Past Event

Speaker: Dr Sondra Hausner, University Lecturer in Study of Religion, Faculty of Theology; Anthropologist, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.

Abstract: Nepali nurses who migrate to England in order to earn higher wages and gain additional professional training usually end up caring for the elderly. Their migration process is undoubtedly gendered: they have to overcome obstacles posed by UK employers, Nepali agents, and both the British and the Nepali governments, as well as contend with separating from parents and children. In the face of these many challenges, the aspiration to belong takes place not primarily in a social sphere but in a professional one. Prohibitions experienced against belonging are not reluctance from ‘host country’ nationals to allow integration, but state barriers to professional advancement, which do not tally with the actual dynamics of either labour needs in the UK nor the charted patterns of health care migration.

Biography: Sondra Hausner is a Research Fellow and a University Lecturer in the Study of Religion. She is affiliated at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Centre for Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS). Sondra holds an AB from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs and a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Cornell University. She has consulted for the World Bank to measure the empowerment of women and low-caste groups in South Asia; the United Nations to promote public awareness on gender-based violence; the Asia Foundation on women's participation in conflict resolution; and Save the Children on the experiences and treatment of women migrants, and the policy discourse around trafficking.