Making Global Society: Friendship Networks among Transnational Professionals in the Building Design Industry

Abstract Little is currently known about the nature and wider implications of transnationalism among professionals, despite the fact that companies are increasingly establishing overseas business links, seeking foreign contracts and obliging professional employees to work overseas for long periods of time. Focusing on the research generated by a small study of mainly architects and engineers who had worked abroad at some time in the building design industry in this article I explore their transnational experiences and the factors that enabled them to construct viable friendship networks extending over time and into global life. These experiences are briefly contrasted with the social processes constructed by migrants and others operating in transnational social space. Though professionals appear to lack the clear sense of collective unity, the pre‐existing identity and/or the same sense of membership and organization as other types of transnational communities may exhibit, these networks nevertheless demonstrated a high degree of sociality and affectivity and a capacity to generate further transnational relationships. They also revealed a strongly postnational orientation arising from the conjunction of a unique combination of shared factors especially age, emotional deprivation, location and the nature of overseas work.