Abstract
The transnational movement of people has been a preoccupation of discussions about the nature of globalization during and since the Cold War era. This has been a leading explanatory framework for tracking the presence of Commonwealth doctors of color in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). Their relation to the NHS and the domestic medical profession has generally been framed as a set of post-Second World War conjunctures, defined and reconciled by the symbiosis of the needs of the developing world and opportunities in the developed world. The needs referred to the dearth of advanced training resources for professionals from developing countries such as India and Pakistan, among others. The opportunities reflected the persistent medical staffing deficiencies within the NHS together with the availability of coordinated medical training in established and emerging specialities. Meanwhile, the career disparities experienced by Commonwealth doctors within the NHS have been analyzed mainly through the lens of immigration in two related ways: the experience of racism within the medical establishment, or the uneven cultural and professional competencies of black doctors. As an optic for understanding the relationship between race and the medical profession, the immigration framework has certainly attended to the physical presence of doctors of color from the Commonwealth.
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© 2007 Douglas M. Haynes
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Haynes, D.M. (2007). The Persistence of Privilege: British Medical Qualifications and the Practice of Medicine in the Empire. In: Grant, K., Levine, P., Trentmann, F. (eds) Beyond sovereignty. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230626522_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230626522_11
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