This paper uses Marx’s theory to analyze the phenomenon of discrimination against foreign workers through a different lens, reevaluating current theories tackling highly skilled migration and conclusions from recently published papers. We are witnessing two very strong and opposing forces: the need for a foreign labor force, and an unwelcoming environment for foreign employees, embodied in wage discrimination, and workplace discrimination in general. Current research in workplace discrimination is focused on unconscious biases, prejudices, and stereotypes as a cause of workplace discrimination, and has an individual-level approach to this problem. However, in countries whose economy depends on the foreign labor force, and has no alternative to it, it is reasonable to assume that the integration of the foreign labor force in the host country's labor market is conditioned by more formal and higher structures of the national state, and international business companies, far beyond from individual level of human resources managers, far away from organizational culture. By delving into the structural dimensions of discrimination, it aims to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by highly skilled migrants in the contemporary workforce.

The past few years have witnessed a plethora of scholars and practitioners embracing the concept of deglobalization. Our literature review reveals that authors have used different definitions of deglobalization, different metrics, and different levels of aggregation, looking at different institutional origins and different timeframes. To provide a more comprehensive assessment, we performed a series of analyses with metrics commensurable to the conceptualization of globalization on a multi-country dataset consisting of 3,303 unique firms from the top 16 home markets of the Fortune Global 500 firms over the 2001-2022 period (n=35,042). We introduce the difference between equally-weighted degree of internationalization which tracks the evolution of the average firm, and value-weighted degree of internationalization which better captures the evolution at the macroeconomic level. We find that using such distinct metrics leads to different judgements on the development of deglobalization. On the one hand, we identify an overall upswing of globalization for the average firm, a pattern that is robust across different economies. On the other, our analysis of value-weighted degree of internationalization highlights that different economies underwent distinct and even contradictory paths of (de)globalization. We identify the research implications.

This paper empirically investigates the impact of inward foreign direct investment,
with a focus on multinational firms holding dominant market shares, on wage dispersion
between firms across European regions. The analysis uses firm-level data from the
ORBIS Europe data set over 2012-2021 combined with a range of economic and social
data at the regional level. Using a shift-share instrumental variables approach, we find
that foreign direct investment, particularly international superstar firms, contributed
to increased wage inequality between firms across European regions.