Keywords

2.1 Introduction

Understanding migrant decision-making and the roles of destinations therein has been a preoccupation of migration theory and immigration policies for decades (McHugh, 1984; Haug, 2008; Klabunde & Willekens, 2016; Van Hear et al., 2018). Increasingly, it is acknowledged that migration decisions are not one-off decisions made in clearly identifiable moments but are, instead, processual and relational decision-making processes which evolve over time (Thompson, 2017; Zhang, 2018). As a parallel, migration journeys are found to be fractured, segmented or incomplete and in need of alternative conceptualisations in the face of open-ended, unplanned or ‘liquid’ migration – as in the case of intra-EU mobility (Engbersen et al., 2010; Bygnes & Erdal, 2017; Mallett & Hagen-Zanker, 2018; Schapendonk et al., 2020).

Among our nurse-migrant interlocutors in Norway, we were struck by the presence of complex migration trajectories, of emigration and return, re-migration and onward migration. This raised the questions ‘Why Norway?’ and ‘For how long?’ – in other words, about Norway as ‘the destination’. These were among the questions pursued in 30 semi-structured interviews with nurse migrants. We build this chapter on the above dataset, with specific analytical emphasis on nurse-migrants’ experiences of complex migration trajectories between Poland, the Philippines and Norway as well as other destinations such as Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the UK. Thus, Norway was the first ‘onward’ destination for some of our interviewees; others had been to several destinations prior to Norway, while some were contemplating onward – and return – migration in the future.

The chapter addresses three theoretically oriented questions which, together, shed light on the possibilities and limitations of the current theorisation of migration decision-making and, more specifically, on the roles implicitly or explicitly designated to ‘destinations’. First, we want to understand the geographical patterns of the specific complex migration trajectories of the nurses whom we interviewed, in order to cast light on the role of destinations in their migration decision-making processes, both for initial and for onward migration. Second, we explore the role of transnational ties and networks – constituting a form of multi-sited transnationalism for some – in the evolving complex migration trajectories found. Third, we investigate the role of time and temporal considerations in shifting perspectives on origin, destination and future outlook.

We argue that a fresh and critical perspective may contribute to an adjustment of prevailing migration theories which, implicitly or explicitly, continue to suffer from what we might call a ‘destination’ bias, even when migrants’ transnational social lifeworlds are acknowledged. In other words, assumptions about the salience and roles of destinations in migration processes, implicitly (e.g., due to data availability) or explicitly (e.g., due to funding from public bodies in particular states), shape existing knowledge and theorisation of migration-decisions. The contribution we make in this chapter builds on the case of professional, predominantly female, often South-North migrants, whose migration experiences have not, to date, been formative of migration theory, despite the volume of interdisciplinary research on and, specifically, the policy interest in nurse migration (e.g., Van Riemsdijk, 2010; Goździak, 2016; Thompson & Walton-Roberts, 2019; Vaughn et al., 2020).

We now develop our argument on migration decisions in complex migration trajectories, by reviewing some existing theoretical perspectives on migration decisions, the roles of transnational networks and temporal perspectives. Following the presentation of our methods, we start our analysis by mapping the complex migration trajectories found in our data, tracing how these come together and the different ways in which ‘destinations’ matter. Subsequently we explore the transnational lifeworlds of nurse migrants which shape their complex migration trajectories, thus revisiting debates on transnational networks and migration destinations and emphasising multi-stage and onward migration possibilities. Finally, we consider future outlooks on onward migration and return among our nurse-migrant interviewees: we discuss the ways in which time, age and different life-cycle stages matter in changing perspectives. We find that the place of residence over a long period of time may, for some, become ‘the destination’ it initially was not – including, for some, as the result of a feeling of migration fatigue more than as an active choice. In the conclusion we offer some reflections on the theoretical implications and relevance of our findings – pointing to similarities with studies of liquid migration and fractured journeys, among others – and argue for the need for further conceptual and methodological scrutiny of the role of ‘destinations’ as this evolves over time and hence how we, as migration scholars, understand migration decision-making.

2.2 Migration Decisions in Complex Migration Trajectories

Whereas the role of destinations in explaining migration decisions has been scrutinised and critically assessed, we suggest that the perspective of complex migration trajectories is a useful one from which to re-engage with the role of destinations in migration decision-making (see also, in this book, Chap. 4 by Flikweert et al. and Chap. 8 by Jung). This is for the simple reason that it makes the basic distinction between the decision to leave and the choice of destination, a distinction which is very obvious when multiple destinations are part of the picture. In our case, when interviewing Filipino and Polish nurses in Norway who had had at least one previous ‘migration destination’ prior to Norway, reflections about the decision to migrate, to go to the first destination, to return or migrate onwards and to re-migrate after return – and to which destination – were all necessary and integral to the migration stories which were shared.

