ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how the professional families surveyed and interviewed engaged with the 'no-go zones' that count on their mobility. It reframes the national problem of recruiting and retaining professionals to service remote and rural communities through the public/private dilemmas these locations pose for the professional family, to understand more fully the terms and conditions under which professionals and their families might be prepared to move to such locations. An altruistic commitment to the public good and an ethical code of public service have served to distinguish professions from other occupations in the past, and justified public subsidy of their extended preparation. Metropolitan and regional centres with deeper educational and labour markets offer these families the capacity to address educational priorities. Literature from the sociology of the professions warns that this traditional service ethic could be eroding in today's more marketised times with the emphasis now on private interests and risk management.
