Migration and Geopolitical Instability: Effects on International Business

Introduction

Escalating geopolitical tensions have become a defining feature of the contemporary international business (IB) environment. Recent scholarship has productively examined how firms cope with geopolitical uncertainty, focusing on organizational resilience, employee motivation in hostile contexts, and the strategic deployment of human resources under conditions of conflict and instability. While this human-centered stream of work has generated valuable insights, it has largely overlooked one of the most profound consequences of geopolitical crises: large-scale, crisis-induced migration and the resulting global reconfiguration of human capital.

The wars and confrontations that have marked the past five years including conflicts involving Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Iran and the United States have triggered unprecedented movements of people across borders. Such geopolitical migration fundamentally differs from “normal” economic migration. It is often sudden, unplanned, and driven by acute security, political, or environmental threats rather than long-term opportunity seeking. As populations flee conflict zones, countries of origin experience significant human capital losses, while host countries confront the challenges and opportunities associated with absorbing inflows of displaced and often highly skilled individuals. In effect, geopolitical crises accelerate the global redistribution and consolidation of human capital, with long-lasting implications for firms, labor markets, and national development trajectories.

IB and related literatures have increasingly addressed migration from macro, meso, and micro perspectives, examining its economic consequences, patterns of brain drain and brain gain, return migration, human capital accumulation, and immigrant adjustment across diverse groups. Important contributions have also explored state policies, diaspora dynamics, human rights, and shifting global migration routes. However, this body of work has predominantly focused on migration that unfolds under relatively stable institutional conditions. Much less is known about migration triggered by geopolitical crises characterized by uncertainty, institutional disruption, and limited capacity for strategic planning by governments, firms, and individuals alike.

Firms are not passive observers of these dynamics. They are directly affected by abrupt changes in the availability, composition, and mobility of human capital, both in crisis-affected home countries and in recipient economies. Yet, firm-level theorizing and empirical evidence on how organizations respond to, shape, and are transformed by geopolitical crisis-induced migration remain underdeveloped. With only a few notable exceptions, IB scholarship has paid surprisingly limited attention to how migration driven by war and geopolitical disruption reshapes firm strategies, human resource practices, and competitive outcomes.

This Special Issue seeks to address this gap by placing firms at the center of analysis and examining migration as a contextual, crisis-specific phenomenon. We invite contributions that explore how firms cope with human capital outflows, leverage inflows of displaced talent, adapt HRM and organizational practices, and interact with states and societies under conditions of geopolitical instability. By integrating insights on geopolitics, migration, and firm behavior, this Special Issue aims to advance a more nuanced and timely understanding of how business operates in an era of persistent conflict and forced mobility.

List of Topic Areas

1. Geopolitics as setting for migration.

• Do different geopolitical crises create unique migration context and consequences for organizations?
• How does the emergence of geopolitical migrants shape global migration flows, migration state policies, and as a consequence, firms' acquisition strategies?
• Do different geopolitical crises emerge different firm-level challenges and diverse organizational responses?
• How geopolitical migration reshapes institutional environment for local and multinational companies operating in affected contexts?
• How local businesses - recipients of geopolitical migrants tackle with enormous migration flows as the results of wars and other types of sudden instabilities?
• What capabilities are critical of companies to overcome migration challenges and create advantages associated with geopolitical migrants as a newly emerged talent pool?

2. Geopolitical migrants and diaspora groups.

• How may local organizations benefit from diverse geopolitical migrant groups?
• How do geopolitical migrants differ from other migrant groups (e.g., self-initiated expatriates, voluntary migrants) in their employment motives, cultural adjustment capabilities?
• What are the effects of the expansion of diasporas in host countries due to geopolitical migration?
• How have diasporas remained connected to their home contexts, and what "new" effects can emerge for home countries as a result of geopolitical talent outflows?
• Can brain drain be turned into a brain gain if migrants (and diasporas) remain engaged in the political, social, and economic processes of their home countries?
• To what extent and under what institutional conditions geopolitical migrants may reshape global and local labor markets?

3. Migration restrictions and its implications for local and IB players.

• Are migration restriction policies beneficial to local firms, and do nationalistic frictions in recipient countries that restrict migration really protect economic interests, or do they instead serve as a barrier to human capital accumulation and thus lead to a loss in the war for talent?
• How institutional context (immigration policies, public support systems, societal values, etc.) may influence organizational cultures or policies affecting the integration of migrants?
• How perception of geopolitical conflict fairness influences state migration policies and geopolitical migrants' inclusion in labor market?
• To what extend migration restriction policies stimulate recirculation of geopolitical migrants in a global arena?
• How does populism influence migration policies and state initiatives towards migration?
• How different political regimes or varieties of capitalism are connected to migration restrictions?

4. Location choices and directions of migration flows.

• Does geographical proximity moderate geopolitical migration?
• How do historical relations between countries (economic, political, cultural) determine geopolitical migration flows? How do they affect adjustment?
• How do multinational companies decide about their internationalization strategies taking into account existing migration flows to benefit from or to avoid migrants as labor market actors?
• How do geopolitical migrants choose their destinations? Is geographical distance decisive or are there other determinants of location choices?
• Which country-specific characteristics are received as attractive for geopolitical migrants and considered as pull factors?

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tmbr

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/mbr

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Key Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/06/2027 

Closing date for manuscripts submission: 31/08/2027