In this section we therefore first revisit extant work on understanding migration decisions broadly, including the balance between rational choice and relational factors. Second, we discuss perspectives on migration decision-making which recognise the role of transnational ties and social networks. Thirdly, we discuss work on time and temporalities in migration studies and suggest that there are productive ways in which a focus on the role of time – in the context of complex migration trajectories – can help to move the theorisation of migration decision-making beyond a too-narrow focus on destinations.

2.2.1 Understanding Migration Decisions

Since Ravenstein’s (1885) ‘laws of migration’, migration theory has sought to explain and predict migration flows, often by means of comparing traits of the place of origin with those of the place of destination. What are often referred to as ‘push–pull’ models of migration (Lee, 1966) build on this basic idea and, through this, are indeed able to explain migration in some contexts and under some circumstances.

In neoclassical economics, wage differentials between places of origin and destination are a key explanatory factor (e.g. Harris & Todaro, 1970), drawing on a rational-choice mode of understanding human actions. Approaches to explaining migration decisions from other social-science disciplines, including anthropology, geography and sociology, have foregrounded the interplay of structure and agency, of asymmetrical access to information and of interpersonal and relational dimensions (see, e.g., Bakewell, 2010). The comparative advantages of the destination, when compared with the place of origin, remain central in theories of migration today, discussing the central ‘migration drivers’ (De Haas et al., 2019).

The ‘New Economics of Labour Migration’ or NELM approach (Stark & Bloom, 1985; Massey et al., 1993) contributed important insights which emphasised the household perspective, often more salient than an individual perspective, when seeking to explain migration decisions in many contexts globally. This underscored the need for a relational understanding of factors in the place of origin which, in different ways, impacted on migration decision-making.

Increasingly, migration decisions are acknowledged to be embedded within interpersonal relationships, reflecting composite migration drivers which may be described as ‘predisposing, proximate, precipitating and mediating drivers’ (Van Hear et al., 2012, 13; see also Van Hear et al., 2018). In other words, migration decisions can be unpacked in stages, even beyond two-step approaches to migration theory, which recognise the aspiration and the capability to migrate as distinct from one another (Carling, 2002). The stages of migration decision-making processes, in the context of complex migration trajectories, are multiple and often non-linear and involve different timescales and changing relationships, with the notion of ‘destination’ as a final port of call, very much based on the specific circumstances at hand (Carling & Haugen, 2021).

Recent contributions to migration studies increasingly engage with such complex migration trajectories, drawing attention to the unexpected turns of migration journeys and thus also the changing role of destinations (see the review by Ahrens and King, Chap. 1). These latter either become the destination or never materialise, whatever may have been the plan at the point of an initial migration decision (Westcott & Robertson, 2017; Valenta, 2020; Crawley & Jones, 2021; Snel et al., 2021). Some of the research includes analyses of internal migration, which may or may not be part of a migration trajectory, including international migration. This scholarship also spans migration in contexts ranging from violent conflict to labour migration to the Gulf States but is equally relevant to considerations of high-skilled intra-European migrants (Erdal & Oeppen, 2018; Ryan, 2019). This work also underscores the need for further theorisation of the roles of – and assumptions about – ‘destinations’ in migration decisions.

2.2.2 Transnational Ties and Social Networks

From the point of departure of seeking to understand migration decision-making and the role of multiple destinations therein, when several migration destinations over time are already involved, several strands of literature are relevant. The salience of social networks is highlighted in migration theory, especially in efforts to explain migration decisions and destination choices (see, e.g., Bakewell et al., 2016). The role of transnational ties and existing transnational social fields, both in facilitating migration itself and in easing settlement processes and thus also feeding into the attraction of particular destinations for specific migrant populations, is well-evidenced (Haug, 2008; Ryan et al., 2009; Lubbers et al., 2020).

Meanwhile, analyses of recent intra-EU mobility suggest that migration can also be less centred on destinations. Sometimes this is referred to as ‘liquid’ or ‘open-ended’ migration, in a context of free mobility such as that within the EU and EEA. This form of migration defies many of the parameters of migration theories developed in the context of South-North migration, from contexts of origin countries with significantly lower levels of income and living standards compared to contexts of destination and, notably, with significant migration regulation involved. Furthermore, the literature on ‘secondary movements’ or ‘onward migration’ underscores the role of social networks and transnational ties and also points to the salience of time and a longitudinal perspective for understanding migration decisions and destination choices (Monti, 2020).

Analyses of the migration journeys – e.g. to Europe across the Mediterranean – among migrants without regular status in Europe, reveal ‘fractured journeys’ (Crawley & Hagen-Zanker, 2019). On the one hand, these studies show that destinations, beyond merely defining ‘Europe’ as one, are beyond the realm of choice for many migrants, who rely on smugglers. On the other, some journeys of migrants without regular status resemble the liquid nature of intra-EU mobility, despite the radically different circumstances (Schapendonk et al., 2020).

Whereas the role of transnational ties – and obligations – is central to efforts to explain initial migration decisions and destination choices, we find fewer attempts to understand the role of transnational obligations for migration decisions in the case of complex migration trajectories, including onward movement and re-migration post-return (but see Serra Mingot & Mazzucato, 2019; Francisco-Menchavez, 2020; McCarthy, 2020). Can it be assumed that these migration decisions and destination choices are identical to those which are relevant prior to the initial migration? If not, how and why might they be different? These questions lead us to the third body of literature on which we draw in this chapter – work on the role of time in international migration and, more specifically, in relation to migration decisions and destination choices from a temporal perspective.

2.2.3 The Role of Time and Temporal Perspectives

Migration studies have undergone what may be referred to as a ‘temporal turn’ in the past two decades (Cwerner, 2001; Gabaccia, 2014; Page et al., 2017), where a renewed interest in the role of time and temporalities has become mainstream. Such interest in the temporal dimensions of migration has led to work on waiting, temporariness and liminality (Noussia & Lyons, 2009; Vaughn et al., 2020), has continued longstanding demographic traditions of the analysis of generations, cohorts and life-cycle stages (see, e.g., Erdal & Ezzati, 2015; Ramos, 2018) and emphasised the importance of acknowledging the roles of the past, present and the future in efforts to understand migration processes.

The passage of time and changing life-cycle stages affect individuals’ and families’ perspectives, showing future choices in a new light in which a cost–benefit analysis may be evaluated differently from one decade to another. The applicability of this basic human insight into migration research has methodological consequences (Robertson, 2015). There are also important conceptual dimensions, not only in the recognition that migration decisions are not one-off decisions made at a particular point in time but which, rather, merit being seen as processes embedded in individuals’ and families’ lifeworlds and shaped by opportunities and constraints, as well as obligations, hopes and desires, which may be less tangible (Collins, 2018). This is not to say that temporal perspectives on migration processes necessarily differ entirely from more rationally oriented perspectives, although a reified ‘idea of the migrant as a utility-maximising individual’ arguably needs challenging in the face of the empirical evidence to hand (De Haas, 2011, 20; Collins, 2018, 965).

Instead, a temporal lens puts the different ways of evaluating circumstances in context and allows space for combining changing rational and relational considerations. Herein lies the role of change or, as Francis Collins (2018) argues, migration as fundamental to the becoming processes of migrants as individual human beings. Thus, in analyses of migration narratives – in our case, foregrounding complex migration trajectories – change, hope, desire, disillusionment and disappointment are all integral to the process of becoming: migration necessarily plays a significant role for individual migrants in shifting their perspectives, commitments and priorities and affecting how, for some, places previously seen as stepping-stones on the migratory trajectory become, in fact, destinations. Following McGarrigle and Ascensão (2017) and Salamońska (2017) we argue that conceptual discussions of migration processes with a temporal lens have much to benefit from further engagement with empirical analyses of multiple migration, onward migration and various forms of circulation. Here we also draw on work conducted among Asian migrants in Australia, drawing attention to the roles of intimacy and time as these evolve in the context of migration regulation and the escalating use of temporariness within such regulation (Robertson, 2020).

Our analysis of the roles which ‘destinations’ play in migration decision-making in the context of complex migration trajectories is anchored in our interviews. Simultaneously, we also draw heavily on existing insights in migration studies, pertaining to decision-making about migration. We find that analyses of decisions about return migration offer an interesting view. Amparo González-Ferrer et al. (2014) hypothesise about the salience of a number of factors, with which we also engage: the role of distance and cost, the impact of restrictive immigration policies, the location of family networks transnationally and the heterogeneity of migration motives and, hence, logics which operate in migration decision-making.

2.3 Methods and Data

This chapter builds on a set of 30 interviews with Filipino and Polish migrant nurses conducted in either English and Norwegian or Polish and Norwegian in Norway.Footnote 1 Our dataset was subject to multiple readings and systematic coding in NVIVO. We were struck by the complex migration trajectories of some interviewees and thus we applied an inductive approach to identify a subsample of eight nurse migrants. We conducted a further in-depth analysis of interviews with the eight individuals who all had international migration experience prior to arrival in Norway.

Of these eight interviewees, three were born in Poland and five in the Philippines: they all moved abroad as adults. The sample is based on mainly female perspectives (seven), with one male perspective. Regarding age, the variation is considerable, as the youngest was 26 and the eldest 64. Their length of stay in Norway at the time of the interview also offers a certain degree of variation, spanning from 4 months to 13 years. The experience that all participants in this subsample had in common was international migration prior to their arrival in Norway. Belgium, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and the UK are all countries in which the interlocutors worked as nurses, health-workers or au-pairs. Most of the stays in these countries were short-term or summer jobs, with the exception of ClarissaFootnote 2 (see Fig. 2.1 below) who, prior to moving to Norway, lived in Sweden for almost 20 years in addition to previous nursing training in the country – one of her daughters and her ex-husband still live there.

