ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the members of two professions, medicine and nursing, in order to examine households in which men and women are pursuing occupational careers. While the status, rewards and prestige of doctors and nurses are different, for some considerable time members of both professions have migrated internationally in an attempt to secure social mobility (Commonwealth Secretariat 2001: 1). Sir William Osler (cited in Verney 1957) has stressed the merits of overseas travel for the career development of doctors. Popular culture representations such as the US television series ER also visibly portray overseas-qualified doctors (from the UK and former Yugoslavia) in the emergency room in the Chicago public hospital, along with US-trained ethnic minority doctors. There are differences in the mobility of doctors and nurses, however. Doctors tend to move for longer periods of time and over greater geographical distances than nurses, and their mobility is more likely to be emigration in the strictest sense of the word. Nurses tend to move shorter distances,1 make less permanent moves and remit more of their earnings home (Commonwealth Secretariat 2001: 1).
