Alternative Title

Learning to fill the labor niche: Aspiring nurse migrants caught in a migration trap

Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

1-2018

Abstract

Overseas recruitment has become a common strategy in filling nurse shortages within U.S. health institutions, sparking the proliferation of nursing programs in the Philippines. Export-oriented education exacerbates a mismatch, however, between available jobs (in both the Philippines and the United States) and the number of nursing graduates, thus increasing joblessness and underemployment among Filipino youth. Pursing higher education as a means to migrate also puts Filipino students at risk of getting caught in a migration trap, where prospective migrants obtain credentials for overseas work yet cannot leave when labor demands or immigration policies change. Such problems highlight the complicated impact of immigrant labor niches in places like the United States on developing nations, beyond the brain drain narratives that dominate academic and policy discussions.

Keywords

Nursing, Migration, Labor niche, Higher education, Philippines

Discipline

Asian Studies | Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education | Educational Sociology | Nursing

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

Volume

4

Issue

1

First Page

172

Last Page

187

ISSN

2377-8253

Identifier

10.7758/rsf.2018.4.1.10

Publisher

Russell Sage Foundation

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.7758/rsf.2018.4.1.10

Share

COinS