Fig. 2.1
A world map illustrates different trajectories for eight different types of people. It includes people and the purpose of travel, and the different countries marked on the map are Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.

Nurse migrants’ complex migration trajectories

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In relation to family, most of our interviewees migrated individually and only one moved with the whole family. Three have children: one in the country of origin and two in the previous country of choice. Clarissa’s case is more complex as she has one child and grandchildren in the Philippines and one child in Sweden. From a professional perspective and with the exception of only one who underwent nursing training in Sweden, our interviewees all have a nursing-education background, with training completed in the country of origin. Due to the nature of their migration trajectories, they all learnt and became fluent in Norwegian as adults, after their move to Norway.

Data were collected in the greater Oslo area between Autumn 2017 and Spring 2018. We conducted follow-up interviews with those respondents who signalled important events approaching in the near future when we met for the first time. Their life situations changed substantially over a short period because of significant events such as pregnancy, moving into a new apartment, reunification with a spouse or starting a new job. Follow-up interviews enriched the dataset substantially, enabling in-depth analysis of the roles of time and the temporal aspects of migration decisions. Norway repeatedly came up as an onward destination which was otherwise unplanned at origin in Poland or in the Philippines.

2.4 Mapping Complex Migration Trajectories

We start this section by introducing the migration trajectories which we analyse in the remainder of this chapter. Figure 2.1 shows the complex geographical migration patterns consisting of South-South and South-North migration, migration within the EEA and internal mobility within Norway. These include initial emigration, return migration, onward migration and re-migration (international as well as internal). Interviewees No. 4 (Blessica), 5 (Anna) and 7 (Paulina) moved back to the country of origin before the further trajectory to Norway; others did not. Circular migration and seasonal work comprise stages of the migration paths of two nurses – Nos 7, Paulina and 8, Clarissa – and pose a challenge to the linear outline of migration trajectories. The diversity of these latter and the instances of internal migration within Norwegian borders problematise the destination-oriented approach to migration, as we return to later in this chapter.

While emigration from the country of origin was viewed as an opportunity to boost the nurse-migrants’ career or improve their personal or family economy across our sample, Norway was not a first ‘country of choice’. Surprisingly, even for some of the interviewees themselves, they crossed the Norwegian border and spent substantial time in a country which they had often not considered as a destination for long-term settlement. Thus, when answering the question ‘Why Norway?’ our interviewees often re-traced their steps to a time before they left Poland or the Philippines. To present the complex migration trajectories we found and analyse how decision-making about migration emerged therein, we follow a chronological order, starting from the choice to become a nurse, through their migration experiences in the first countries of immigration and to how Norway became a migration destination on their trajectories.

Nursing as a profession is linked to a robust mobility potential, due to a worldwide shortage of healthcare professionals. As is well evidenced in the literature on nurse migration, the Philippines is a very specific context in terms of nurse education for export (Choy, 1998; Ball, 2004; McKay, 2016; Thompson & Walton-Roberts, 2019). For some of our interviewed nurses, the choice of a nursing degree was also, to a great extent, motivated by the wish to improve their personal and family economy through an expected income made as a nurse abroad. Lorna was not the only interviewee who was initially afraid of blood and shunned a career in nursing at first. However, the migration opportunities linked to becoming a nurse and the economic profits she envisaged determined a last-minute change in her education plan:

We have the American dream, they call it. Because it’s very common, like, a lot of Filipino nurses go to America, and, you know, see a lot. They have a good life and a good salary and all that stuff. And a lot of my friends also studied nursing. At first, I was like […] I wanted to study accounting. I was with my mum, and suddenly I thought ‘Oh, maybe I can try nursing!’

The desired South-North mobility and employment opportunities in the first ‘countries of choice’ are bound to complex legislative frameworks. Increasing restrictions on migration and challenges to the authorisation of foreign medical degrees in the US and Canada promoted the choice of EEA countries or the Gulf States. These were initially planned to play the role of stepping-stones in Filipino nurses’ migration trajectories, still with the planned destination of North America. In contrast, in our sample, the Polish nurses aimed for mobility within EEA borders only; thus, the stepping-stone approach is nationality-specific in our data. Among both Filipino and Polish nurse migrants, different strategies were utilised to initially leave the country of origin. These included seasonal labour migration in the health-care sector, labour migration linked to regular employment as a nurse, health-worker or care-giver and also family migration and reunification options as well as au-pair cultural-exchange programmes abroad.

