Prof. Jean S. Encinas-Franco has published a book chapter titled “Dreams Interrupted: Migrant Filipino Nurses, Gendered Nationalism and Ontological (In)Security during the COVID-19 Pandemic” in Nurse Migration in Asia, published by Routledge.
The abstract reads:
In response to the onslaught of COVID-19, the Philippines’ populist President Rodrigo Duterte banned migrant health professionals, including nurses, from leaving the country. Health worker shortages were already contributing to the fragility of the country’s health system, even without the pandemic. When the pandemic struck, there were fears of a massive haemorrhage of medical workers. Filipino nurses, the focus of this study, comprise the largest share of the country’s annual health worker outflow. Drawing from academic literature linking gender, nationalism, and ontological security, the chapter finds that the ban not only displaced nurses, but also exposed their structural invisibilities, and the extent to which they are commodified and infantilised. This interprets the ban as a manifestation of “gendered nationalism” (Agius et al. 2020), in which women’s (and men’s) bodies are feminised and controlled, ostensibly for the nation’s sake. Overall, the study widens the explanatory reach of nurse migration studies that normally focus on push-pull factors and occupational hazards. Using the lens of populists’ gendered response to ontological security, the chapter enhances a political understanding of nurse migration from the perspective of the sending-state in the Global South.
Access the book chapter here: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003218449-7/dreams-interrupted-jean-encinas-franco