Nurses on the Move: Migration and the Global Health Care Economy – By Mireille Kingma
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| Author | Geraldine Healy |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00657.x |
resources strategy, but similarly sheds additional light on issues pertaining to the
prospects for trade union revitalization.
Peter Butler
Leicester Business School
Nurses on the Move: Migration and the Global Health Care Economy by Mireille
Kingma. Cornell University Press, ILR Press, Ithaca and London, 2006, ix +275
pp., ISBN 978 0 8014 7259 6, US$24.95, £14.50.
Migration is one of the major employment relations issues of our time. Although, if
we take an historical perspective, we see that migration has been a continuous feature
of national labour markets for the last two centuries and before. Paradoxically,
migration is regularly proclaimed by press and politicians alike as both the cause of
many contemporary social problems and the solution to others. The political promi-
nence of migration today gives this book its contemporary resonance.
Nowhere has migration been more important than in the healthcare economy.
There is little doubt that migration from the less developed world has sustained the
health care economy in economically wealthy countries. Health migration is a highly
contested area. Despite its undoubted growth in recent years and its value (particu-
larly through remittances), there is major concern about the corresponding damage
the migration of scarce skills inflicts on developing countries.
Yet despite its political, economic and social significance, there are few studies that
confront in detail the different dimensions of healthcare migration. Nurses on the
Move by Mireille Kingma is one such study even if it focuses on only one occupational
group in the international healthcare industry. In doing so, the book addresses the
experience of nurse migration from different perspectives and this is its real strength.
It addresses a healthcare industry phenomenon where skilled, overwhelmingly female
nurses are moving in the hundreds of thousands around the globe.
The author begins by setting out her personal experience of migration as a nurse in
both Europe and the United States. She was educated in the United States but began
her nursing experience in Switzerland and the United Kingdom and then Spain. The
author is currently a consultant on nursing and health policy for the International
Council of Nurses (based in Geneva, Switzerland) and therefore has unique access to
data sources and key individuals.
The titles of the book’s chapters give some flavour of what is to follow: 1. Welcome
to globalization; 2. The human face of nurse migration; 3. Mini-business, big business;
4. Vested interests, inconsistencies and double standards; 5. Trade and migration; 6.
Brain drain, brain gain and brain circulation; and 7. The grass could (original italics)
be greener.
I cite the chapter titles as they capture the breadth of the content of the book. This
is a critical book that seeks to uncover the complexities of the international nurse
migration industry. As such, it is a welcome addition to our understanding of the
processes that underpin the migration experience and the subsequent work experience
of those who migrate.
The book begins by moving from personal experiences of migration to the contra-
dictions of nurse migration. Thus, Kingma states ‘no country today is untouched by
nurse migration. A staggering number of nurses worldwide — the vast majority of
them women — are searching for better pay and working conditions, career mobility,
Book Reviews 869
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.
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