Clarissa made use of family reunification, married and started a family in Sweden, where she also received her nursing training and gained extensive work experience. Meanwhile, the au-pair scheme implied a match with a host family abroad and the Filipino nurses who chose this migration strategy were open to the idea of this cultural exchange programme in multiple locations in Western and Northern Europe; thus they were flexible about their ‘destination’. Temporary contracts for au-pairs providing short-term residence permission in their first country of immigration led the nurses to seek further alternatives for staying abroad. Migration to Norway appears to be an accidental consequence of a match with a new host family. As Lorna pointed out:

It just happened that the family from Norway was the one I was matched with. For me it didn’t matter. I could go to Denmark, or, yeah, Sweden or anywhere, because […] being an au-pair was the easiest way for us, for example Filipinos, to go to a different country.

For nurses who employed the labour migration or family migration scheme for their onward journey to Norway, the choice of the latter as a destination was largely dictated by the high demand for healthcare professionals in the country. This was linked to the anticipated ease in obtaining the necessary documents and an attractive income, higher than that which was likely in their first country of immigration. We find that previous migration experiences, often neutral or negative in nurse-migrants’ narratives, were also important in the migration decision-making process.

The emotional aspect mattered particularly for some interviewees, who did not feel at home in their first country of immigration. Anna left the UK, moved back to Poland and subsequently left for Norway. She said:

Already after my Bachelor’s I went to England. I worked there for two years. I started missing our country [Poland]. I didn’t take to it in my heart. England is not close to my heart; I didn’t put down roots there. My fellow students from the BA joined me [in England]. They’ve put down roots there. They have jobs, children, marriage, friends. I came back to Poland. I studied for my Master’s and I was employed in the Operating Room. But I only held out for two years. With that [low] pay.

The idea of income comparisons in the evaluation of migration destination choices is both obvious and, of course, a key tenet of existing theorisation. However, both economic and emotional considerations mattered for Anna, whose migration trajectory, in a simplified manner, could be summarised as follows: a low salary in Poland, migration to the UK, negative emotions, return migration to Poland, a low salary, migration to Norway, negative emotions, internal migration in Norway and no return to Poland. Anna’s case is indicative of the transformation – the process of becoming – to which migrants with complex trajectories expose themselves which, in some cases, may lead to tangible transnational capital in terms of skills, know-how and comparative advantage in the labour market.

The internal migration in which Anna engaged is another aspect of the complex migration trajectories which we identified, where we found that a move within Norway or, indeed, other countries, could have implications comparable to international resettlement (cf. King & Skeldon, 2010). Paulina, a nurse with migration experience from the Netherlands, decided to move on to Norway because of the landscape and leisure activities available. During the interview, she said: ‘Holland is too flat’ and expressed a desire to live surrounded by a mountainous landscape. She moved to Norway through a recruitment agency and had no choice over the specific location in Norway to which she was sent. The mismatch of expectations and the current location far away from mountains were the main factors which led Paulina to a further move, which places internal migration centrally within her trajectory.

Other nurses who came to Norway through recruitment agencies followed a similar settlement pattern in which the demand for nurses was the main factor determining where they would be sent. Consequently, this raises questions about the nurses’ degree of choice of ‘destination’, beyond choosing the country. These issues, although in a radically different context, are similar to those of decentralised refugee-settlement programmes in many European countries, whether for resettled refugees or for asylum-seekers who are granted refugee status: even when the country is a chosen destination, the place in which you live may well not be. The Filipino nurses who were part of the au-pair scheme agreed to move to wherever in Norway their ‘match’ family was located. For nurses who had some agency in the choice of a specific place in Norway and those who moved internally within the country, their networks – both personal and professional – played a major role in the migration decision-making process. In other words, the presence of family, friends, fellow graduates and religious and diaspora communities mattered for their choice of Norway as a destination country, not least for the choice of specific locations within Norway.

2.5 Transnational Ties and Networks

In our analysis of how complex migration trajectories contribute to shedding light on the role of destinations in migrant decision-making processes, we now turn to the role of transnational networks. Transnational ties and networks are a central feature of analyses of contemporary migration, foregrounding remittances, care obligations and the role of visits. Several other chapters in this volume exemplify these interconnections: see, especially, de Hoon and van Liempt (Chap. 3), Flikweert et al. (Chap. 4), Tobin et al. (Chap. 5), Jung (Chap. 8) and Formenti (Chap. 11). In our interviews, we also found experiences of and reflections about these kinds of transnational practice. Our purpose in this section is to show their relevance in the context of attempting to better understand migration decision-making processes and the role of destinations therein.

Following Bakewell et al. (2016), our analysis supports previous contributions which have brought attention to the role of social networks, where we find a multiplicity of locations to be of relevance simultaneously – suggesting the salience of multi-sited transnationalism.

Danilo had lived in Norway for 5 years, following his migration experience in Denmark. His case, however, constitutes a clear example of how transnational networks and familial obligations are interlinked with decision-making about onward migration. His family created a transnational support strategy which he himself calls a ‘migration culture’, with financial commitment to the family system as a core element. Danilo’s and his siblings’ places of residence stretch across four different countries, as visualised in Fig. 2.2.

Fig. 2.2
A world map illustrates different trajectories for five different types of people. It includes Danilo, Sisters 1 to 4, and Norway, Denmark, France, and the Philippines. The dash line indicates journey and the bold line indicates remitances.

Remittance flows in Danilo’s family

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Danilo’s transnational family illustrates a system where one family member first receives remittances from a relative to complete higher education and then, at later stage, is expected to financially support another family member. While migration can be a personal decision in order to benefit from better working conditions in a chosen destination country, the financial obligations towards relatives sometimes push nurses to go abroad and stay outside their countries of origin for a substantial period.

According to our Filipino interviewees, it is impossible to significantly support a relative with a salary as a nurse in the Philippines. In other words, the labour migration and long-term trajectories figure as a response to either common family material needs – like Danilo’s need to finance his sibling’s education – or family-specific needs, like that of supporting a father with a chronic disease, as expressed in the interview with another Filipino nurse in Norway, Dorothy.

Although the differences in national social-security policies put greater pressure on Filipino than on Polish nurses to provide for their relatives, we observed several individual factors against the nationality divide in our sample. These include having or not having younger siblings or children, the nurses’ own health and the age of family members living outside of Norway, which strongly shape whether or not an interviewee sends remittances and for how long.

The international experience of other family members can shape migration decisions and affect the choice of destination. In Danilo’s case, his older sister was the first to migrate to Denmark and created an avenue for him to follow. In contrast, Anna’s brother’s migration experience incited her to actively reject his migration destination.

Anna is a Polish nurse with migration experience from the UK, where she spent a few years prior to her return to Poland and her onward migration to Norway. She has a brother who emigrated from Poland before she did. He lives in Sweden and was one of the driving forces behind Anna’s migration to Norway, as she recounts:

If I were to go to Norway on my own (…), knowing the costs of living here, I would have to take out a loan. And how to do it? […] Luckily, I have a brother who lives in Sweden. My brother would be able to lend me money. He kept on telling me ‘As a nurse, you will not get better paid anywhere in the world than in Norway. I can tell you with my work experience from here [Sweden]. Swedes move to Norway, don’t even think of coming here to be in the same country as me. It’s just Norway which is an option for you. Close to Poland, few cultural differences between us and them. This will be very easy. Go there, only there [Norway]. You’ll be there alone, but it’s not a problem for you since you are looking [for work] in some emirates. Think how long it would take to fly to Poland’. That was true. All those factors mattered.

Anna’s example highlights the significance of networks beyond the country of origin, in multiple sites. Anna used the ‘lessons learnt’ by another migrant. Her brother was able to identify factors which were relevant for Anna when she was planning another move away from Poland. The family networks in this case serve as a source of insider knowledge. In spite of other examples of nurses who join their networks, Anna’s brother’s advice to not join him in Sweden places her personal gain from migration over her potential desires to either keep the family together or to re-join them.

The easy mobility between Norway and Poland that Anna’s brother referred to was significant for many interviewed nurses who are able to visit Poland frequently and to be visited by family members and friends in Norway. This is not such an easy option for Filipino citizens due to the different migration regimes and the more time-consuming and expensive travel.

Both Danilo and Anna moved abroad alone, without a partner or children; nor did they have children at the time of the interview. Due to the importance of life-stage and age, a third case which we now introduce adds important insights and shades to the story on transnational networks and obligations spanning nation-state borders.

Clarissa is one of the nurses with the longest migration experience. Due to her multiple national identities, Clarissa’s example challenges the traditional origin–destination divide, for what is ‘origin’ and what is ‘destination’ for a Filipino-Swedish migrant who has lived in Norway for more than 10 years? Clarissa was born in the Philippines and left for Sweden as a young adult, leaving her first child behind in the Philippines. She has a Swedish nursing degree – which is automatically recognised in Norway – and Swedish citizenship which enables friction-free mobility within the EEA. During the interview she used the word ‘countrymen’ several times. When asked to clarify to whom she was referring, Filipinos or Swedes, she replied:

Fili (…) I mean both. Because sometimes when (…). We always have Swedish nurses [at work] and since I speak the [Swedish] language, they know that I’ve been living in Sweden.

In some ways, Clarissa felt that home was still the Philippines where her house was and to where she wants to move back to make the most of the pensions from Sweden and Norway for her retirement. Although living in Norway and emotionally attached to the Philippines, Sweden is still important as her second, now adult, child lives there. Her family ties include locations in Norway, the Philippines and Sweden, where her spouse, children and grandchildren now live. Thus, for Clarissa, multi-sited transnationalism is engrained in who she is and how she has and will live her life.

