Restricting health worker migration in the name of solidarity

Abstract

This paper explores and adds to Gillian Brock and Michael Blake’s debate on health worker migration. Brock argues for a limited right of states to restrict the migration of health workers beyond their borders. She offers a range of reasons to support this argument based broadly on her account of global justice. In the context of health worker migration, she supports her argument more specifically by linking health workers’ obligations to duties of reciprocity and not imposing costs on their compatriots. In this paper, I seek to support her argument by offering solidarity, as developed in the literature on public health ethics, as a ground for the obligations of health workers to their compatriots and a limited right of states to restrict their movements. On a narrow view of reciprocity, health workers are obligated to repay their communities for the benefits that they have received during their childhoods and training. Solidarity augments this view by arguing that all persons also have positive obligations to take public actions to address injustices. This complementary ground for restrictions on the movements of health workers helps to address Blake’s critiques of communitarianism and reciprocity as justifying state restrictions.