Business Schools Should Teach Migration Workforce Management

Every year, December 18 marks International Migrants Day, designated by the United Nations to “shine a spotlight on the invaluable contributions of millions of migrants around the world” while also highlighting “the increasingly complex environment in which migration occurs.”

These messages—the vital role of migration in development, on the one hand, and the problems caused by its mismanagement and corruption, on the other — were also echoed across various panel sessions at the 14^th UN Forum on Business & Human Rights, held in Geneva from November 24–26, 2025.

In the panel on Labour Migration, Business, and Human Rights in Times of Transformation, Bernard P. Olalia, from the government of the Philippines, emphasized: “Migrant workers build economies, they care for societies, and they sustain global industries. They are not beneficiaries of pity but partners in development.” Yet he also highlighted persistent problems of corruption in international labor recruitment networks, including scam hubs linked to human trafficking. Indeed, recently, in the Philippines, a former mayor was convicted for her role in setting up such a scam center.

A session focused on responsible recruitment highlighted that, despite migrant workers making up nearly 5% of the global workforce, many still face exploitative practices such as excessive recruitment fees, illegal contract substitution, forced labour, and limited access to grievance mechanisms and remediation.

Experts from both the nonprofit and corporate sectors stressed that, for business leaders, tackling these issues is not only an ethical obligation but a strategic necessity for creating inclusive and resilient value chains. Yet, migration is rarely found in business school curricula. My colleagues Aida Hajro, Paul Baldassari, and I have spoken with dozens of senior-level executives at some of the largest global firms, and they all told us they learned about migration management the hard way, by: (A) starting from scratch, (B) making mistakes, and (C) learning from NGOs, human rights lawyers, and sustainability consultants.

In this article, I argue that business educators should be equipping their students—the world’s future leaders—to manage migration effectively and fairly. I also offer strategies we can use to advance migration education.

There’s No Scarcity of Knowledge

There is a vast body of accumulated knowledge on migration and human rights in global value chains, built over the past five decades since multinational enterprises began intensifying their offshoring and nearshoring practices.

Until recently, most of the academic research on this has been conducted in disciplines such as sociology, labour law, labour relations, and the multidisciplinary field of migration studies.

In business and management research, there were several path-breaking publications in the 2010, including the provocation paper on the invisibility of migrants in diversity research by Bell and colleagues and the special issue on employment discrimination against immigrants edited by Jörg Dietz. But the interest really picked up with multiple special issues on migration from 2019 onward, and it continues gaining traction today.

Apart from academic studies and research by leading intergovernmental actors, like the IOM, ILO, and UNHCR, a significant amount of data collection is carried out by regional and global NGOs, supply chain risk consultancies, and industry alliances. Many of these organizations were represented at the UN Forum, where they discussed their latest achievements and ongoing challenges.

Here are some examples:

• A regional NGO, CIERTO, focuses on the Guatemala–Mexico–US migration corridor. They’ve been designing practical tools to measure the relationship between responsible recruitment and worker productivity, as well as the impacts of responsible migration on sustainable development in countries of origin.

• A globally operating NGO, Verité, has collected multi-country data to develop the Recruitment Cost Calculator.

• Another global nonprofit, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, maintains a Migrant Worker Allegations Database that uses desk research across more than 30 countries to record trends in migrant human rights abuses, including case locations and implicated companies.

• The Swiss consulting group Equiception, founded and led by former Fair Labor Association CEO Auret van Heerden, uses field research in combination with stakeholder and expert interviews to produce guides, fact checks, and online due-diligence assessments for companies.

• The risk-management platform EiQ by LRQA gathers supply chain intelligence and produces reports drawn from 30,000 onsite annual audits. Its most recent work illustrates how tariff wars are reshaping migration and increasing the risk of human rights abuses in supply chains.

• Industry coalitions such as the B4IG, The Consumer Goods Forum, and Responsible Business Alliance have developed due diligence tools based on sector-specific insights, stakeholder interviews, and case research, to support responsible migration management among their member companies.

