Women, workers, and migrants in the globalised public health sector: debate at the 2004 International Labour Conference

Total remittances from migrant workers (US$80bn in 2003) significantly outstrip the total amount of overseas development assistance (US$55bn in the same year). Many conclude that such remittances make a positive contribution to development in the global South. However, the experiences of women health-care workers and migrants contradict easy and hopeful assumptions about the positive effects of migration. Further, the more economistic analyses of the benefits of migration do not subtract its gendered and social costs when calculating labour savings in the North or income from remittances in the South.