in world city formation. As they commented,

It has been Saskia Sassen, however, who has taken the lead in conceptualising the role of immigrant labour in the global city. In three of her leading books, (1998) The Mobility of Capital and Labour, (1991) The Global City and (1994) Cities in a World Economy, and numerous journal articles, she has emphasised the rise of the low-waged immigrant sector, supporting the professional elite, as being crucial to global city formation and reproduction (e.g. Sassen-Koob 1984, 1985, 1986; Sassen, 1987, 1989). As Sassen has consistently argued, the "restructuring of labour demand" within "global centres" is "shaped" by "the growth of the advanced producer service sector, including the financial system" and the "shrinking of the traditional manufacturing industries" (1988, 22).

Building upon these seminal works, others have begun to investigate the different ways in which transient professional migration as a globalization process, is reworking and re-configuring the global city. Here, of particular importance, has been the collective work of: members of the Institute of British Geographers Limited Life Working Party on Skilled International Migration (e.g. Findlay and Gould, 1989); Beaverstock on world cities and advanced producer services (e.g. Beaverstock, 1994; 1996a); Findlay, Jones, Jowett, Li and Skeldon on Hong Kong (e.g. Findlay and Li, 1997; Li, Jowett, Findlay and Skeldon, 1995; Li, Findlay and Jones, 1998); and the rich empirical studies of gender and immigration in the global city (e.g. Hardhill and MacDonald, 1998; Kofman, 1996; Yeoh and Khoo, 1998). With very few exceptions, all of these studies have theorised migration as an integral globalization process, which has (re)produced new geographies of transient professional migration, with respect to both process and pattern. Moreover, and in addition, apart from engaging with transient professional migration as a globalization process and tendency, throughout the 1990s, much of the research undertaken in global cities by these writers have become very much grounded at the qualitative end of the methodological spectrum, as we shall see later.

Two very recent, and relevant, examples of the ways in which transient professional migration as a globalization process, is reworking and re-configuring the global city, come to mind. First, Weyland's (1997) analysis of female Filipino maids and wives of multinational corporation executives', provides a fascinating story of how mistress and maid alike, are intertwined with both the globalization of capital and the making of Istanbul's global city space. Second, Li, Findlay and Jones's (1998) have opened our eyes to the social and cultural factors which, in tandem with economic drivers, must be fully appreciated by researchers if we are to advance our theoretical (and empirical) knowledge of transient professional migration to the global city, in this case Hong Kong.

Transnational Corporations and Cultural Capital

To explore transient professional migration between global city international financial centres, we must go further than Sassen and others (as cited above), and begin to link the globalization tendencies of such migration flows within the prevailing theoretical frameworks accounting for 'global' financial geographies within global cities (see for example Leyshon and Thrift 1997; Laulajainen, 1998). In the following section, I wish to discuss the dialectic relationship that exists between globalization and transient professional migration to financial centres, by conceptualising two very important 'driving forces': the advanced producer service transnational corporation; and transient professional migrants' embedded geographies - their role in accumulating 'cultural capital'.

Transnational Corporations and Transient Professional Migration in International Financial Centres

The role of transient professional migration flows in international financial centres, still remains a relatively 'invisible' facet of globalization processes in the world economy (Beaverstock, 1996a; Findlay, 1996; Findlay et al 1996). This is surprising, when we consider that as international financial centres, London, New York, Tokyo and Singapore, have continued to concentrate and intensify financial capital, foreign banks and advanced producer service TNCs, they have become 'global complexes' of economic, social and cultural power in the world economy (e.g. McDowell, 1997; Sassen, 1995; Thrift, 1994). Where, an important constituent of this 'global complex' are transient professional migrants who move within TNC global city office networks (Beaverstock, 1994).

Moreover, recent research findings from Beaverstock's analysis of TNCs in accountancy, investment banking and law, have revealed that despite rapid improvements in information technology, communications and cost structures, and the increase in (real-time) financial media networks, TNCs in these sectors have still continued to post staff to global cities (Beaverstock, 1996a-c; Beaverstock et al 1999, Leyshon & Thrift 1997 pp298-303). Research from these sectors indicated that staff were placed on secondment, transferred, or exchanged, between London and other global cities, because they had, or could obtain, the specific knowledge, expertise, and skills required to ensure the efficient operation of both the international financial system, and the global reach of the transnational corporation. In advanced producer services, transient professional migrants perform important 'global' labour market processes within transnational corporations, and global cities. In essence, these are 'face-time' processes: the ability to perform 'face-to-face' contact between firm and client, or international markets, and, or involvement the capital culture of the international financial centres (e.g. Amin and Thrift, 1992; McDowell 1994).

