International Healthcare Migration in Asia Pacific: International Policy Responses

This paper examines international policy responses to cross-border healthworker migration in the Asia Pacific and Oceania regions. These responses include policy agreements, policy dialogue and programmes of action in relation to key issues of ethical recruitment, ‘circular’ migration and labour rights. The paper argues that these policy initiatives are unfolding in spheres of cross-border governance, as well as in spheres of domestic governance and they evidence the involvement of national and transnational actors, together with the interplay between them. These comprise diverse state and non-state actors acting ‘outwardly’, through participation in policy-making in spheres of cross-border governance (bilateral and multilateral), as well as transnational actors (located within countries and outside of them) shaping policy responses and practices in identified country and other settings. The paper elaborates an understanding of an embedded transnational policy field of healthcare migration which keeps in clear sight specificities of country contexts and the presence of (and interplay between) transnational and national actors, institutions and policies in different but complementary spheres of governance. This analysis is integral to an expanded understanding of healthcare migration as a transnational policy field.