Capitalism And Economic Extraction: A Comparative Perspective on Global Talent Mobility

Anthony P. D’Costa,

Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne

6:00 -7:30pm, October 20, 2026

Room 301, 3F, building 10, Sophia University

In person only / No registration required

The objective of this presentation is to remind us that behind all the human stories of migration and multilayered experiences of different ethnic communities, generational differences, and national policies, the mobility of talent is a product of the structural workings of uneven global capitalism. Here I provide a familiar but foundational dimension of labor mobility with a focus on “talent”. Using the analytical concept of the extraction of surplus value and relying on a mix of theoretical perspectives, the international mobility of “talent” (people) is related to the systemic imperative of capitalism to generate economic value. Who gets what from global talent mobility is assessed using empirical materials drawn from the Indian experience.

Anthony P. D’Costa is an Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne. He taught at the University of Washington, National University of Singapore, Copenhagen Business School, University of Melbourne, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In Copenhagen and Melbourne, he was the Chair and Professor of Contemporary Indian Studies and in Huntsville an Eminent Scholar of Global Studies and Professor of Economics. He has published extensively on the political economy of development in India and industrial transformation in East Asia. In 2026 he published his fourteenth book project, Indian Business, Economic Development, and the Jobs Dilemma in the Twenty-first Century (OUP 2026) and his edited The Oxford Handbook of the New Space Economy (2026). He contributed “The International Mobility of Technical Talent” (2008) to the UNU-WIDER International Mobility of Talent Project, a more updated chapter to OECD’s annual Asian migration report (2018), and published International Mobility, Global Capitalism, and Changing Structures of Accumulation: Transforming the Japan-India IT Relationship, (2016 Routledge) based on an Abe Fellowship of the Japan Foundation.

This talk is organized by Megha Wadhwa (Assistant Professor, DES, Sophia University).