Nurse Migration from Turkey, Brazil, and Mexico to Germany

Since 2022, all recent employment growth in nursing has been entirely driven by foreign-trained nurses. Hospitals and long-term care facilities rely heavily on international recruitment. As a result, transnational nursing care chains are emerging, in which professionals trained abroad are employed in Germany. However, which actors, interests, and structures shape this market, structured by global inequalities? And how do nurses themselves experience recruitment and migration?

This panel, bringing together academic and activist perspectives, examines nursing care chains from Turkey, Brazil, and Mexico to Germany. The speakers explore the conditions under which these migration pathways are established and how migrant nurses navigate the tensions between mobility, autonomy, and (potential) exploitation. Drawing on an intersectional perspective, we analyze discrimination, deskilling, and the multi-sided integration within the German healthcare system.
Finally, we open a discussion on how solidarity and networks can contribute to more just forms of migration and fairer processes of integration.