Online seminar series: What is the Global South and why it matters - Session 10

Session 1: International recruitment/ migration of nurses from the Global South by the countries in the Global North: a manufactured migration trap

Speaker: Dr Radha Adhikari, Lecturer in School of Health in Life Sciences, University of the West of Scotland

Human mobility is a natural phenomenon and also a politically contested topic in recent decades. Current migration/immigration policies in rich nations are set to perpetuate disadvantage. Migration and mobility are a luxury for the privileged group and a compulsion/ survival strategy for the disadvantaged group. When privileged people move for jobs/ or any other business, it is seen as their right to mobility, but at the same time, for the less-privileged group, their mobility is restricted, and ethical questions are raised.

Based on the researcher’s ongoing research engagement on international nurse recruitment and migration to the UK, this paper looks at how the system creates dream- trap/ or migration trap for migrants. Despite their experience of discrimination, racism, and career stagnation in the Health and Social Care system, they are determined to settle in the UK.

Date and Time: Wednesday 11 February 2026, 1pm–2pm GMT/BST

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About the speaker

Radha Adhikari is a Lecturer in the School of Health in Life Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland. She teaches in BSc Nursing, an international programme, and works on global health and nursing, international nurse migration, gender, and workforce management, and global health equity. She has extensive experience in nursing education, research, and clinical practice in the UK, Nepal, Malawi, Uganda and Japan.

Adhikari has published on international nurse migration and nursing workforce management. A few key publications include, I am a Nurse Not a Hero: A memory book of those frontline nurses who served during the first wave of the COVID-19 in London (2025), Books Himalaya Pvt. Ltd. Nepal, Nurse migration in Asia: Emerging Patterns and Policy Responses edited volume (2023), Routledge and Migrant health professionals and the global labour market: The dreams and traps of Nepali nurses, monograph, (2022) Routledge. Further information is available at: https://research-portal.uws.ac.uk/en/persons/radha-adhikari

About the seminar series

This online seminar series aims at both centring and critiquing discussions around the ‘Global South’.

Contributions will come from leading academics drawn principally from the social and human sciences whose research or practice engages with, challenges, or advances the concept of the ‘Global South’ and who, to do so, draw on a variety of theoretical, scholarship and research positions.

The series will be of interest to academics, professionals, students, researchers and policy makers eager to diversify their knowledge and make their professional practice more inclusive. It would appeal to those working in the areas of criminal justice including prisons, probation services and policing, education, nursing, psychology, social policy, sociology, and social work.

The series will take place every Wednesday, 1-2pm (BST/GMT), in February and March 2026, starting Wednesday 11 February. It will be Co-Chaired by Professor Elaine Arnull and Dr Amy Duvenage.

For more details and to register > 

If you have any questions, please email elaine.arnull@solent.ac.uk.