Diversity, Ethnicity, Migration and Work: UK and US Perspectives

Migrant workers have long been used as a solution to major labour shortages in the health care sector, as demonstrated in the previous chapter. Yet, when living and working in foreign countries, migrant workers, whether professional or low paid, are faced with legacies of colonialism and racism. This chapter considers the history and policies of anti-racism, equal opportunities and diversity management in the United Kingdom and the United States and shows how these policies interlock with experiences of migrants/ethnic minorities and the health care systems in the two countries. We unravel the language of diversity and the impact this has on the strategies and practices in organizations. We do not seek to conflate the terms migrant with ethnic minority but equally it is important to recognize the often overlapping nature of these ascriptions. A black Nigerian person who has immigrated to the United Kingdom or the United States will be an immigrant (or migrant) and will also fall under a category identifiable by ethnicity and race and may suffer some of the same inequalities of treatment as their black counterpart born and raised in the United Kingdom or United States. Therefore the significant commonality in discriminatory treatment experienced by, for example, black migrants and black Britons means that we need to bring together issues of race, legislation and equality and diversity policies in this chapter in order to contextualize the findings of our later empirical chapters.