The UK National Health Service's migration infrastructure in times of Brexit and COVID‐19: Disjunctures, continuities and innovations

Abstract

The COVID‐19 pandemic and Brexit were separate yet inter‐related developments which affected the British National Health Service (NHS). The UK's state‐funded health sector had historically relied on migrant labour and depended on a migration infrastructure designed to solve its nursing labour shortages. The analysis of primary qualitative and secondary quantitative data shows that the NHS migration infrastructure increased its orientation towards Asia to compensate for the effects of Brexit. The paper reveals how the persistent use of temporary visas along with conditional contractual arrangements has led to various exclusions for migrant nurses and midwives. These data also demonstrate how international travel restrictions associated with COVID‐19 created temporary obstacles for nurses' inflows. Alongside Brexit, this has also resulted in an increase in outflows amongst EU health workers. The article identifies the development of migrant support infrastructure amongst Filipino and Indian nurses as a major COVID‐19 linked innovation.

The UK's ''Shortage of Occupation Scheme'': Advanced Stage of Neo-Colonialism on the Health System of Less Developed Countries: The Case of Nigeria

“…This write-up focuses on the workforce of the Nigerian health sector and how the government of the UK plays its mind game to absorb the readymade staff of these country by escaping the route of investing in training and making their own workforce. Ciupijus, Z., Forde, C., Giralt, R.M., Shi, J. and Sun, L., (2022), in one of their research projects, held the position that one of the outcomes of Brexit was the shortage of health workers that resulted in a migrant support infrastructure in Britain to attract nurses and other health workers from less developed countries. Absorbing trained health personnel from countries considered to be having poor healthcare system is morally indefensible and constitute the highest form of destroying, obstructing, devaluing, and degrading the healthcare systems of these countries.…”