About the seminar
International institutions increasingly promote ‘ethical recruitment’ as a standard for health worker migration from poor to rich countries. In this seminar, organized by the Research Group on Global Challenges to Human Rights, Dr Tine Hanrieder will present research analyzing how this notion is interpreted in a country considered exemplary.
In Germany, international nurse recruitment initiatives are proliferating. Programs such as the public Triple Win scheme and a private-sector voluntary fairness certificate promise gains to all participating actors. This research reconstructs the contradictory aspirations and practices in this emerging market. Gains for sending countries are claimed, yet de facto merely assumed to happen through remittances, and developmental demands by sending countries remain unaddressed. As employers compete for ‘loyal’ nurses who integrate and stay, worker protection becomes a way of retaining their labor, despite talk about circular migration and support to sending countries.
Dr Hanrieder argues that ‘ethics’ glosses over unresolved conflicts and asymmetries, both between industries and between countries, and facilitates a regime of liberal care worker extractivism: This regime recognizes individual rights (however imperfectly) but disregards developmental and social rights, and it limits state intervention to market facilitation and soft regulation. The research presented was conducted together with Leon Janauschek (LSE) and draws on primary sources including documents retrieved through freedom of information requests, and over thirty interviews with recruiters, regulators, employers, unionists, and civil society experts.
About the speaker
Dr Tine Hanrieder is Associate Professor in Health and International Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). She conducts research in the fields of global health and international political economy and has published on themes including reform dynamics in international organizations, international theory, South-North knowledge transfers in humanitarianism and global health, and on expertise in global health. Her current research focuses on labour and migration in the health economy.
Practical information
This seminar will be moderated by Nina Reiners, Associate Professor at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and leader of the Research Group on Global Challenges to Human Rights.
The seminar will be held on the 8th floor of Domus Juridica. If you do not have an access card, please call +47 403 91 077 when outside.
We kindly ask that participants register in advance: