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• 1 2023-10-22T21:16:37+00:00 Black Migrant Nurses 5 plain 2023-12-07T16:56:32+00:00 The U.S. health care industry includes migrant nurses from the Caribbean, Asia and the African continent. The general assumption is that these nurses emigrate to the U.S. “in search of a better life” and upward mobility. While this view is not inaccurate, migrant nurses have also been recruited to alleviate nursing shortages experienced by the U.S. and other “developed” countries.
  
  Nurses migrate because of interconnected political, economic, and social factors. Certainly, nurses migrate for better pay, improved working conditions, career opportunities and job security. They also migrate because of family, friends and for adventure.
  
  Nigerian Margaret Okodua's cousins were living in the U.S. but disagreed frequently. Margaret’s aunt promised she would obtain a visa for Margaret to travel so she would act as a mediator between her children.
  
  "That I had plans to go to is because somebody said we can help you...I wasn't one of those people that was like, 'Oh, I want to go to America to go and do this. Or let me go to England to go and do this.' No, that wasn't my plan.”
  
  Margaret migrated from Nigeria to Chicago in 1989 and lived with her cousins. It is unclear the exact amount of Caribbean and African nurses working in the U.S. They are likely part of the 8.8% of nurses who identify as Black or African American. Given Nigeria is the 6th largest nation in the world, it is possible that most African migrant nurses in the U.S. are Nigerians.
  
  While Black migrant nurses face gendered racism like their African American counterparts, their experiences are compounded by their outsider status. Black migrant nurses face xenophobia, like being told to go back to where they came from.
  
  Nigerian-born Titilola Turton migrated to the U.S. in 1984 and recalls:
  
  "Oh yes. They [African American and nurses] be telling you, "Go back to your Africa. I always tell them, "I'm glad I have an Africa to go back to.”
  
  
  To address the varied issues they encounter, Turton, Okodua , and five other nurses established the Nigerian Illinois Nurses Organization  (NINA). Turton saw specific health issues in the Nigerian community:
  
  “I reflect back to my fellow Nigerians that all these people, some of them are here, they don't even go to the hospital they said, "Oh, I don't have the money." They don't have this. They don't have that.”
  
  To address some of the health issues, Turton and her colleagues began by checking blood pressures at community gatherings. Encouraged by a Nigerian physician, Turton and her colleagues formalized the NINA.
  
  Today, NINA is a transnational organization supporting health care work both in Illinois and Nigeria.