Tracking the career decisions and experience of migrant elites: The case of South African-trained medical professionals in the Australian labour market

Abstract

Our paper analyses and explains the migration decision and labour market experience of migrant elites, by drawing on the case of South African-trained doctors in Australia. In doing so, we expand on the limited conceptualisation of skilled migration to which we offer a different interpretation by drawing on a multi-scale and integrated model of analysis tracing the experience of this group over a 60-year period. The research is informed by a sample of almost 500 culturally diverse South African-trained male and female medical practitioners migrating to and working in Australia from the 1950s through to 2009. Through an iterative process of analysing empirical findings and simultaneously examining the policy and scholarship on medical migration, we refine the concept of migrant elite as a category of skilled migration and respond to an absence we have identified in the scholarship and policy terrain.

Keywords:

• migrant elites
• multi-scale analysis
• overseas-trained medical practitioners
• professional sociology