Moving nurses to cities: On how migration industries feed into glocal urban assemblages in the care sector

Abstract

Migration industries include a diverse array of migration-related services provided by the state, commercial agents, humanitarian organisations and migrant social networks. The work performed by this array of providers, both non-state and state actors, includes facilitating, filtering/channelling and constraining migration. As a powerful example of how migration industries work in general, we examine their dynamics in the care sector as part of glocal (care) chains involved in the migration of nurses. The article provides a conceptualisation of the role of the ‘migration industry’ as part of a changing global business in the field of care work. We direct our attention to the drivers and institutions that facilitate and shape the arrangements of international care mobility and the constitution of glocal urban assemblages. Drawing on three models of nurse migration – bus stop (Philippines–Singapore), two-step (India–Canada) and triple-win (Vietnam–Germany) – we show how the socio-spatial configurations of glocal urban assemblages linked to the three models yield different social integration outcomes for migrant nurses.