Mobility Capital
entry by Julie M. Marx, Global Family Expert at Expat Valley
The accumulated skills, dispositions, networks, and experiential knowledge that internationally mobile families develop across successive relocations, which in turn facilitate more effective navigation of future moves. Mobility capital is understood as a form of social and cultural capital specific to the globally mobile experience and includes cross-cultural adaptability, logistical expertise, network-building capacity, and a repertoire of established transition strategies.
Comparable terms
Relocation experience (HR/mobility — functional descriptor; less theoretically specific) · Expatriate capital (research — overlapping; Selmer & Lauring) · Cultural capital (Bourdieu — the broader construct from which mobility capital draws) · Global career capital (HR research — Dickmann & Harris; includes mobility experience as a career asset)
Why this matters
Mobility can build a powerful toolkit: cultural agility, networks, and practical know‑how. When noticed and named, this becomes an asset in careers and family life. Without recognition, families may feel only the cost of moving, not the capital they’ve built.
Cross-references
Mobility Pattern (Transitions & Mobility); Assignment Success (Transitions & Mobility); Expandable Worldview (Identity & Belonging); Cultural Agility (Cultural Adaptation). Mobility pattern describes the cumulative relocation history from which mobility capital is built; assignment success is one of the primary organizational expressions of accumulated mobility capital in professional contexts. The expandable worldview and cultural agility entries document two of the most significant personal dimensions of mobility capital — the broadened perspective and behavioral flexibility that repeated cross-cultural experience develops.
Sources
Dickmann, M. & Harris, H. (2005). Developing career capital for global careers: The role of international assignments. Journal of World Business, 40(4), 399–408. Provides the framework of career capital — knowing why, knowing how, knowing whom — most applicable to understanding how mobility experience accumulates as a professional asset.
“Mobility capital” as a specific term is in practitioner and community use but is not yet standardized in the research literature. The closest academic analog is in: Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J.G. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–258). Greenwood.
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