The here and now of transnational networks and obligations maintained over time links not only to past migration choices and family stories but also to future settlement plans dictated by both personal and family situations and priorities. We continue the analysis by now turning to the effects of the passage of time.

2.6 Future Outlook and Changing Perspectives on Destinations

A temporal lens is integral to considering both the future and the past and in evaluating changing perspectives on destination choices. Our analysis connects narratives on past decisions about migration with considerations about potential onward movement, whether as return migration, as onward migration to another country, as internal migration within Norway or, indeed, also as the option of a transnational way of living spanning several locations (Carling et al., 2021). We find age and life-stage to make a difference, perhaps unsurprisingly, as well as what we term a ‘migration fatigue’ which results from our interviewees’ complex past migration trajectories. This migration fatigue is revealing of the fact that the roles of and perspectives on ‘destinations’ in individual migration projects change over time.

Hence, a temporal lens when considering migration decisions and the role of destinations becomes particularly pertinent when exploring the issue of the future in the context of complex migration trajectories. Given that we analyse interviews with Filipino and Polish nurse migrants, it is worth considering what assumptions might be made about their positionality as migrants – in terms of mobility opportunities and constraints – given their nationalities and their profession as nurses (Van Riemsdijk, 2010). At the time when the interviews were conducted, the nurses with complex migration trajectories were able to decide upon their future, in spite of restrictive migration policies. As skilled workers with attractive nursing skills and international experience, they are in the position to consider and to choose to migrate onwards to other locations if they so desire, in a very different way to many other migrants globally, not the least compared with many migrants moving from Asian-origin countries to Europe.

We found that the nurses we interviewed all had initial plans about using Norway as a stepping-stone in their migration projects, to perhaps later go back to previous destination countries or to their country of origin or even to migrate onwards to a different destination, as discussed above. Nevertheless, at the time of interview, those nurses with complex migration trajectories were all living in Norway and had, in some sense, ‘settled’ there, either with a long-term view for a certain period of time or with the idea of staying until retirement age. In Lorna’s words, the American dream she referred to in an earlier quote was no longer a reality:

I have some family in the US. I have my aunt, she’s also a nurse there and, yeah, I have some cousins in the US too. But I really feel like (…). I don’t know, America, like, just seen in the news, like, a lot of, you know, shootings (…). I don’t feel (…) I don’t feel like going to the US anymore.

When asked about their future plans, some clearly stated that, from the perspective of the present, they wanted to stay in Norway looking forward. Against the backdrop of the complex migration trajectories which we analyse in this chapter, we found that, after having tried different realities, a certain degree of migration fatigue emerged – not with the moving per se but with repeatedly finding a new place in a new setting. Whereas our interlocutors had actively not chosen Norway as a primary destination for their migration, at this juncture it appears that Norway had become their destination. So why Norway and not the previous location they had lived in? Indeed, why was the option of returning to their country of origin not pursued, given that they had initially not chosen Norway as a destination?

Dorothy, at the time of our follow-up interview, wished to settle permanently in Norway due to her family situation although, not that long ago, she had planned to move back to Denmark, her previous migration destination country:

So, I just decided to come here and probably, like, save [money] and then go back to Denmark to continue with the language, ‘cause it’s easier to be a nurse there compared to Norway.

For Dorothy and other nurses, Norway has become the destination, from a point of departure where it was not actively chosen as a destination. From the data we see that elements of safe, well-paid employment, a generous welfare state and a good work–life balance all influence the decision to remain, at least for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the door to return migration is left open – or at least is not closed.

Learning a foreign language as an adult is a challenge which all our interviewees stressed. Norwegian language skills essentially do not add up to capital which can be easily transferred and used elsewhere in the world. This makes turning Norway into an unplanned destination, different from an English-speaking country. While nursing allows for agency, due to the global need for nurses, simultaneously, the profession requires excellent communication skills, a familiarity with informal language – slang – as well as a good medical vocabulary. Meanwhile, none of our interviewees had learned Norwegian before obtaining their nursing degree, underscoring the disconnect between their present-day nursing careers in Norway and the country as a migration destination for them. Blessica is one of the nurses who no longer wants to learn yet another language as an adult due to the effort it entails:

I’m done with learning languages because it’s very hard to have a language barrier. You cannot express yourself, like, when you want to help the patient […]. Norway is the third foreign country I’ve lived in, with yet another language barrier. So it’s quite hard, sometimes you feel so dumb. At work, it’s like, okay, but sometimes you have no choice but to learn. I did that. I was quite (…). At first, I had a lot of fear in me and I was so exhausted after every duty I had at work, because I had to translate everything in my mind, think in English, then in Norwegian, Norwegian-English (…).

