Global Health, Justice and the ‘Brain Drain’

One-day interdisciplinary conference on International Health Worker Migration

17th September 2007

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN Draft programme available here

Keynote Speakers

Professor Thomas Pogge, Columbia University

 Professor Karen Hassell, University of Manchester

Globalisation and the prospects of international migration bring both opportunities and challenges. The north-south and south-south ‘brain drain’ of skilled labour is induced by and reinforces gross global inequalities that have been exacerbated by globalisation. International migration in the healthcare professions threatens health, human rights and development goals for the world’s poor challenging notions that justice, health systems and migration policies are matters only for domestic concern. Against this backdrop, this conference is interested in understanding the ‘brain drain’ of health workers and its impact on global health as matters of justice.

 This conference aims to bring together participants from different academic disciplines, health professions, and practitioner backgrounds to address questions such as:

• Should international health worker migration be considered a matter of global justice?
• What does it mean for human rights, particularly the right to health?
• For whom do we seek justice? How should we balance the competing interests and moral responsibilities of individuals, health systems, communities and countries?
• Can autonomy of movement for the more advantaged be balanced against justice for the disadvantaged? What does the phenomenon mean for citizenship?
• Does non-active recruitment from poor countries absolve rich health systems of moral responsibility?
• What are the roles of skill-seeking and restricted immigration policies in a just world?
• Do recent national, bilateral and international awareness-raising activities and policy agreements address concerns of justice? How do political theories make sense of these moral problems?
• What are the implications of the brain drain for international relations and global security?
• To what extent are the impacts of the migration of skills and (health)care in receiving and sending countries gendered and what can feminist analyses contribute?
• Who has responsibility for this problem, and what can we do about it?

Abstracts are welcome on these or any other related questions. They should be submitted in Word format by 22 nd June 2007. Papers from postgraduate students are particularly encouraged and limited support for postgraduate attendance is available (see registration page for details). Abstracts and queries should be sent to Rebecca Shah at r.shah@keele.ac.uk