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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 22, 2026

Neuroimaging Field Methods Using Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy NIRS Neuroimaging to Study Global Child Development: Rural Sub-Saharan Africa

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Development Mobilities: Identity and Authority in an Angolan Development Programme.

Rebecca Warne Peters¹

¹Rebecca Warne Peters is Assistant Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Syracuse University.

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

|September 23, 2017

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

International non-governmental organizations use staff mobility to claim expertise in development work. However, this system often disadvantages professionals from developing nations, perpetuating global inequalities in the development sector.

Keywords:

Africa Ethnography International Development Mobility Transnational Professionals

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Area of Science:

Development Studies
Sociology of Knowledge
Mobility Studies

Background:

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) leverage staff transnational mobilities to assert authoritative knowledge in development work.
The essay examines how professional biographies are strategically presented to stakeholders to meet institutional needs.

Purpose of the Study:

To analyze the commodification of cosmopolitanism within the development sector.
To investigate how global hierarchies impact the benefits derived from transnational mobility for professionals.
To critically assess the relationship between mobility patterns and global inequality.

Main Methods:

Ethnographic analysis of a case study involving a professional's trajectory from Angola to Britain and back.
Examination of how biographical narratives are presented to different audiences (donors vs. internal staff).

Main Results:

The presentation of staff mobility is tailored to institutional requirements, highlighting a commodification of cosmopolitanism.
A global hierarchy exists within the development regime, creating unequal benefits from mobility.
Professionals from developing nations often experience fewer benefits from their cosmopolitan mobility compared to those from industrialized nations.

Conclusions:

Transnational mobility in development work is embedded in a system that can reproduce global inequalities.
Social scientists must critically examine how mobility patterns reinforce or challenge existing global structures of inequality.
Mobility studies should move beyond highlighting interconnectedness to scrutinizing the unequal outcomes of global mobility.