Migrant health professionals’ systemic human rights vulnerabilities

This article investigates whether the methods by which states implement citizens’ human rights possess serious weaknesses for ensuring migrant health professionals’ rights. Stemming from the discipline of normative philosophy, the moral approach to human rights sees rights as implemented through multiple waves of duties delivered by state-managed integrity systems. We argue that this otherwise comparatively reliable method can fail to deliver adequate outcomes to migrant health professionals. These professionals can encounter problems stemming from the following: their lack of political priority as non-citizens; the challenges to effective monitoring of migrant health professional pathways and outcomes; the incapacity of federal lawmakers to impact on key policy levers; the ever-present threat of “pathways to nowhere”; and state-enabled employee exploitation. The findings provide a philosophically grounded foundation for acknowledging the human rights concerns of even high-skilled migrants, and show why special regimes for rights protection, facilitation and monitoring are necessary for migrant health professionals.