A new book about the shift from permanent to temporary migration of nurses to the global north began as a PhD thesis at Carleton University.
Salimah Valiani (PhD/10) was working as a policy analyst at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), while completing her PhD in Sociology part-time.
“At the CLC, I initiated research and advocacy work that focused on temporary labour migration,” says Valiani. “I realized that this situation was longstanding for nurses and wanted to trace the causes and consequences.”
When she approached her PhD Committee with the idea of turning this topic into a thesis, she received an enthusiastic response. “The chair, Wally Clement, was very welcoming of my policy expertise. He saw it as a driver of my scientific enquiry, as I did, which has made this study a unique contribution to the academe, the policy world, and the world of labour organizing.”
Her dissertation led to two years of research and, this spring, culminated in the publication of Rethinking Unequal Exchange: The Global Integration of Nursing Labour Markets (University of Toronto Press).
Valiani’s book aims to understand the increasing use of temporary migrant nurses e.g. nurses entering countries on temporary work permits rather than as permanent residents.
She points out that while there is nothing new in the flow of nurses, particularly from poor countries to richer countries, the increased use of temporary migrant nurses is a phenomenon that began in the early 1990s.
Valiani says the exploitation of these nurses is also on the rise. While permanent residency for internationally trained workers means they have the right to live and work in places of one’s choice, the right to migrate with one’s entire nuclear family, and the right to eventual citizenship, which includes political rights such as the right to vote, this is not true for temporary migrant workers.
Furthermore, as their legal status is typically tied to their employers, they can only remain in the country by staying in the job through which they had been given the temporary work and residence permit.
“Given this constraint, the employers have yet more power over the worker than they do in other employment relationships,” says Valiani. “All of this is bad for the worker, particularly given that most internationally-trained workers seek employment in countries other than their own in order to improve the lot of themselves and their families.”
While Valiani’s book focuses on the post-1950 political economies of the Philippines, the United States and Canada, the trend-setting countries in the increased supply and demand of temporary migrant nurses, she had this to say about permanent Canadian nurses: “The difficult situation and exploitation of nurses in Canada today is caused by the same problems faced by temporary migrant nurses in Canada.”
Today, Valiani is the economist and policy analyst for the Ontario Nurses Association, the largest union of frontline nurses in Canada, and an associate researcher with the Centre for the Study of Education and Work at the University of Toronto.
Her book will be launched 7 p.m. on Monday, May 14 at Octopus Books in Ottawa.
Thursday, March 22, 2012 in Alumni, News
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