New Grant Will Support Research on International Migration of Health Workers

Professor Ivy Bourgeault will lead development of a tool to help to analyze the literature and data of health worker migration using a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The work is expected to yield greater insights on how sex and gender impact the international migration of health workers and the effects on population health and health systems. A gathering of researchers in sex/gender analysis and health worker migration will develop a tool for use in research planning in this area. 

Background

The majority of health workers who migrate internationally (mostly as nurses) are women, but women’s experiences may be different to those of migrating men. For example, when men and women migrate they are often forced into lower skilled work, but women may face additional disadvantage as a result of gender inequality, race and ethnicity, and being a non-national in their new countries. But gender is rarely a focus of migration research, data and literature. Sex/gender analysis enables the systematic analysis of research data taking men and women into account, and in this study, it can be used to explore of the differential impacts and effects of the international migration of health workers on men and women.