Theme 2025: Nursing and Migration
Deadline for abstracts: 31.05.2024
Deadline for manuscripts: 30.11.2024
Staff shortages in nursing seem to be one of the constants in European health systems. As early as the 1950s, European states have found it necessary to recruit from abroad the qualified nurses and apprentices for the caring professions that were needed to mitigate a crisis in their health care systems. Since then the nursing shortages have only been reinforced by demographic changes and advances in health care. Today, through state-driven recruitment programmes, most developed countries employ a substantial number of migrant nurses, transforming the profile of nursing in Europe, North America and Australasia. Regular and irregular migration into formal and informal labour markets have played as much a role as the increasing care dependency on migrants in ageing societies. While some aspects of a migration history of nursing appear to be specific to the era of post-war globalisation, the entangled history of nursing and migration is considerably older, predating the modern professionalisation of nursing.
Planned for 2025, the special issue of the European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics aims to explore the relation between nursing and migration from different perspectives. The guest editors of the special issue are Fruzsina Müller, David Freis and Pierre Pfütsch. The editors are seeking abstracts that will address historical and ethical issues pertaining to the topic of nurse migration, including the political, social and institutional contexts in which migrant nurses travel and work, their experiences as migrant nurses and their impact on both the nursing and the health system of their host country. In doing so, the issue also aims to create a fruitful exchange between historical and ethical perspectives of the topic.
Possible topics and questions pertaining to nursing history may include:
• Everyday experiences and professional identities
• Experiences of care recipients
• Contexts
Possible topics and questions pertaining to nursing ethics may include:
• Ethical questions involving the recruitment of nurses from abroad
• Ethical challenges of transcultural care
• Ethical problems in the employment of migrants in inhouse-care
The guest editors welcome contributions from nursing and medical history, nursing studies, nursing ethics, as well as from history, social science, cultural studies and adjacent fields.
Seventh Issue 2025
The European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics is an interdisciplinary Open Access and peer-reviewed eJournal spanning the Humanities, Nursing Science, Social Sciences, and Cultural Studies. The journal is published online once a year with each edition having an individual theme and an open section that contains articles on various topics. In addition, the sections “Forum” and “Lost and Found” offer the opportunity to publish shorter articles on current debates or to present remarkable objects, texts, pictures or movies with relevance to nursing history and ethics and to discuss their significance.
The Journal is seeking contributions to
- the open section
- themed section
- Lost and Found
- Forum
Please note the following remarks on the concept of the European Journal for Nursing History and Ethics:
The journal creates a dialogue between the history and the ethics of nursing, while providing new impulses for advancing the subfields of the history as well as the ethics of nursing. Historians are asked to include the ethical dimension of the topic into their research project; researchers interested in ethics are requested to reflect on the historical dimensions of their projects. This does not mean, however, that articles on ethics should be preceded by a historical overview in the style of a manual. Rather the latest developments and socio-political debates that have led to the current issues in the ethics of nursing should be put in their historical context and be used in the analysis. Likewise, papers on the history of nursing should address ethical questions within the historical context or refer to current issues in the ethics of nursing. The journal publishes research both on European History and the history of the reciprocal relationships and interplays of European and non-European societies.
The journal only publishes original contributions. When submitting their manuscript, authors agree that their text has not already been submitted or published elsewhere. Publishing in this Open Access journal is free of charge.
Please submit your abstract in English and separately a short CV by May 31, 2024 to Prof. Dr. Susanne Kreutzer: kreutzer@fh-muenster.de and Prof. Dr. Karen Nolte: karen.nolte@histmed.uni-heidelberg.de.
Following a positive reaction by the editors, manuscripts will have to be submitted until November 30, 2024 and undergo a peer review process.