EDUCATION
INTERNATIONAL
A report produced by the U.S.-based International Labor Recruitment Working group found that government sponsored temporary work visa programmes were circumventing workplace equality laws and “quietly reclassifying entire sectors of the U.S. workforce by race, gender, national origin and age”. A look across visa programmes found that employers sorted workers into jobs based on racialised and gendered notions of work and that they were able to shop internationally for workers on employment agency websites that advertise workers like commodities. An agency advertising Filipino nurses and teachers touted the attraction of their cultural attributes, “inherent warmth, caring nature and adaptability to different cultures and environments”.142 Moreover, research indicates that race and country of origin may affect not only a teacher’s likelihood of being recruited, but also the terms of the recruitment contract. Pittman’s study of problems faced by foreign educated nurses indicated that nurses recruited to the U.S. from high income countries were significantly less likely to experience a violation of ethical recruitment principles than nurses from low income countries.143 Indeed, serious problems were faced almost exclusively by nurses from low income countries. This differential of terms and treatment in the healthcare sector is relevant for two key reasons: first, because many of the agencies recruiting teachers internationally were originally formed to facilitate nurse migration.144 And, second, because the patterns of discrimination based on country of origin appear to be the same in the education sector. A comparison of the experiences of two groups of teachers working in the state of California underscores the significance of recruitment conditions: “The teachers from Spain find their government pathway here easy and relatively inexpensive and they are ready to make the return journey if conditions don’t suit them. The Filipinos find their agency pathway steep, arduous, and expensive. They do not readily return home and their relative success here is imbued with a much greater significance in their lives.”145 Thus the recruitment process and terms have far reaching implications for a teacher’s ability and willingness to assert her rights or raise concerns or questions.
Recruitment Contracts Because the terms of recruitment are so important, a careful review of the recruitment contract is one of the most essential steps in the recruitment process. However, teachers 142
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Source: http://www.arrowheadmanpower.com/about.html (website suspended; last accessed May 2012). 143 Pittman, “Ethical recruitment Practices”, 2012. 144 Bartlett, Migrant Teachers, 2014. 145 Ibid.