Transient Professional Migrants as Cultural Capital

Running parallel to recent studies of transient professional migration within financial transnational corporations, has been a myriad of work, couched within the new economic geography/sociology (e.g. Lee and Wills 1997; Storper 1997; Zukin and Dimaggio 1990). In short, this work has begun to unpack the role of 'embedment', knowledge, expertise, and business and social networks, as 'global' processes which are accumulating cultural capital within global international financial centres (e.g. Amin and Thrift 1992, 1997; Clark 1997; Leyshon and Thrift 1997; McDowell 1997; Thrift 1994; Thrift and Leyshon 1994). In this work, the emphasis has been focused towards investigating the organizational cultures of professional staff employed in advanced producer services, and attempting to understand the connections that exist between an individual's knowledge, and the production/circulation of that knowledge. In the context of the City of London, such knowledge and reflexivity is achieved through: involvement in complex business and social networks; everyday cultural life experiences; gender relations; wealth; the location of specific 'meeting places'; and, their reaction/involvement in the culture capital of its day-to-day financial atmosphere, tacitly couched in story making and rumour. Equally, the research of those identified above, and others (Laulajainen, 1998), indicates that the performance of a financial transnational corporation is also very much linked to the success and speed with which their transient professional migrants accumulate and circulate knowledge, expertise and intelligence in the institutional workplace. As Thrift (1994, 336) argues, an important element of the City of London's 'global corporate network' is its 'constant through-flow of workers' from other international financial centres. Or to put it another way, the competitiveness of a financial TNC located in New York City, is just as dependent upon the success of its transient professional migrant workforce in creating 'cultural capital', through personal interaction and contacts in expatriate and indigenous business and social networks, than it is with them creating capital from conventional financial transactions (Beaverstock, 1996b). A reading of Nick Leeson's (1996) Rogue Trader   highlights the importance of an expatriate's global corporate and social networks in the accumulation (and losses) of financial capital in Barings Futures business activities in Singapore. The 'cultural capital' (i.e. knowledge) obtained from overseas postings is highly prized amongst financial corporations (including accountancy firms and, more recently law firms, see Beaverstock, Smith & Taylor, in press) as one foreign banker who came to London in the 1960s states:

EXTENDING OUR KNOWLEDGE OF 'TRANSIENT MIGRATORY FLOWS': RESEARCHING GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBAL CITIES IN MIGRATION STUDIES

Since the early 1990s, a small group of geographers, and other social scientists, have begun to focus on globalization, migration and transient professional migration, and the global city (Table 1). These writers have achieved three major attributes. First, they have brought globalization firmly into our understanding of transient professional migration as a process, especially through the subject of the global city (also see Wickham, 1998). Second, they have provided us with very rich and detailed case studies of high- and low-waged migration, encompassing such issues as gender, identity, citizenship, wealth and employment. Third, and just as significant, these writers have been instrumental in bringing qualitative approaches into the study of migration.

A review of several key publications reporting globalization and migration, and transient professional migration in global city research from the late 1980s onwards, reveals three key methodological tendencies (Table 1). First, many of the early writings (mid-late 1980s) were based solely upon the analysis of secondary, official data sources. In short, aggregated Census of Population or Employment data were analysed in order to report major international trends between global cities, and nation-states. Second, as we entered the early 1990s, with exceptions, research was often executed by use of the postal questionnaire survey, associated statistical analysis, and very occasionally, limited interview material. The rationales for using these quantitative techniques were quite straight forward: to collect primary material, which would indicate 'representative' trends in migration data. Third, from the mid-1990s, and influenced by other geographical practices, researchers have been adopting mix-method approaches to their work in order to provide a more biographical approach to understanding migration (e.g. Findlay and Li 1997; Halfacree and Boyle 1993; White and Jackson 1995). In essence, such mixed methods have involved a plethora of 'soft quantitative' and qualitative methods, with particular emphasis placed upon biographical techniques in case study research, through the use of semi-structured interviewing, textual analysis and life histories. In combination, all of these intertwined strands of research have provided much 'added value' to extending our theoretical and empirical understanding of globalization and transient professional migration tendencies, in the global city.

