Asian women medical migrants in the UK

Introduction: The volume and geographical spread of Asian female migration as well as its impact on the sending countries has led to a rapid growth in research on such migration (Limand Oishi 1996; Yamanaka and Piper 2003). Broadly speaking, there are two strands to this literature, that which focuses on intra-Asian migration (Huang and Yeoh 2003; Wickramasekara 2002; Chin 2003) and that which follows the broad contours of brain drain migration, from countries of the Third World to the First (Parreñas 2001; McGovern 2003). The extent of intra-regional migration in Asia, the conditions under which much of this labour is performed and the new forms of political and civil engagements that have emerged as a result have all evoked feminist attention (Yamanaka and Piper 2003; Piper 2003; Barber 2000). Research on the movement of women from Asia to work in OECD countries, particularly the US (Espiritu 2002; Parreñas 2001) and the U.K. (Anderson, 2000) echoes many of the same concerns. In much of this literature female labour seems to primarily involve body work, work where the female body or 'femininity' are implicated in the nature of work provided (see for instance, Gulati 1994). For instance, most Asian women labour migrants move to take up jobs as domestic workers, sex workers and nurses, professions that are defined by notions of femininity. As Bowlby, Gregory and McKie (1997) argue such notions can act in oppressive ways to structure women's entry into occupations but also shape the form of international female migration. However, women who move from the Third World to the First as well as within Asia also take part in the less feminised sectors of the labour market such as IT where gender exclusivity and male dominance are the norm, although such participation has received much less attention (but see for instance, Yeoh and Willis 2004; Raghuram, 2004a; Raghuram 2004b). Shortages in these sectors in many First World countries have reawakened debates about brain drain and more recently of 'brain circulation' (Saxenian 2001). These forms of migration are also encompassed in the burgeoning literature on highly skilled migration (see for instance, Iredale 2001) yet much of the literature on these topics does not acknowledge the presence of Asian women in skilled migration streams (but see Kofman and Raghuram 2004; Raghuram and Kofman 2004). As more and more countries use labour market needs and the ability of migrants to fill skills shortages as important principles for selecting migrants, it is important to examine the ways in which Asian women too are significant players in skilled migration streams. Recognising the presence of Asian women in skilled migration expands the way in which we think of migrant Asian women and highlights the variations between women who migrate in different ways and through different routes. In this paper I take some tentative steps towards this by highlighting the presence of women doctors who migrate from the Asian subcontinent to the UK, working in a sector where the discourse around migration is relatively ungendered, but often implicitly masculinised. I suggest that migrant women too play an important part in UK's professional labour markets and explore how recognising the presence of Asian women in medical migration can alter the ways in which we think of the presence of Asian women in the UK.1 The rest of the paper is divided into three sections. The first section looks at some debates around migrant women's participation in the labour market and contrasts that with contemporary debates on the broader literature on women's participation in the professions. The following section outlines the extent of migrant women's participation in one sector, i.e. the medical sector of the labour market and the final section outlines some of the implications of these patterns for the way we think about Asian female migration

Locating Care Ethics Beyond the Global North

In care ethics, caring is seen to be embedded in practice and locally contingent. However, despite a large and thriving literature on care practices as they vary across the globe, the implications of the different meanings and geohistories of care for the ethics of care have hardly been addressed. Rather, most theorisations of care ethics have implicitly conceptualised care as a universal practice or drawn on care as practised in the global North. This paper argues that care ethics needs emplacing, and that this emplacement should extend beyond sites in the global North so that feminist theories of care can take account of the diversity of care practices globally. Moreover, given the increasing globalisation of care, different notions of care are often and increasingly in dialogue with each other. As care is relational and enacted across space, the differences in care ethics between places have to be negotiated. This paper, therefore, calls not just for recognising multiplicity in care ethics or even multicultural care ethics, but for theorising the relations between different kinds of care and the ethics that drive them. Finally, both care relations and understandings of care are dynamic; they alter as people migrate, which also needs consideration. This paper argues that a relational and dynamic understanding of varied care offers new theoretical, political and empirical agendas both within geography and for feminist theory

Governing the mobility of skills

About the book: This book offers a critical examination of the way in which the nature and governance of international labour migration is changing within a globalizing environment. It examines how labour mobility and the governance of labour migration are changing by exploring the links between political economy and differentiated forms of labour migration. Additionally, it considers the effects of new social models of inclusion and exclusion on labour migration. Therefore, the book troubles the conventional dichotomies and categorizations – permanent vs. temporary; skilled vs. unskilled; legal vs. illegal -- that have informed migration studies and regulatory frameworks. Theoretically, this volume contributes to an ongoing project of reframing the study of migration within politics and international relations. Bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, drawing on examples from the European Union, North America and Asia, Governing International Labour Migration will be of interest to students and scholars of migration studies, IPE, international relations, and economics

Thinking UK's medical labour market transnationally

About the book: This volume provides the first detailed overview of the growing phenomenon of the international migration of skilled health workers. The contributors focus on who migrates, why they migrate, what the outcomes are for them and their extended families, what their experiences in the workforce are, and ultimately, the extent to which this expanding migration flow has a relationship to development issues. It therefore provides new, interdisciplinary reflections on such core issues as brain drain, gender roles, remittances and sustainable development at a time when there has never been greater interest in the migration of health workers

Do the Best Go West?: An Analysis of the Self-Selection of Employed East-West Migrants in Germany

