IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v130y2015icp268-276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mobility and health sector development in China and India

Author

Listed:
  • Holdaway, Jennifer
  • Levitt, Peggy
  • Fang, Jing
  • Rajaram, Narasimhan

Abstract

China and India are both attempting to create comprehensive healthcare systems in the context of rapid but uneven economic growth and rapidly changing burdens of disease. While in each country the referencing of international policies and work experience abroad have been part of this process, research has yet to examine the kind of knowledge that is exchanged or the various actors involved in knowledge circulation. Based on a study of two sub-national contexts, this article focuses on the role Chinese and Indian health professionals who have studied and worked overseas play in introducing ideas and practices about healthcare provision and health education. We found that experience abroad influenced individuals, institutions, and each society differently and with some contradictory effects. International experience clearly contributed to personal growth and led individuals to support the adoption of new institutional practices, such as more egalitarian relations between doctors and patients and between students and teachers. However, the content of what individuals learned overseas and the mechanisms through which this knowledge was introduced back into homeland settings often reinforced rather than ameliorated institutional hierarchies and social inequalities. While the scope of this research was limited, we suggest that more explicit analysis of the role professional migrants play in transferring ideas and practices within the health sector would be valuable for policymakers and funders seeking to support a more productive interaction between local and global knowledge.

Suggested Citation

  • Holdaway, Jennifer & Levitt, Peggy & Fang, Jing & Rajaram, Narasimhan, 2015. "Mobility and health sector development in China and India," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 268-276.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:130:y:2015:i:c:p:268-276
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.02.017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953615001008
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.02.017?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lant Pritchett & Michael Woolcock & Matt Andrews, 2013. "Looking Like a State: Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 1-18, January.
    2. Bloom, Gerald & Standing, Hilary, 2008. "Future health systems: Why future? Why now?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(10), pages 2067-2075, May.
    3. Dummer, Trevor J.B. & Cook, Ian G., 2008. "Health in China and India: A cross-country comparison in a context of rapid globalisation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(4), pages 590-605, August.
    4. Lant Pritchett & Michael Woolcock & Matt Andrews, 2013. "Looking Like a State: Techniques of Persistent Failure in State Capability for Implementation," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(1), pages 1-18, January.
    5. Okeke, Edward N., 2013. "Brain drain: Do economic conditions “push” doctors out of developing countries?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 169-178.
    6. Robertson, David Brian, 1991. "Political Conflict and Lesson-Drawing," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 55-78, January.
    7. repec:unu:wpaper:wp2012-63 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Fang, Pengqian & Dong, Siping & Xiao, Jingjing & Liu, Chaojie & Feng, Xianwei & Wang, Yiping, 2010. "Regional inequality in health and its determinants: Evidence from China," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 14-25, January.
    9. Kangasniemi, Mari & Winters, L. Alan & Commander, Simon, 2007. "Is the medical brain drain beneficial? Evidence from overseas doctors in the UK," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(5), pages 915-923, September.
    10. Filc, D., 2004. "The medical text: between biomedicine and hegemony," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 59(6), pages 1275-1285, September.
    11. Bennett, Colin J., 1991. "How States Utilize Foreign Evidence," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 31-54, January.
    12. Dani Rodrik, 2008. "Second-Best Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 100-104, May.
    13. Kenneth Sherr & Antonio Mussa & Baltazar Chilundo & Sarah Gimbel & James Pfeiffer & Amy Hagopian & Stephen Gloyd, 2012. "Brain Drain and Health Workforce Distortions in Mozambique," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(4), pages 1-7, April.
    14. Devesh Kapur, 2010. "Diaspora, Development, and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9202.
    15. Rose, Richard, 1991. "What is Lesson-Drawing?," Journal of Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(1), pages 3-30, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cao, Xuemei & Sun, Ken Chih-Yan, 2021. "Seeking transnational social protection during a global pandemic: The case of Chinese immigrants in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. May-Britt Stumbaum, 2015. "The diffusion of norms in security-related fields: views from China, India and the EU," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 331-347, September.
    2. Andrews, Matt & Pritchett, Lant & Woolcock, Michael, 2013. "Escaping Capability Traps Through Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 234-244.
    3. Valentin Seidler, 2017. "Institutional Copying in the 20th Century: The Role of 14,000 British Colonial Officers," Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 137(1-2), pages 93-119.
    4. Frédéric Docquier & Hillel Rapoport, 2012. "Globalization, Brain Drain, and Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(3), pages 681-730, September.
    5. Andrew McNee, 2012. "Illuminating the local: can non-formal institutions be complementary to health system development in Papua New Guinea?," Development Policy Centre Discussion Papers 1215, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    6. Jeremy Streatfeild, 2017. "Does This Road Go on Forever? Modelling Sustainability of Infrastructure in Developing Countries," Journal of Infrastructure Development, India Development Foundation, vol. 9(2), pages 69-81, December.
    7. Gustafsson, Martin, 2015. "Enrolment ratios and related puzzles in developing countries: Approaches for interrogating the data drawing from the case of South Africa," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 63-72.
    8. Heather Lovell, 2017. "Are policy failures mobile? An investigation of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Program in the State of Victoria, Australia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 49(2), pages 314-331, February.
    9. Larson, Greg & Ajak, Peter Biar & Pritchett, Lant, 2013. "South Sudan's Capability Trap: Building a State with Disruptive Innovation," Working Paper Series rwp13-041, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    10. Lena Dohlman & Matthew DiMeglio & Jihane Hajj & Krzysztof Laudanski, 2019. "Global Brain Drain: How Can the Maslow Theory of Motivation Improve Our Understanding of Physician Migration?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-13, April.
    11. Alina BOTEZAT & Andreea MORARU, 2020. "Brain drain from Romania: what do we know so far about the Romanian medical diaspora? Abstract: In recent years a considerable amount of attention has been directed to the migration of tertiary educat," Eastern Journal of European Studies, Centre for European Studies, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, vol. 11, pages 309-334, June.
    12. Warren, Peter, 2017. "Transferability of demand-side policies between countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 757-766.
    13. Seidler, Valentin, 2018. "Copying informal institutions: the role of British colonial officers during the decolonization of British Africa," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 289-312, April.
    14. Larson, Greg & Ajak, Peter Biar & Pritchett, Lant, 2013. "South Sudan's Capability Trap: Building a State with Disruptive Innovation," Working Paper Series rwp13-041, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    15. Patrik Marier, 2017. "The politics of policy adoption: a saga on the difficulties of enacting policy diffusion or transfer across industrialized countries," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(3), pages 427-448, September.
    16. Brian Levy & Michael Walton, 2013. "Institutions, incentives and service provision: Bringing politics back in," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-018-13, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    17. Martin Gustafsson, 2019. "The case for statecraft in education: The NDP, a recent book on governance, and the New Public Management inheritance," Working Papers 16/2019, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    18. Dori Patay & Sharon Friel & Ashley Schram & Susan Sell, 2023. "How do interests, ideas, and institutions affect multisectoral governance? The case of tobacco governance in two Pacific small island developing states," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(2), pages 313-327, April.
    19. Kenneth Abante, 2019. "Minimizing Smuggling and Restoring Public Trust in the Philippine Bureau of Customs," CID Working Papers 113a, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    20. Leon Hermans, 2011. "An Approach to Support Learning from International Experience with Water Policy," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 25(1), pages 373-393, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:130:y:2015:i:c:p:268-276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.