Many have now argued for the merits of using mixed-methods in migration research (e.g. McKendrick, 1996), and in the following case study, I wish make a positive contribution to these methodological debates. This will be done in two ways. First, I will illustrate how transient professional migration has become an integral part of globalization, by drawing upon case study research undertaken in one very important advanced producer service: banking. Second, in a more covert way, I will extend the methodological virtues of using taped semi-structured interviews, as a mechanism with which to collect a richness of detail and depth in findings, which could never be obtained through other methods.

GLOBALIZATION AND GLOBAL CITY CORPORATE 'TRANSIENT' MIGRATION: EVIDENCE FROM PROFESSIONALS IN THE BANKING SECTOR

Four important reasons account for the selection of clearing banking, as a medium to investigate the dialectic relationship that exists between globalization and transient professional migration, in the global city. First, according to Sassen (1991, 1994, 1995), and others (e.g. Daniels, 1993), banking is one of the major global forces concentrating, centralising and reproducing economic power in the global. Second, banking, like many advanced producer services, are knowledge based industries. Banking, like management consultancy, law and advertising, for example, all sell very ephemeral products, where clients in fact are buying the expertise and knowledge of selected individuals employed by the firm (Leyshon and Thrift, 1997; Laulajainen, 1998). Third, many have argued that the cultural and social geographies of work in the global city, and their international financial centres, are constructed from the 'polarised' production and consumption patterns of the advanced producer service labour market (e.g. Sassen, 1991), and again the huge financial rewards that can be obtained in banking, investment especially (e.g. McDowell, 1997). Fourth, banking has also been long associated with facilitating both settler and transient professional migration between global city office networks (see Beaverstock, 1994).

For example, it is well established that the City of London is an international banking centre, having at least 500 foreign banks in situ, and employing on average between 35,000 and to 40,000 staff, per annum (Corporation of London, 1995) (n.b. in March 1998, 565 foreign banks based in London [Reed, 1998]). In contrast, what is less known is that these foreign banks bring a multitude of foreign workers, transient professional migrants, into the City each year (see: Beaverstock and Smith, 1996). For example, Beaverstock and Smith's (1996) survey of transient professional migration within 110 relatively small London foreign banks revealed 512 British transients were posted to other international financial centres, for periods greater than one years, between 1990-1993. But, overall, these workers, however, are extremely difficult to quantify. They remain too dis-aggregated to be identified in official 'aggregated' statistics (e.g. Labour Force Survey), and, therefore, the only way in which we can analyse their contribution to London's banking community, and identify their social and economic characteristics, is through case study research: i.e. questionnaire and, or, interview surveys (see for example Beaverstock 1996b; White, 1998). We must not, however, underestimate the magnitude of transient professional migration flows to the City of London. As the Economist (1998, 31) reports

Transient Professional Migration

Table 2 shows transient professional migration data derived from interview surveys with four commercial banks. A summary of the principal findings derived from interviews with Barclays Bank Plc. and The Royal Bank of Scotland Plc., undertaken in mid-1993, are listed in Appendix 1. In order to highlight the richness of the data obtained from using interviews as a methodological tool, I wish to proceed in two ways. First, I will present detailed studies of two banks: Standard Chartered and HSBC Holdings Plc. For both banks, secondary material collected in January 1999, will be used to supplement the 1993 interview survey. Second, I will bring together the salient features of globalization and transient professional migration, as one in the same process, for all the four clearing banks investigated in this research.

In 1993, Standard Chartered Bank had on average 200 British International Managers, known as expatriates, working in cross-border activities throughout the bank's 750 international offices. During that period, they also had 150 staff on secondment, whose length of stay abroad was between 2-3 years. Staff on secondment were distributed unevenly throughout the bank's offices, but were specifically focused in Asia-Pacific (e.g. Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai), African (e.g. Nairobi) and European regions of the bank (e.g. Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Milan, Zurich). In addition to British International Managers and Secondments, at interview, the Expatriate Manager pointed out that there were also "many cross-secondments taking place at any one time within the Group ... to develop high calibre local managers, by means of providing them with international opportunities." Thus, within Standard Chartered Bank, transient professional migration was a central issue of the Groups globalization strategies. In all cases, staff were sent abroad to perform technical banking functions (e.g. corporate banking, information technology, risk and treasury), all of which had been created by skill shortages in specific business activities. In addition to these migrant functions, expatriates circulated amongst the bank's international office networks to manage offices. In 1993, all foreign workers entering London did so to perform a specific banking functions (in this case all 14 were either treasury, credit or personal bankers), and they originated from a wide range of offices. With respect to gender, the majority of expatriates and staff on secondment were male, however, the bank did point out that they were unable to send women to certain Middle East offices. Finally, looking towards the future, the interviewee predicted that the number of International Managers would decline (by as much as 50%), as more local offices would resource themselves, however, with respect to secondments, he reported that there would be very little change, except "a more multi-cultural mix of secondees".

