Global work, international mobility and expatriation management practices brought new questions to individuals, groups and organizations. Organizational expatriation, conceived as a specific, contingent work context typically observed in transnational organizations, can represent new learning opportunities for individuals, as well as it can challenge preexistent notions of identity and belonging. This paper suggests that organizational expatriation practices compose a specific social context for individual action and reflexive experience, one of liminal and disjunctive nature. It is suggested that this context produces individual and social disjunction and differentiation, and pressures organizational capabilities that preferentially may foster centripetal visions for managing global work and international mobility practices. Using secondary data and repatriation management case study results as reference, the “re-entry shock” is used as empirical reference to illustrate the liminal, disjunctive frame of individual action that can be composed by contemporary organizational expatriation practices.

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Global work,Expatriation,Identity,Liminarity,Disjunctive Socialization