Purpose There is a gap in the literature to understand how professionalizing systems intersect with socioeconomic and political realities such as globalization to (re)produce social inequities between those trained locally and those trained abroad. In this critical review, the question of how systemic racism is reproduced in health care is addressed. Method Electronic databases and nontraditional avenues for searching literature such as reference chaining and discussions with experts were employed to build an archive of texts related to integration of internationally educated health care professionals (IEHPs) into the workforce. Data related to workplace racialization were sought out, particularly those that used antiracist and postcolonial approaches. Rather than an exhaustive summary of the data, a critical review contributes to theory building and a spatial analysis was overlayed on the critical literature of IEHP integration to conceptualize the material effects of the convergence of globalization and professional systems. Results The critical review suggests that professions maintain their value and social status through discourses of “Canadianness” that maintain the homogeneity of professional spaces through social closure mechanisms of credential nonrecognition and resocialization. Power relations are maintained through mechanisms of workplace racialization/spatialization and surveillance which operate through discourses of “foreign-trainedness.” Conclusions Movement of professionals supports a professional system that on the surface values diversity while maintaining its social status and power through the (re)production of the discourse of “Whiteness.” The analysis shows how in the process domestic graduates are emplaced as the “rightful” citizens of professional paces while IEHPs are marginalized in the workforce.

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In a neoliberal turn, the government of Ontario cut more than $750 million in funds that were traditionally received by pharmacies through dispensing medication. These funds were replaced with a state-funded program that would reimburse pharmacists for professional services related to patient care. The problem facing professional elites from Ontario pharmacy’s advocacy body was how to govern members of a self-regulating profession to switch subjectivities (identities) from the traditional dispenser of medication to providing patient care for profit. We address a gap in the literature and pose the question, how are the rank and file of allied healthcare professions governed by professional elites to become responsibilized subjects who will adopt state/profession agendas? Using a Foucauldian governmentality framework, our findings reveal that the rank and file are governed by elites through two technologies: resilience and value making possible a new “legitimate” pharmacist subjectivity related to the market and health care sustainability.