Is a Win-Win Possible in International Recruitment and Mobility of Health and Care Workforce?
Shortage of health and care workforce has been a global issue where both the developing and developed countries around the world has been struggling to train, recruit and retain the workforce and reduce the gap. Though the shortage is predicted to reduce in global scale, it is extending massively in many of the developed and developing countries. The UK is the one, which is in the brink of the shortage and predictions show a huge increase in the existing gap in future. However, research shows that despite the shortage of health and social care workers in the UK and its need to attract more migrant care workers, unethical recruitment creates devaluation of trained human resources as well as strict immigration policies for family members increases inequalities in maintaining informal care among the migrant care workers and their families. As the UK since history has been following its utilitarian policies of exploring and utilising migrants to fulfil human resources needs, after the Brexit a new exploration has started to recruiting health and care workforce internationally, i.e. outside the EU. One of the means is through government-to-government agreement with the countries in the global South. Between 2021 and 2022, it has reached bilateral deals with six countries including Nepal. This research addresses a research question on how do the people and countries participating in the mobility of care can achieve benefits from the international recruitment of health and care workers. This research brings some of the policy concerns on how the care mobility widens health and care inequalities among the countries and people participating in it and explores the possibilities to reduce the inequalities and gain a win-win. This research is based on a qualitative study of Nepali health and social care workers in the UK and their parents in Nepal. The data is analysed in reference to the migration of Nepali health care workers to the UK since 2000s and specially amid the increased trend of migration of Nepali nurses to care homes in the UK following the government-to-government agreement between the UK and Nepal in 2022 for the recruitment of nurses from Nepal.