Nursing staff from Asia - cheap labor instead of a sustainable fight against causes
Staff is scarce, conditions are poor and initiatives often fall short. Instead of addressing the far-reaching problems in the care sector in the long term, the focus is increasingly on recruiting care workers from Asia (Filipino care workers). But is the welfare of those in need of care really the driving force behind this?
Saya (27 years old) sees an opportunity in Germany that she doesn't have at home in the Philippines. With a university degree and medical training under her belt, she has bravely decided to leave her family behind to work as a nurse in Germany. But the reality is different from what she imagined. At home, she was allowed to decide many things herself, but here she is "only" an assistant for the time being. Despite this, she knows that she would hardly have had any career opportunities at home. In her home country, nursing staff are trained far in excess of demand, and most of her former fellow students have also long since looked elsewhere. Saya is just one of many foreign nursing staff in German-speaking countries. In Austria, too, it has long been clear that without the influx of care workers from Asia and other countries, the Austrian care system would quickly collapse. And this will even get worse in the future. Due to demographic trends and an aging society, it is predicted that by 2030 there will be an additional need for 34.200 give caregivers. In order to meet this demand, taking into account the decreasing attractiveness of the nursing profession for Austrians, help must come from abroad. According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, only around 1.6 percent of all caregivers were of Austrian origin in 2017. The majority come from Slovakia, Romania, Poland and other Eastern European countries. However, the focus is increasingly shifting beyond beyond European borders - especially towards Asia. The Philippines is a sought-after source of nursing staff in both Germany and Austria. Three main reasons explain the focus on the Southeast Asian island state: Many Filipinos are Christian, which gives especially older Austrian patients who need care the feeling of identifying with a person who shares their values. Social and emotional rapprochement, an important basis for successful care, can thus be established more easily. The nursing training system in the Philippines is comparable to that in Austria and enjoys a very good reputation internationally. While training to become a nurse takes six semesters in Austria, it takes eight semesters in the Philippines, including a mandatory internship and German lessons. This intensive training makes nurses from the Asian region highly respected internationally. As early as the 1970s, there was a trend towards the immigration of Filipino skilled workers to Austria. Today, this trend is returning, supported by the fact that highly qualified care workers often have no career opportunities in their home country and the unemployment rate in the care sector in Asia is high. More about the Nursing education and its challenges find out more in our corresponding article. Germany is miles ahead of Austria when it comes to recruiting foreign nursing staff. With the Triple Win project - an initiative to recruit nursing staff from abroad - Germany has been pursuing the goal of reducing the shortage of skilled workers and at the same time relieving the labor markets in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and the Philippines since 2012. The program has three stated goals: Reducing the German nursing shortage
Saya's story: A dream that turned out differently
Where do Austria's care workers come from?
Why the Philippines?
Cultural proximity:
High standard of education:
Tradition and necessity:
The "win-win-win situation"?
- the first "win".
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Offering migrant nurses better career prospects, which they cannot find in their home country due to the overcrowded labour market - the second "win".
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Promoting economic development in the home country through the dissemination of knowledge and the return of migrants with new skills - the third "win".
However, in practice, care workers struggle with legal uncertainties, a lack of educational opportunities and limited political rights. Many of them are employed in low-paid sectors, far below their skill level - a phenomenon known as "brain waste".
The promised economic development in the countries of origin often fails to materialize and integration into the labour market after return is difficult. You can find out more about the challenges of integrating care workers and how noracares offers a solution in our article Nursing agency:
The problem with respectability.
Austria's 3-step search program to recruit nurses from Asia
Austria has copied a lot from Germany, but the recruitment of Asian nursing staff remains controversial here too. In 2019, Krems University of Applied Sciences launched a project to train nursing staff in Vietnam in order to to alleviate the domestic staff shortage.
Upper Austria's ÖVP Member of Parliament Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer also spoke out in favor of recruiting Filipino nursing staff and presented a 3-step search program that extends from the EU to the rest of Europe and Asia.
But even here, the challenges remain great:
Language barriers, the high level of bureaucracy involved and the lengthy recognition of foreign qualifications delay the process considerably. Experts warn that it could be years before the first nurses are able to start work in Austria. In our article Overcoming language barriers in care: Simple tips and methodslearn more about the challenges and possible solutions.
Nora's conclusion
Recruiting Asian care workers alone will not solve the problem. Such measures are at best a way of alleviating the symptoms of a flawed labor market policy. What is really needed are better working conditions in the domestic care sector: higher wages, lower non-wage labor costs and more flexible working time models. Without such changes, the demand for care workers from abroad will only continue to increase.
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