Since the inequality of earnings in East Germany has approached West German levels in the late 1990s, the standard Roy model predicts that a positive selection bias of East-West migrants should disappear. Using a switching regression model and data from the IAB-employment sample, we find however that employed East-West migrants remain positively self-selected with respect to unobserved abilities. This result is consistent with the predictions of our extended Roy model which considers moving costs that are negatively correlated with labour market abilities of individuals. Moreover, we find that wage differentials as well as differences in employment opportunities are the central forces which drive East-West migration after unification.Migration; Self-selection; East Germany

"Without racism there would be no geriatrics": South Asian overseas-trained doctors and the development of Geriatric Medicine in the United Kingdom', 1950-2000

The long history of medical migration to the united Kingdom is relatively well known. however, until recently the story of the contribu-tion of South Asian doctors to specific fields has been less discussed. in this chapter we address this gap by focusing on the contributions of migrant doctors to the geriatric specialty. We begin with a history of geriatrics in the united Kingdom and go on to outline our methodology before describing the process by which South asian doctors came to be working in geriatric medicine, what barriers they encountered, and how networks worked both for and against them, before conclud- ing with a consideration of how certain regional centres of excellence played a part in their professional development and careers as consult- ants in the specialty

The United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and MObility (UNU-GCM) in Barcelona: Mission and vision

L'Institut de Globalització, Cultura i Mobilitat de la Universitat de les Nacions Unides (UNU-GCM), amb seu al pavelló de Sant Manuel del complex modernista de l'Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau de Barcelona, és l'institut més recent, fins ara, de la Universitat de les Nacions Unides (UNU) i l'únic al sud d'Europa. La UNU consisteix en un conjunt d'instituts de recerca i formació escampats per tot el món que actuen a la vegada com a laboratoris d'idees (think tank) i centres de formació de postgrau, amb la central al Japó. La missió de la UNU-GCM és contribuir a la bona governança, a la diversitat cultural, a la democràcia i als drets humans a través d'una millor comprensió de la mobilitat i la diversitat culturals en el context de la globalització. Així, se centra en els principals fenòmens culturals i socials de la migració i els mitjans de comunicació com a segells distintius de l'era de la globalització. L'Institut té com a objectiu fomentar la investigació d'avantguarda en aquestes àrees, tant a escala global com local, tenint en compte conceptes culturals com ara les fronteres, el gènere o les connexions transnacionals. La UNU-GCM pretén amb això donar suport a l'assoliment dels Objectius de Desenvolupament del Mil·leni, en particular els d'igualtat de gènere i la noció d'una aliança global per al desenvolupament.Based in Barcelona, in the Sant Manuel Pavilion of the Sant Pau Art Nouveau Site, the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM) is the newest institute to date of the United Nations University (UNU) and the only one in southern Europe. The UNU, which consists of a globally dispersed set of research and training institutes, is a global think tank and postgraduate teaching organisation headquartered in Japan. The mission of the UNU-GCM is to contribute to good governance, cultural diversity, democracy and human rights through a better understanding of cultural mobility and diversity in the context of globalisation. Its focus is thus on the major cultural and social phenomena of migration and media, as hallmarks of the era of globalisation. The institute aims to foster cutting-edge research in these areas at global and local levels through the lens of key cultural concepts, such as borders, gender and transnational connections. The UNU-GCM thereby also aims to support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, in particular those of gender equality and the notion of development as a global partnership

International Migration to Germany: Estimation of a Time-Series Model and Inference in Panel Cointegration

In this paper we study the determinants of international migration to Germany, 1967-2000. The empirical literature on macro-economic migration functions usually explains migration flows by a set of explanatory variables such as the income differential, employment rates, and migrations stocks as in Hatton (1995), for example. Since macroeconomic variables are widely acknowledged as nonstationary, the standard model in the migration literature can only meet the requirements of modern non-stationary time-series econometrics if migrations flows and the explanatory variables are integrated of the same order and if these variables form a cointegrated set. In order to prove whether the standard specification is compatible with our data, we use the univariate Augmented Dickey-Fuller test as well as its panel data version, developed in Im, Pesaran, and Shin (2003), to test for unit roots in the time series. The tests demonstrate that migration rates are stationary, while the remaining explanatory variables follow I(1) processes. Consequently, we suggest an alternative specification of the long-run migration function with migration stocks as the dependent variable. For this specification, we find that all variables are I(1) processes, and that the null of no cointegration can be decisively rejected by applying the panel cointegration test of Pedroni (1999). The parameter inference in the cointegrating regressions is conducted using the method of canonical cointegrating regressions of Park (1992). Our empirical findings generally agree with predictions of migration theory.Migration, unit roots, panel cointegration

Population Aging and Trends in the Provision of Continued Education

This study investigates whether the incidence of continued vocational education has changed as the German workforce commenced an aging process which is expected to intensify. As the lifespan in productive employment lengthens human capital investments for older workers become increasingly worthwhile. Using the data of a German population survey we describe recent trends in the development of human capital investments and apply decomposition procedures to the probability of continued education. Holding everything else constant the shift in the population age distribution by itself would haveb lead to a decline in training participation over the considered period, 1996-2004. However, the decomposition analyses yield that behavioral changes caused an increase in training particularly among older workers. This is confirmed by multivariate regressions on pooled cross-sectional data: the increase in training probabilities is highest among older workers.specific human capital investment, training, population aging, demographic change