Five years on, in 1998, migration remains an important globalization strategy of the bank. Standard Chartered has now reduced its International Manager workforce to 420, 180 less than in 1993, and 380 fewer than in 1988 (the height of the boom in the globalization of its banking activities) (Maitland, 1998). The raison d'être of the International Manager, however, has remained the same: preaching the banks global culture and providing technical knowledge and expertise, when critical skill shortages exist. Looking towards the next millennium, the bank is planning to use many more secondments, involving all nationalities, in order to become "transnational" in scope, and offer a "seamless" global service operating across national-borders (G. Rogers, Head of Human Resources, Standard Chartered Bank, quoted in Maitland, 1998, 17; also see Standard Chartered Bank worldwide web site: http://www.stanchart.com/scb/about.html [accessed 20 January 1999]).

In 1993, HSBC Holdings Plc., which acquired the Midland Bank Plc. in 1992, had approximately 600 International Officers (I.O.s) who continually moved on cross-border assignments between its 3,000 offices in 68 countries, and five business activities: commercial banking; investment banking; private banking; finance; and group head office. Directed from the bank's Hong Kong Group headquarters, these transient professional migrants were an integral element of the banks' global practices, and were employed as branch managers or very senior staff, specialising in all technical functions, throughout the global office network. During that time, the 40 personnel sent on overseas Assignments from London, went for a period of 2-3 years, and fulfilled the role of meeting specific banking functions, such as private, treasury, capital markets and information technology, as required to balance skill shortages created in hosting offices. But, differences did exist between function and length of stay abroad. As the Expatriate Manager reported:

All moves from the UK were through London, the 'sanctioning environment'. In 1993, the major destinations for assignments were: New York City (Midland Marine Bank, Samuel Montagu and James Capel); Europe, especially Paris (Midland Bank S.A. and James Capel S.A.) and Frankfurt (e.g. HongkongBank), for corporate banking; and, Hong Kong, to the British Bank of the Middle East, for treasury and capital markets. During that period, the bank received transient professional migrants from its HSBC Group headquarters (Hong Kong), and their function was to perform very senior executive banking activities: treasury; corporate finance and merchant banking. With respect to gender, the majority of I.O.'s and staff on assignment were male. As to the future, the HSBC Expatriate Manager made these comments:

Five years on, these comments made by the Expatriate Manager still hold. HSBC Holdings Plc. maintains its I.O.'s, on permanent cross-border postings, and are used exclusively to "meet the business resourcing needs of the HSBC Group" (HSBC Holdings, 1999). I.O.'s are now also recruited directly from graduate entry. They receive a very structured career path which starts with the Executive Trainee Development Programme (at HSBC Group Management Training College), and after successful completion, is followed by the five year Junior Officer Development Programme (J.O.D.P.), which involves a posting to one of the Groups major 5,500 offices, in 79 countries. The distribution of the 50 I.O.'s currently on J.O.D.P.'s, are: 60% posted to the HSBC Group in Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong); 15% posted to North America in Marine Midland Bank (New York) or Hong Kong Bank of Canada (Toronto), and 12% assigned to the British Bank of the Middle East (Hong Kong). After successful completion, staff become fully-fledged I.O., thus are transient professional migrants, eligible to be posted every 2-3 years between offices in the HSBC Group network (Source: http://www.hsbcgroup.com/ accessed 20 January 1999).

