How Workforce Localization Shapes Expatriate Agency

Narratives of voice, silence, and knowledge practices in Saudi Arabia, with Ali Faqihi and Cathy (Ying) Xu.

Highlights

Workforce localization is reshaping employment relationships in the Gulf region, yet little is known about how expatriates interpret their capacity to act within these politically sensitive environments. We examine how foreign professionals working in Saudi Arabia enact agency through voice, silence, and knowledge practices under Saudization. Drawing on 23 interviews and using composite narrative analysis, we develop four patterned profiles Altruist, Compliant, Pragmatist, and Apprehensive that capture distinct combinations of communication and knowledge behaviors, and the meanings expatriates attach to those actions. The findings show that expatriates are neither passive recipients of policy nor homogeneously adaptive. Instead, they engage in purposeful strategies to sustain legitimacy, safety, and moral purpose in a system that simultaneously depends on their expertise and signals their eventual replaceability. The study makes three contributions to international management research. First, it advances understanding of localization as a lived process of situated agency. Second, it extends theories of voice, silence, and knowledge practices by showing how political and temporal pressures reshape their meanings. Third, it introduces a typology of agency under structural constraint, offering conceptual handles to explain divergent expatriate responses to localization.

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Wechtler, H, Faqihi, A., & Xu, X. (2026). How workforce localization shapes expatriate agency: Narratives of voice, silence, and knowledge practices in Saudi Arabia. Doctoral thesis, Ali Faqihi, University of Newcastle.