The limits to public service: rural communities, professional families and work mobility

Abstract

Australia faces an ongoing challenge recruiting professionals to staff essential human services in rural and remote communities. This paper identifies the private limits to the implicit service contract between professions and such client populations. These become evident in how private solutions to competing priorities within professional families inform their selective mobility and thus create the public problem for such communities. The paper reports on a survey of doctors, nurses, teachers and police with responsibility for school-aged children in Queensland that plumbed the strength of neoliberal values in their educational strategy and their commitment to the public good in career decisions. The quantitative analysis suggested that neoliberal values are not necessarily opposed to a commitment to the public good. However, the qualitative analysis of responses to hypothetical career opportunities in rural and remote communities drew out the multiple intertwined spatial and temporal limits to such public service, highlighting the priority given to educational strategy in these families’ deliberations. This private/public nexus poses a policy problem on multiple institutional fronts.

L’Australie fait face à un défi permanent en matière de recrutement de personnel qualifié pour pourvoir aux services essentiels à la personne dans les communautés rurales et éloignées. Cet article a pour but d’identifier les limites « privées » au contrat de service implicite entre les professions et de tels clients. Ces limites sont évidentes quand on observe la façon personnelle ou « privée » dont les familles de personnes qualifiées professionnelles résolvent les dilemmes de priorités auxquelles elles doivent faire face quand elles sont confrontées aux questions de mobilité, créant ainsi un problème d’ordre « public » pour ces communautés. Cet article donne les résultats d’une enquête menée auprès de médecins, infirmières, enseignants et policiers chargés de s’occuper d’enfants en âge d’être scolarisés dans l’état du Queensland, qui expose la prévalence des valeurs néolibérales dans la stratégie d’éducation et leur engagement envers le public dans les choix de carrière. L’analyse quantitative indique que les valeurs néolibérales ne sont pas forcément opposées à un engagement au service du public. Cependant, l’analyse qualitative des réponses à des opportunités de carrières hypothétiques dans les communautés rurales et éloignées a souligné les nombreuses limites spatiales et temporelles, liées entre elles, à un tel service public, démontrant la priorité donnée à la stratégie d’éducation dans les délibérations qui ont lieu dans ces familles. Ce lien privé/public pose un problème en matière de réglementation sur plusieurs fronts institutionnels à la fois.

Keywords:

• professionals
• rural/remote communities
• family
• schooling
• mobility
• neoliberalism

Mots-clés:

• personnel qualifié professionnel
• communautés rurales/éloignées
• famille
• scolarité
• mobilité
• néolibéralisme

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of the Queensland Teachers Union, the Queensland Nurses Union, the Queensland Police Service and the Australian Medical Association Queensland.

Notes on contributors

Catherine Doherty is a Senior Research Fellow working in the sociology of education with research interests and publications in the areas of educational markets, internationalised curriculum and family mobility.

Paul Shield is an adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology. His area of expertise is quantitative and mixed methods research methodologies. He has a particular interest in social network analysis and the application of machine learning algorithms in educational research.

Wendy Patton works in the area of career development. She researches the impact of changes in the nature and structure of work on individual careers.

Guanglun Michael Mu is a Senior Research Assistant at Queensland University of Technology. He works in the sociology of education with particular interests in the identities of migrant populations and quantitative design and analysis.

Notes

1. The numbers following each quote refer to the particular survey respondent.

2. Cunnamulla was the subject of a controversial documentary, Cunnamulla, directed by Dennis O’Rourke (2000), which presented a depressing picture of the town and its residents, and has inevitably coloured public perception.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Australian Research Council [grant number DP110100530].