Toward a Sustainable Health Workforce?

Mosuela, Cleovi C.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-44580-5_5

Cleovi C. Mosuela²

167 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter seeks to unsettle the ecological precept of sustainability evoked in the recruitment of Philippine-trained health care workers. I suggest reading the rhetoric as an expression of not only effectively sorting out nurses who are resilient and manageable but also making sure that labor in the source country is renewable. Experts governing the recruitment process bring migration in line with the current project of sustainable development. Migrant nurses play a big role in sustaining forms of social protection for citizens in the North. Taking the term sustainability earnestly would mean taking care of and taking care about present and future health systems, including those in the South, and social values.

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Notes

1.
“Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015”, in 70/1. Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 21 October 2015). https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/70/1&Lang=E
2.
In conversation with Nigel Clark 2019.
3.
Seyed Ali Hosseini “Development as Usual: Ethical Reflections on the SDGs” in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Global Governance Challenges, ed. Simon Dalby et al. (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019), 202.
4.
Mark Duffield, “Getting savages to fight barbarians: development, security and the colonial present,” Conflict, Security & Development 5, no. 2 (2005): 153, https://doi.org/10.1080/14678800500170068.
5.
Duffield convincingly argues that development is best understood as a technology of security it functions to contain and manage underdevelopment’s destabilizing effects…
6.
Duffield, “Getting savages to fight barbarians: development, security and the colonial present.”
7.
Ibid.
8.
Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples (Cambridge Polity Press, 2007), ix.
9.
GIZ Germany interview 12 June 2014.
10.
German embassy Philippines interview 24 November 2014.
11.
Ibid.
12.
GIZ Philippines interview 8 October 2014.
13.
Nurse Eden interview 13 May 2015.
14.
Thomas Faist, “Brokerage in Cross-Border Mobility: Social Mechanisms and the (Re)Production of Social Inequalities,” Social Inclusion 2, no. 4 (2014).
15.
Faist, “Brokerage in Cross-Border Mobility: Social Mechanisms and the (Re)Production of Social Inequalities.”
16.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
17.
Najim Azahaf and Ulrich Kober, “The nursing-care industry in Germany is struggling with international recruitment efforts,” news release, 2015, https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/topics/latest-news/2015/juni/the-nursing-care-industry-in-germany-is-struggling-with-international-recruitment-efforts/
18.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
19.
Triple Win Bewerberinformation [applicant information] (Bonn: 2013), 3, http://www.poea.gov.ph/twp/files/Triple%20Win%20Philipinen.pdf
20.
The Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF), also known as Pag-IBIG Fund, is a government-owned and regulated establishment under the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council. It was founded on 11 June 1978 as a result of Presidential Decree No. 1530 to address the need for a national savings scheme and an affordable housing support for the Filipino worker. Pag-IBIG is an acronym which signifies Pagtutulungan sa Kinabukasan: Ikaw, Bangko, Industria at Gobyerno (Cooperation for the Future: You, Bank, Industry, and Government). The Pag-IBIG Fund connects these four sectors of the society to collaborate toward offering its members with housing loans and access to its savings system. The Fund is open to Filipinos employed by local and foreign-based employers along with those who choose a voluntary and self-employed membership. “History of Pag-IBIG Fund,” Pag-IBIG Fund, accessed 7 October 2017, https://www.pagibigfund.gov.ph/history.html.
In 2016, the Pag-IBIG Fund’s Net Income reached PHP 25.01 billion (approx. EUR 417 million). In the same year, it reached 17.27 million memberships; 12.51 million members work within the country while 4.76 million work overseas. The Fund approved more than PHP 72.46 billion (approx. EUR 1.2 billion) to support the procurement of 93,383 homes. Pag-IBIG Fund 2016 Annual Report (2016), https://www.pagibigfund.gov.ph/document/pdf/transparency/2016/report/PAG-IBIG%20ANNUAL%20REPORT%202016%20(posted%20Sept%2006%202017).pdf.
21.
Triple Win Bewerberinformation [applicant information] 3.
22.
PSLink interview 6 February 2015; DoH interview 18 February 2015.
23.
PSLink interview 6 February 2015.
