Shiva Nourpanah successfully defended her PhD thesis in August 2017, and graduated with a doctorate of Social Anthropology. Her thesis, “They Are Here to Stay”? Foreign Nurses on Temporary Work Permits in Nova Scotia, Canada“, is an ethnographic study focusing on nursing labour mobility and the policies surrounding temporary foreign labour.

Thesis abstract: Foreign nurses are moving to Canada on temporary permits, and gaining employment in the Nova Scotian healthcare sector. In this dissertation, I argue that their experiences of movement and work are conditioned by a complex array of intersecting policy contexts on labour, migration and healthcare. Using ethnographic research methods, I demonstrate how these policy contexts regulate and monitor the transition of temporary foreign nurses into permanent Canadian residents, and ultimately, citizens. Throughout this complex transition, my research shows how different policy contexts operate in disjointed, unpredictable ways, creating an element of “riskiness” and ambiguity for the nurses subject to them. The decision-making processes of these nurses regarding movement and work are consistently presented in terms of chance, risk, luck, (mis)fortune and similar idioms. Leading from this riskiness are certain sentiments and dispositions produced systematically through engagement with policies. These dispositions mark the relationships of the foreign nurses with employers, colleagues, union officials, patients and clients, often but not always, to the detriment of foreign workers. These dispositions can potentially impact labour protection and solidarity, as well as career development prospects, and the impacts are gendered, classed and racialized, affecting men and women of different class and ethnic backgrounds differently.

Selected publications:

Nourpanah, Shiva. Accepted July 2020. “Moving, Waiting, Racing: The Emotional and Temporal Experience of Policy for Temporary Foreign Nurses in Canada.”  Anthropologica: Special issue “Bureaucratic Routes to Migration”

Nourpanah, Shiva. 2019. “Limbo”. In A Canadian Perspective on Refugees and Forced Migration : An A-Z Guide, edited by Catherine Baillie Abidi and Shiva Nourpanah. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus Publishing.

Nourpanah, Shiva. 2019. “’Maybe We Shouldn’t Laugh So Loud’: The Hostility and Welcome Experienced by Foreign Nurses on Temporary Work Permits in Nova Scotia, Canada.” Labour: Journal of Canadian Labour Studies/Le Travail: revue d’Études Ouvrières Canadiennes 83: 105-20. https://doi.org/10.1353/llt.2019.0004

Nourpanah, Shiva. 2019. “Drive-By Education: The Role of Vocational Courses in the Migration Projects of Foreign Nurses in Canada.” Journal of International Migration and Integration 20 (4) : 995-1011. https//doi.org/10.1007/s12134-018-00641-0