ABSTRACT
Compared to most female migrants to Australia, nurses tend to find work relatively easily after arrival, reflecting the shortage of nursing skills in the national workforce. However, their jobs in Australia are usually of lower status than those they left behind, leading to downward social mobility. This has long been a common experience in Australia for migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds, particularly women. This chapter documents this downward mobility among migrant nurses, and explores how it is subjectively experienced. It focuses on one group of migrant nurses in Australia-those who have migrated from Hong Kong over the last two decades. In many ways, these Chinese nurses’ experiences typify those of skilled migrants in Australia. However, their relative ease of entry into the Australian workforce enhances the range of choices open to them in shaping their new lives, allowing a detailed exploration of the impact of international migration on migrants’ identities and lifestyles, which indicates a profound ambivalence in Chinese nurses’ evaluation of their lives in Australia. While migration means a fall in social status, both at work and in society more generally, it also enables a higher degree of freedom and autonomy, both within and outside the workplace. Chinese nurses therefore often experience migration to Australia as deeply contradictory.
