PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter 5 – Workplace belongingthey also gain emotional comfort and workplace harmony from their various quanxiwith their team mates or fellow expatriates.5.5. ConclusionThis chapter elaborated on the ways in which the structure and culture of the TaiwaneseIT firms as MNCs shape Taiwanese expatriates‘ grounded experiences of belonging.The research findings show that the emergence of a transnational social space within thetransnationally operated Taiwanese IT firms as a result of the reproduction of themateriality and corporate culture in China, is significant in making the MNC workplacea spatial setting that allows Taiwanese expatriates to feel safe, familiar, connected tohome and forge a sense of being-in-place and workplace identity. In this section, I havepaid special attention to considering how transnational experiences (in terms of thetransfer of the material, corporate and work cultures prevalent in the Taiwanese IT firmsto China plants and my respondents‘ daily transnational business links to Taiwan)constitute Taiwanese expatriates‘ everyday workplace practices and shape theiremotional process. The often neglected aspect of expatiate workers‘ workplaceinteractions and socialising in relation to their well-being were examined and I arguedthat embedded in such practices of belonging are Taiwanese expatriates‘ negotiationsand practices of their multiple identities (i.e. ethnic, cultural and national identities).The empirical case of Taiwanese expatriates‘ workplace practices of belonging canmake distinct contributions to the scholarship on skilled migration in significant ways.Firstly, while existing studies on the formation of the transnational social spaces withinMNCs have frequently considered them to be a result of expatriate workers‘transnational business practices (e.g. Flecker and Simsa‘s 2001, Pries 2001), this206