As international mobility becomes more common and hybrid work shifts from a temporary solution to a permanent feature of corporate life, the idea of “home” is becoming more fluid — especially for globally mobile workers, who live and work across multiple countries.
For Laetitia Mimoun, associate professor of marketing at ESCP, this is not just a byproduct of globalisation, but a shift worth closer attention. It’s changing how people with ties to multiple countries organise their work, relationships, and everyday routines, according to academic work she produced with colleagues Zahra Sharifonnasabi (Queen Mary University of London) and Fleura Bardhi (Bayes Business School).
“These aren’t traditional migrants who settle permanently in a new place,” she explains. “They may live in one country, have family in another, and spend parts of the year elsewhere. When you ask them where home is, they don’t have one answer — they have many.”
This demographic is distinct in important ways, she explains. Not only do they resist a singular definition of home, but they actively construct and manage a portfolio of homes — each with its own psychological, emotional and logistical weight.
For organisations, Mimoun, Sharifonnasabi, and Bardhi say this creates both challenges and opportunities: supporting these employees well means recognising the complexity of their living arrangements, and the demands this places on their time, wellbeing and mobility.
These aren’t traditional migrants who settle permanently in a new place. They may live in one country, have family in another, and spend parts of the year elsewhere. When you ask them where home is, they don’t have one answer — they have many.
One life, four homes
For the globally mobile professionals, “home” is no longer singular. Instead, they operate across four parallel concepts of home — each serving a different function, according to Mimoun, Sharifonnasabi, and Bardhi’s research.
“They define the concept of home across different locations,” Mimoun says. “They do not have one home that is truly convenient; they have four.”
The first is what they term the “emotional home”, where attachments and memories reside. Then there is the “home away from home”, where day-to-day life plays out and most family routines occur. A third, more utilitarian space is the “base of operation”, often stripped of emotional significance but serving practical needs. Finally, there is the “home on the road” — the most flexible, made up of things they can easily pack and take with them.
The hidden cost of flexibility
For companies, these highly mobile workers can seem like an ideal group — flexible, fast-moving and able to adapt quickly to changes in the market or political environment. But Mimoun and colleagues caution against this simplistic view.
“Managing multiple homes is very costly. It’s a heavy mental load,” she explains. “There’s a lot of planning involved — keeping track of where your possessions are, what’s needed in each place and coordinating travel between them. Then there’s the emotional side — you’re constantly missing things, which can take a real toll.”
In essence, the mobility that fuels a global career also fragments experience. Holidays are missed. Social connections erode. And while air miles and loyalty programmes suggest comfort, the emotional strain of juggling life in multiple places is something companies rarely acknowledge in their policies.
Home, by brand and by bond
So how do people create a sense of home when their lives are spread across different places? For Mimoun, Sharifonnasabi, and Bardhi, it comes down to relationships — some of them surprisingly transactional.
“One of the key ways people recreate a sense of home is by building relationships with businesses they interact with regularly,” Mimoun says. “It could be hotel managers or staff, for example. Over time, they form friendships and feel recognised as individuals by these people.”
Though not the central focus of the research, Mimoun acknowledges that brands also play a subtle but important role in stabilising identity across geographies.
“Brands help recreate the feeling of the emotional home,” she explains. “They often carry nostalgic value and are linked to specific national or cultural identities.”
In this context, a particular type of coffee, scent, or home appliance is no longer just a product — it becomes a proxy for comfort, a tool of psychological continuity.
One of the key ways people recreate a sense of home is by building relationships with businesses they interact with regularly. It could be hotel managers or staff, for example. Over time, they form friendships and feel recognised as individuals by these people.
Home as strategy
For business leaders managing globally mobile talent, Mimoun, Sharifonnasabi, and Bardhi offer a measured call to awareness. It begins with recognising the complexity of “home” in the lives of these employees — and ends with adjusting expectations accordingly.
“One key takeaway is simply recognising that this dynamic exists,” she says. “It’s important to understand which version of ‘home’ the individual is trying to recreate in a new place. Another is acknowledging the personal cost employees take on to be where the company needs them to be.”
Put plainly, relocation packages and housing stipends may only scratch the surface of what’s required to support a life lived in multiple time zones and tax codes.
Despite this, Mimoun, Sharifonnasabi, and Bardhi believe the lifestyle will become more common, not less, as remote and hybrid work accelerate. “Remote work makes these patterns even more common,” Mimoun says. “It’s likely to increase the number of people who maintain multiple homes.”
Why do people choose a life that is more logistically and emotionally expensive? The authors give three reasons: job demands, easier access to new opportunities, and the growing value of being flexible.
“It gives them more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances,” Mimoun says. “We saw this clearly during both Brexit and the Covid pandemic — people used their network of homes to adapt when laws or travel rules suddenly changed.”
In that sense, the global home is not just a lifestyle — it is also a strategy. A way of living that lets people adjust quickly when things are unpredictable. For companies and policymakers, the challenge is clear: to understand and support this architecture, not merely as a quirk of the elite but as a growing reality of the modern professional class.
As Mimoun and her colleagues’ work shows, home is no longer where the heart is. It is where the WiFi connects, the relationships hold, and the suitcase is never quite unpacked.