From the case study interviews with Standard Chartered, HSBC Holdings Plc., Barclays Banks Plc. and the Royal Bank of Scotland, as reported above, and in Table 2, we would like to suggest that two major threads stitch together globalization and transient professional migration, in commercial banking. First, and of the utmost importance, in these times of information technology and business travel, these banks still employ transient professional migrants, for periods between 2-5 years on average, to embed their global culture, 'operationalise' banking functions (e.g. treasury) and represent clients, in their financial centre office networks. In essence, these banks facilitate the global reach of their business through the knowledge, expertise and general know how of migrant labour, and transfer their global corporate message via a pool of international staff, who roam between international offices, and rarely return to London in their career life-course. Moreover, the very rigorous selection criteria used by all the banks to select staff for postings, based upon an individual's banking expertise, knowledge and experience (note age range of migrants), reinforces the importance and role of the migrant in the banks' knowledge-based business activities. A quotation from an interview with the The Royal Bank of Scotland's Assistant Manager for Overseas Operations represents the views of the other three banks regarding knowledge and recruitment,

Second, its is evident that banks use transient professional migration flows to transfer their knowledge and expertise via postings throughout the international banks' office networks, including nearby offshore financial centres, for example the Channel Islands (where one would expect business travel to replace such staff). Moreover, evidence presented at interview also indicated that disproportionate flows of transient professional migrants were directed towards the major global city financial centres, where the banks had their largest presence's, with respect to employment size. Such centres included: New York; Tokyo; Frankfurt; Zurich; Paris; Singapore; and Hong Kong. Apart from the agglomeration economies of these international financial centres, one can interpret the distribution from the two important conceptual frameworks discussed earlier in this paper. First, our thoughts about international financial centres as 'meeting places' and 'corporate networks', as discussed by Amin and Thrift (1992), and others (e.g. Clark, 1997). And, second, through the writings that have discussed the role of 'embedment', cultural capital, knowledge transfer, and social interaction (e.g. McDowell, 1997). Much more research is needed here, however, to begin to unpack these two interpretations of the cultural significant, and cultural economy, of transient professional migrants in global city international financial centres.

FUTURE RESEARCH ON NEW MIGRATION FLOWS: THE ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL'S TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITIES PROGRAMME

In order to advance both our theoretical and empirical knowledge of globalization and migration studies in the world, the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council commissioned a new national research programme into aspects of emerging transnationalism, in October 1998. A sum of £3.8 million was allocated for the Programme. The Programme involves about 20 projects, some within a single discipline, but most linking several. While the programme's Directorship is based in Oxford, the projects are conducted from a variety of British universities with multi-site research to be undertaken throughout the world. The Programme is designed to run until the end of 2002. Both individually and collectively, the projects will broaden our understanding of the new and increasingly significant place of globe-spanning social networks in labour, business and commodity markets, political movements and cultural flows. The programme will concentrate on an actor-directed view of globalisation and migration: 'globalization from below'.

Present-day transnational communities are uniquely at once the products of, and catalysts for, contemporary globalisation processes. This is particularly evident in their utilisation of modes of telecommunication and transport, in their pooling of resources and patterns of investment or remittance, and in their successful exploitation of new international markets. Moreover, the social forms, political challenges, cultural resources and group identities generated by the linkage of groups in several geographical locations represent an increasingly important dimension of the shift toward new kinds of cosmopolitanism described in much work on globalisation. It is likely that transnational communities will play an ever more important role in shaping world-wide social, cultural, economic and political processes.

Research into the dynamics of transnational communities must be approached from inter-disciplinary perspectives. Yet the programme projects will be linked by common methodological concerns surrounding the formation and maintenance of community (based especially on social, economic and political networks), the construction and expression of identity (including the refashioning of cultural forms and symbols), and the reproduction or contestation of social relations (especially involving issues of gender). Research has been contracted within four areas:

1. NEW APPROACHES TO MIGRATION (including projects addressing: Comparative Diasporas; Transversal Migration; Refugees and Asylum-Seekers)

2. ECONOMICS (including projects addressing: Global Economic Networks; Transnational Corporations; Transnational Household Strategies)

3. POLITICS (including projects addressing: Global Political Networks; City, Region, National and Supra-National Policies; Gender, Communities and Power)

4. SOCIETY AND CULTURE (including projects addressing: Social Forms and Institutions; Cultural Reproduction and Consumption; Transnational Religious Communities).

Specific details and contact addresses for each project are shown in Table 3. I invite you all to laise with those project Directors relevant to your own work. Collectively, these projects, and others, will continue to enhance our knowledge of migration, and provide much needed quantitative and qualitative data, for policy makers, whether at state, Non-governmental organization or firm level, to address migratory issues as we enter the Twenty-First Century.

A RESEARCH FRAMEWORK: ENHANCING POLICY FORMATION

I am in total agreement with Conference's Discussion Outline on Migration and the Brain Drain, which suggests that "the lack of knowledge on the phenomenon precludes the formulation of adequate strategies and policies" (1999, 10). I would, however, like to suggest that we can enhance our knowledge of brain drain processes by examining in detail the theoretical and empirical migratory flows of those transient professionals, and their families, who transfer within the internal labour markets of transnational corporations.

