Configurations of global software development: offshore versus nearshore

We are faced with a bewildering range of offshoring options such as "best-shoring," "farm-shoring" and many more. One of these options, nearshore outsourcing, has received wide coverage in contemporary popular media and appears to apply to a wide selection of countries. However, the justifications for this have not been examined. We conducted a content analysis of 90 textual sources that refer to nearshoring, so as to determine its global scope and spread, its accepted meaning, and its areas of distinction from offshore. We find 46 such nearshore destinations worldwide and assert that competitive differentiation in the offshoring marketplace appears to be a main objective for the use of this terminology.