Global Virtual Migration and Transnational Online Educational Platforms

In our digital age, virtual migration—workers providing transnational services without the physical mobility of workers’ bodies—has become an essential component of globalization. This chapter draws on transnational online educational platforms connecting contractors in North America with young English learners in China, especially ABCKID (pseudonym), to explore how virtual migrants from developed countries provide services to customers in developing countries. Using in-depth interviews, surveys, and online data, I illustrate how ABCKID has mobilized highly mobile and highly immobile social groups that were previously marginalized by various labor markets—military wives, digital nomads, and stay-at-home moms in the United States and Canada—to join the platform, and thus expand the pool of virtual migrants. The alignment between these virtual migrants’ motivations to overcome labor-market constraints and the characteristics of ABCKID jobs has not only prompted them to join the platform but also brought them immense job satisfaction. Although this platform dislocates contractors from their local contexts, contractors from these social groups have found meaning in their jobs. I discuss how mobilizing these formerly marginalized social groups into virtual migrants has facilitated the transition of globalization forms, while clouding and justifying the control and surveillance of digital globalization. I also discuss the impact of this transition on the direction of globalization and global inequality.