Migration policies, ethical controversies and registration procedures related to the recruitment of African nurses in the UK: Towards a paradigm shift?

About this event

This event is part of the IMI Seminar Series, Michaelmas term 2014.

As most European countries are having an ageing population, the UK is faced during decades with a growing need for health personnel, particularly nurses. Historically, the UK has long favoured the international recruitment of overseas health professionals into the NHS to meet the health workforce needs. However, since 2004, the open and liberal British model of recruitment of overseas health professionals tends to be supplanted by a model increasingly restrictive.

The new British institutional context of overseas migration policy is marked by major policy changes. The implementation of the Code of Practice is now prohibiting the active recruitment of health personnel from poor countries and is imposing the recruitment of health workforce from the European Community. This shift in migration policy is linked with the revision of the immigration law and changes in the registration procedures for overseas nurses.

This paper discusses the migration of African nurses in the UK within a general context of controversy surrounding the migration of health personnel involving both the international and the national actors, in the North and the South. The analytic literature review will pay particular attention to the actors of the controversy and the construction of a new hegemonic paradigm.