24.
Ibid.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Ang Nars interview 26 January 2015.
27.
Philippine embassy Germany interview 4 August 2014.
28.
Philippine embassy Germany interview 4 August 2014.
29.
“Recruitment of Filipino Nurses for Germany,” (6 August 2016, Geneva: Global Forum on Migration & Development, 20 July 2017 2016). https://gfmd.org/pfp/ppd/5041
30.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
31.
POEA interview 13 October 2014.
32.
Philippine DoH interview 18 February 2015; PSLink interview 6 February 2015.
33.
PSLink interview 6 February 2015.
34.
Philippine DoH interview 18 February 2015.
35.
Ibid.
36.
Mireille Kingma, Nurses on the move: Migration and the global health care economy (London: Cornell University Press, 2006).
37.
Kingma, Nurses on the move: Migration and the global health care economy.
38.
PSLink interview 6 February 2015.
39.
Ibid.
40.
GIZ Germany interview 12 June 2014.
41.
Christian Joppke, “Beyond national models: Civic integration policies for immigrants in Western Europe,” West European Politics 30, no. 1 (2007), https://doi.org/10.1080/01402380601019613.
42.
POEA interview 13 October 2014.
43.
“Triple Win Project Update,” Philippines Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) 2016, accessed 23 December 2019, http://www.poea.gov.ph/twp/TWP.html
44.
The main web page of the Project reports 55 who have passed the recognition exam, however, when looking carefully at the list of names it totals 66.
45.
The number stands in contrast to the 130 participating health care facilities, according to ZAV, in which some have pending nurse positions yet to be filled (interview 8 October 2015).
46.
POEA interview 13 October 2014.
47.
Kingma, Nurses on the move: Migration and the global health care economy.
48.
POEA Manpower Registry interview 16 December 2014.
49.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
50.
Nurse Eden interview 13 May 2015.
51.
Tania Murray Li, “Practices of assemblage and community forest management,” Economy and Society 36, no. 2 (2007), https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140701254308, p. 270.
52.
POEA interview 16 December 2014.
53.
GIZ Philippines interview October 2014.
54.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
55.
Philippine DoH interview 18 February 2015.
56.
GIZ Germany interview 12 June 2014.
57.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
58.
Philippine DoH interview 18 February 2015.
59.
Ibid.
60.
Cindy Horst et al., “Private money, public scrutiny? Contrasting perspectives on remittances,” Global Networks 14, no. 4 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12048.
61.
Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, “The Tavistock programme: The government of subjectivity and social life,” Sociology 22, no. 2 (1988): 172, https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038588022002002.
62.
ZAV interview 8 October 2015.
63.
GIZ Germany interview 12 June 2014.
64.
Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of Peoples.
65.
In conversation with Nigel Clark 2019.
66.
Lisa A. Eckenwiler, “Care Worker Migration and Global Health Equity: Thinking Ecologically,” in The International Migration of Health Workers. Ethics, Rights and Justice, ed. Rebecca S. Shah (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
67.
Eleonore Kofman, “Rethinking care through social reproduction: articulating circuits of migration,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 19, no. 1 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxr030.
68.
Margaret Walton-Roberts, “Contextualizing the global nursing care chain: international migration and the status of nursing in Kerala, India,” Global Networks 12, no. 2 (2012), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2012.00346.x.
69.
Shiv Visvanathan, “Mrs Brundtland’s Disenchanted Cosmos,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 16, no. 3 (1991): 378, https://doi.org/10.1177/030437549101600306.
70.
Mike Hannis, “After development? In defence of sustainability,” Global Discourse 7, no. 1 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1080/23269995.2017.1300404.

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Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
Cleovi C. Mosuela

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Mosuela, C.C. (2020). Toward a Sustainable Health Workforce?. In: Recuperating The Global Migration of Nurses. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44580-5_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44580-5_5
Published: 15 May 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44579-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44580-5
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