Emilia, who moved with the whole family from Poland to Belgium and then migrated on to Norway and bought a house there, said that she adjusts to the rest of the family, who are settled in Norway now: ‘I am the one who’s in the trap’, she said, referring to the fact that Norway was not – and is not – her destination of choice. However, for Emilia, primarily due to family considerations, Norway has become the destination for now and for the mid-term perspective, at least.

Echoing Emilia’s reflections, other nurse migrants also kept the door open to future onward or return migration, seeing Norway as somewhere to stay only until a certain point in time – such as retirement – which is common more generally among many migrants moving to work in Norway. Some also spoke of more open-ended trajectories, like Paulina, who decided to migrate internally in Norway first, then maybe go to Canada or another location, with a good dose of adapting to what life brings. In these more open-ended future outlooks, we also found that multi-sited transnationalism mattered, including where migrants’ children were living and consideration of their remittance obligations both today and those anticipated for the future.

Thus, a temporal lens aids our analysis by foregrounding how the past, present and future are viewed from the perspective of the present and compared, for example with the perspective prior to migration or to the most recent migration to Norway. We also find that life-course stages intersect with changing perspectives on the past, present and future. An obvious point, perhaps, but future outlooks and considerations about Norway as a de facto destination of sorts, differ radically between our migrant-nurse interlocutors in their 20s or 30s and those in their 50s and 60s. Interviewing migrants who are at different life phases enables different analytical perspectives on the life-course in the narratives.

Clarissa, whom we introduced earlier, is in her 60s and the time span between her two migration moves – from the Philippines to Sweden then, subsequently, from Sweden to Norway – is wide. She had different plans and prospects for the future when she moved from the Philippines to Sweden. At the time of our interview, she was looking forward to retirement in the Philippines, where she will have a Swedish and a Norwegian old-age pension and where she envisages a degree of circulation. Her future outlook is different now that her reference point is her retirement age and – on the basis of now having a citizenship which offers her mobility resources and a pension enabling financial resources – the ability to live transnationally if she so desires in the future. Clarissa’s story illustrates a key insight from our analysis – there is not always a clear answer to the question ‘What is a destination?’

2.7 Conclusion

We suggest that the theorisation of migration decision-making may benefit from the analysis of reflections from the perspective of those following complex migration trajectories. We argue that the insights gained on the role of destinations in migration decision-making among predominantly female, skilled, regular migrants, moving from places which are still often viewed as the global periphery, are worth further integrating into the body of mainstream migration theory. We offer three conclusions to this end.

First, migration decisions are neither entirely open-ended processes nor are they possible to pin-point and see as entirely individualised. Instead, we find much in our study to support analyses of migration decisions which encompass processual dimensions. This is critical in two ways. We find that there is much to glean from traditional migration theory, in the sense that economic differences do matter as migration decisions are often built on what is otherwise referred to as wage differentials. However, there is always also the collective dimension at play, often embedded within family networks which may be stretched internally or internationally by migration. The relational dimensions thus need to be taken into account in order to explain migration decisions, especially as these are intertwined rather than existing as two parallel considerations. We also find that migration decisions would benefit from being understood as processual, in that, increasingly, migration is found to be stepwise, fractured – perhaps usefully understood as a journey or as liquid. In our analysis we can maybe best see that migration decisions need to be understood more fully by taking on the role of what is unplanned and unforeseen, yet still materialises as part of an individual’s migration project, often but not always, in response to migration regulations.

Second, nurse migrants’ narratives reveal agency in individuals who are often economically independent, having multiple resources, drawing on multi-sited transnational networks and actively capitalising on the experience of having managed in different national contexts on the global labour market. This empowered image of predominantly female migrant nurses, both white and non-white, whose positionality might be traditionally viewed as a limitation rather than an opportunity to migrate overseas, emerged from our analysis.

Third, we find that an active choice of internal onward migration within Norway can have comparable implications as international migration in terms of professional development and economic gains but without the costs that international migration entails. Migrant nurses can therefore show autonomy and agency by actively building on their mobility resources and experience gained in Norway to transfer these to new locations internally within the country.

Finally, we start and finish this chapter with the paradox that, despite an active non-choice of Norway as ‘the destination’, the country has become the destination – at present, for the time being and, for some, with a longer-term perspective. We find that Norway – as a destination of onward migration – was usually not the result of the fulfilment of a plan initially made. However, the view of Norway as the current destination might also change at some point in the future and over the life-course. While the notion of destinations is pervasive in both migration theories and immigration policies, in fact, the idea of ‘the destination’ is neither as singular nor as straightforward as it may appear. For nurse migrants, we find that destinations may become. The becoming of destinations might happen de facto, by choice or by resignation, willingly or with resistance; the temporal view might be permanent or open-ended, seen as part of migration projects to be continued and reflective of lives that are embedded in transnational social networks across multiple sites.