The ethical significance of migrating health professionals’ legitimate expectations: Canadian and Australian pathways to nowhere?

Abstract

This chapter explores the ethics of a critical vulnerability suffered by migrant health professionals (MHPs): the problem of ‘pathways to nowhere’. This problem arises from dynamic change in the processes, practices and policies governing how migrant professionals achieve accreditation, training and employment in destination countries, whereby established pathways to professional practice are unexpectedly altered or removed. The authors detail the significance of this phenomenon in Australian and Canadian contexts. Drawing on the literature on legitimate expectations and the rule of law, the authors outline the ethical stakes and responsibilities that attach to states creating and then disappointing people’s legitimate expectations, and discuss how these considerations apply to destination countries’ treatment of MHPs.