Migration is Missing from Business School Teaching

Now, to what I see as a glaring problem: This knowledge is not making its way into most business school classrooms. (My colleagues and I conducted a study analyzing business school curricula that proves this.)

That’s a real missed opportunity. Most business leaders do have a business education, but their courses in international business, supply chain management, human resource management, strategy, and marketing did not equip them to manage the migrant workforce effectively and fairly.

I raised the issue of this looming gap at the UN Forum. Gladys Cisneros, the Branch Chief for Labour Migration at the ILO, picked up this question and called for scaling up the global efforts: “this is so topical because it has been missing from the agenda… we do see this [migration teaching in business schools] as part of how we critically think about business need for the future.” 

Where We Should Go From Here

As with all major sustainability education challenges, there are multiple ways forward. These include (but are by no means limited to):

Repeated Calls for Action

My coauthors and I have called for the incorporation of migration topics in business education through our research papers, podcasts, webinars, and business school leadership conferences, such as the annual EFMD Conference for Deans & Directors General. Integrating migration issues into business and management education, including executive MBAs, is also one of the core tenets of our Migration, Business & Society initiative.

But this is clearly not enough. As we know from the history of most sustainability-related topics, calls for action must be repeated again and again, through multiple channels. Sustainability networks like NBS, GBSN, PRME, and key accreditation bodies such as AACSB, EQUIS, and AMBA are major players in shaping business education and can serve as platforms for dialogue.

Creating Teaching Materials

The ILO and the IOM offer workshops for educators and toolkits that are a great starting point but need to be adapted to the specific needs of business courses at different levels of instruction. The Migration, Business & Society initiative also curates a Teach & Learn page.

Apart from these resources, there is still a very long way to go. Business and management textbooks rarely touch upon the migration topic, and there are only very few business case studies, which, as we know, are a key method used, especially in MBA programs.

Creating Research Knowledge Hubs

Many universities promote research-informed teaching. As business and management research on migration continues to grow, dedicated research clusters and interdisciplinary institutes could also support the development of classroom content. To date, I am aware of only two migration-focused business school centers: Research Institute for Migration and Refugee Studies and Management at Vienna University of Economics and Business (launched in 2025) and Center for Migration and Integration Research at Stockholm School of Economics (to be launched in 2026).

Partnering With and Learning From Similar Initiatives

There’s another relatively young field that has already made its way into business education: business and human rights. Michael Posner and Dorothee Baumann have set a powerful example by establishing human rights centers within their business schools. In his book Conscience Incorporated (2024), Michael writes: “As global businesses grapple with human rights problems, there is a growing demand for educators to equip current and future leaders with the tools to do the same.”

Together, the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights and the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights have developed a toolkit that goes a step further than providing teaching materials: it offers a vision for how to institutionalize a human rights perspective within business school curricula. Both centers are also leading members of the GBSN Business and Human Rights Impact Community, organizing its annual meetings and driving the teaching agenda forward. Academics wanting to advance migration education could partner with and learn from the work of these human rights-focused leaders.

Why Migration Education in Business Schools Needs Its Own Niche

One can learn a lot from the work of experts from outside academia and from our path-breaking colleagues in the human rights and business education field.

However, there is more to migration than its human rights dimension. Migration is also about facts, numbers, and historical patterns. It’s about internal and international movements, voluntary and forced causes, social and environmental factors, and all that lies in between. It’s about labour demands, skills, talent, and innovation. It’s about business strategies, location and investment decisions. It’s about sustainable development. It’s about cross-cultural management. It’s about human psychology. It’s also about many of our students themselves.

This December 18, I hope we’re reminded that business schools must incorporate migration into their teaching curriculum—and that they should have done it yesterday. Let’s get to work.

Find Out More

Our website, “Migration, Business & Society,” offers teaching resources, collections of both peer-reviewed articles in business journals and practice-oriented accessible articles for the classroom, business toolkits, the latest research, lists of migration organizations, blogs, and inspirational art.