“I just ended up in nursing”: Inequalities in health professions education and migration aspirations among medical and nursing students in Ghana

Abstract

This paper investigates educational experiences and the factors that shape the intention to migrate among current students enrolled in nursing and medical schools within migrant sending nations. The focus on nursing and medical students reflects the existence of a global labor market in which there is a demand for the international recruitment of health professionals. Empirically, this research is situated in Ghana, West Africa, a country that has faced large scale emigration of its professional and skilled labor force. Based on individual and focus group interviews with students in Ghana, this paper argues that stratification within secondary and tertiary educational institutions; lack of access to selective institutions and programs of first choice; and inadequate resources within the institutions where they receive training, fuel the desire to migrate. Findings reveal how stratification in educational prestige in medicine inheres within an immigrant sending country, and how it in turn shapes the desire for prospective health professionals to migrate [with the United States as their most desired destination]. Conceptually, this research contributes to studies going beyond the “brain drain” frame in discussions of the migration of health professionals. It reveals migration desires that are imagined as part of a transient stage in the life course, to escape under resourced educational environments, build human capital, broaden life goals, and to return to contribute to the homeland.