How to Understand Limitations of the Right to Exit with Respect to Losses Associated with Health Worker Emigration: A Clarification

Abstract

There is a recent interest in the ethics of high-skilled worker emigration through which the limitations of the right to exit are discussed. Insightful arguments have been made in favour of (or against) the emigration restrictions on skilled workers in order to tackle the deprivations in developing countries. However, there is still a need for clarification on how we can understand, discuss and implement limitations of a right from a normative perspective. Significantly, how we understand the limitation of a right might determine how we approach such limitations – both in terms of the process of assessing the limitations and in terms of their implications. In this paper, I identify two distinct ways to understand limitations of the right to exit with respect to losses associated with health worker emigration, while also pointing to their implications for restrictive policies: (i) as a matter of scope, and (ii) as a matter of weight or emergency, which requires a compensatory scheme for the individual right holders. While the emergency restrictions seem to be a point of convergence in the literature, what defines an emergency and the nature of the compensation still warrant exploration. To that end, I also discuss from a normative perspective what might constitute a public emergency that would give states a prima facie prerogative to regulate temporary limitations on the exercise of the right to exit. In addition, I briefly introduce the implications of emergency restrictions, with a particular focus on compensatory schemes for individual right holders.

Doctors Behind Borders : The Ethics of Skilled Worker Emigration

“…I demonstrate that the way we understand the limitation of the right to exit in the case of health worker emigration has different implications. I argue that we should be wary of treating the limitation of the right to exit as a matter of scope for many practically relevant reasons (Yuksekdag 2018b). For instance, a right, such as the right to free movement within a country might be understood as limited by its scope that it does not include a right to enter into someone else's private property.…”

“…In Article II, I explore different ways to restrict the right to exit. I show that the limitations of the right to exit can be understood as a matter of scope or as a matter of weight/emergency that requires compensation(Yuksekdag 2018b).…”