In particular, we can: (i) advance our theoretical understanding of transient professional migratory flows by investigating the human resources strategies of transnational corporations, and in particular, examine why such labour is still require in global cities in these time of rapid improvements in information technology and transportation.

(ii) extend our theoretical understanding of transient professionals themselves, by investigating how such migrants construct local knowledge within, and outside, their place of workplace, through becoming economically, socially and culturally embedded in expatriate lifestyles, undertaken in particular networks and expatriate spaces within such global financial spaces.

(iii) collect new and unique quantitative and qualitative data sets on the existence of transient professional migrants, which includes gathering data from both transnational corporations and migrants themselves, especially those who are experiencing expatriate cultural lifestyles in global cities.

(iv) make a contribution to the development of methodology in the arena of migration by adopting multi-method approaches to the study of transient professional migration, where a considerable emphasis should be placed upon extending the value of qualitative methods (semi-structured interviewing, focus-groups and time-space diaries) in migration research.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In order to extend our knowledge of brain drain in the migration system, I would argue that we must begin to investigate the migratory flows created by inter-company transfers with transnational corporations: termed transient professional migration. In the service economies of global cities, and especially their international financial centres, transients are positioned at the hub of the global-local nexus, yet they still remain 'invisible' in existing theoretical and empirical studies of globalization and brain drain studies. As I have previously argued, these transient professional migrants act as catalysts to perpetuate globalization from the local, or below, through their work, and participation in formal and informal social and business networks, which are often transnational in scope. I would also like to suggest they extend globalization processes through the professional knowledge structures, expertise and intelligence, which they bring to, and learn from, the global city, which is often reproduced through everyday expatriate cultural experiences, work and participation in networks. All of which needs further research in order to extend our knowledge of the complexities of transient professional migration as brain drain.

In particular, the conceptual commentary and data introduced in this paper, advances our theoretical and empirical understanding of globalization and transient professional migratory flows, in three main ways. First, from an economics perspective, the paper extends our knowledge and understanding, of the operational aspects of transnational corporations in facilitating transient professional migratory flows. Second, from a society and cultural perspective, and linked to economics, the paper conceptualises how the everyday cultural experiences of transient professional migrants, who live and work in global city financial centres, creates capital for themselves, and employers. Third, from a methodological perspective, this paper continues to support the use of qualitative research techniques to collect data and extend our knowledge of both transient professional migratory flows and general brain drain complexities.

Moreover, the empirical work reported from the banks illustrates the complex relationship that exists between globalization and transient professional migration. Despite high cost structures, advances in information technology and travel, bank's preserve a professional migrant labour force, and temporary secondments, as a very 'visible' globalization strategy intended to extend, and maintain, core global business activities. Transient professional migration in clearing banking, like other advanced producer service sectors, remains an exceptionally important globalization process. Transients, third-country-nationals and secondment staff, provide an extremely efficient mechanism for banks to transfer knowledge, expertise and experience across borders, in still what remains a very 'face-to-face' corporate environment, which is tacitly couched within the cultural capital of the global city's international financial centre. Moreover, in the case of Standard Chartered Bank and HSBC, as we leave the Twentieth Century, migration still remains a globalization driver of business activities, and is viewed as 'global' strategies for the banks concerned.

Looking beyond advanced producer services and the global city scale, globalization tendencies are now being identified as paramount forces in the (re)production of migration, and transient professional migration, at different scales in the world Table 1, and, for example, Jones and Findlay, 1998). According to Portes (1997, 1) geographies of migration can be conceptualised as "globalization from below". A term which has been coined to couch migration as a local response to the many 'top-down' tendencies of globalization in the world. Thus, whether in, or between, the global city, or from village to town, the tendencies of globalization are powerful forces which are influencing the geographies of migration. At the same time, however, uneven and different geographies of migration MUST be acknowledged by academics and policy makers alike, as both integral tendencies of globalization, and as 'drivers' of globalization, in the world. Because at present, outside of the migration fraternity, social scientists and other commentators who profess on globalization issues are failing to acknowledge the importance of people, and especially transient professional migration flows, in the wider readings of globalization in the contemporary world, and the complexities of brain drain, moreover, between the developed world's global city network.