HARARE, ZIMBABWE — When Tanya moved to Ireland for care work in 2022, she was certain of three things: Her family would join her soon. Her husband would find work. And her children would attend a good school. Initially, her move was smooth. Visas and permits were no problem. But once in Ireland, reality proved harsh for Tanya, a Zimbabwean who asked Global Press Journal to use her middle name for fear of jeopardizing her visa status.
The country’s visa restrictions for the general employment permit meant that for her husband to join her, she’d have to earn at least 30,000 euros annually for two years (about 31,500 United States dollars per year). To reunite with each of her three children, she would need to bring in increasingly more.
Tanya earns an income of about 27,000 euros per year (about 28,400 dollars). She spends her time caring for children with autism, but her own children live without her in South Africa.
“I struggle to sleep. I am always emotional. I have become too sensitive and negative towards life,” Tanya says.
Her story is common in a global economy increasingly reliant on migrant workers, who now constitute 4.9% of the global workforce. The demand has risen steadily since 2013 and surged during the pandemic. But as demand increases, so do restrictions on visa policies regarding family members who want to move to be with their spouses or parents in the world’s biggest economies.
Health care workers like Tanya in particular are in high demand. Approximately 15% of the global health care workforce is employed outside their home country or country of training.
The situation is especially pronounced in big economies like the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, where labor shortages and aging populations strain health care systems.
On the supply side, it’s countries with smaller economies like Zimbabwe that are among the main exporters of talent, especially health care talent. The migration of health workers from Zimbabwe is so severe that in 2023, the World Health Organization added it to a “red list” of 55 countries from which international recruitment of health care personnel is discouraged, due to the critically low numbers of health workers remaining to serve their home populations.
Some countries, including Switzerland, the UK, Australia and Denmark, relaxed their visa requirements during the pandemic but have since reverted to previous policies, says Godfrey Kanyenze, director of the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe, a research think tank.
There has been a rollback of what Kanyenze calls “sensible arrangements” that had enabled migrant workers to relocate with their families.
In one such reversal, the UK implemented new measures in December 2023 to curtail migration into the country, which then-Home Secretary of State James Cleverly described as “far too high.”
Among the changes is that care workers — who were in such high demand at the onset of the pandemic that the UK had to introduce a special visa for them in 2022 — can no longer relocate with their families.
The policy also increased the salary threshold — or the minimum amount of money one must earn to qualify for the visa — for all migrant workers by close to 50%. Now, migrant workers need to earn at least 38,700 British pounds (about 49,000 dollars) per year to retain their visa status.
In most cases, low-skilled workers such as care workers earn too little to meet these income requirements, says Hilda Tinevimbo Mahumucha, senior legal consultant with Women and Law in Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, a gender justice organization.
In 2023, Sweden, a major migration hub, also announced new restrictions on low-skilled labor migration into the country. Scheduled to take effect this year, migrant workers from “third world countries” will be required to earn a monthly minimum of approximately 2,200 euros (about 2,300 dollars) to obtain a work permit, and even higher income requirements to bring family members to join them.
Receiving countries capitalize on the skill sets of migrant workers without bearing any of the costs, especially the cost of training people, says Abel Chikanda, an associate professor at the School of Earth, Environment and Society at McMaster University in Canada.
“[They] are essentially benefitting from human resource that they did not contribute towards,” he says.
For example, in the case of health worker migration, annually, Africa loses about 2 billion dollars invested in medical training when its health workers migrate abroad. Meanwhile, destination countries enjoy substantial savings by bypassing these costs.
The human cost
In the end, it is migrant workers and their families who pay the steepest price, each in their own way.
Senzeni Chiutsi, a psychologist based in Harare, says that while migration allows parents a chance to support their families economically, the children they leave behind are prone to stress and trauma.
A 2018 study on the effects of migration on children and adolescents left behind by their parents noted signs of depression and loneliness. And 8 in 10 of those interviewed reported having once considered suicide.
Already, the distance between Tanya and her children is widening. On the rare occasions she visits them, her 9-year-old son finds more comfort in video games, while her two girls remain behind the closed doors of their bedrooms.
“One time when I went there, my second child said, ‘Mommy … I don’t even know [the last time] I was hugged,’” Tanya says.
Although she stays in touch through phone calls, it is difficult because of the time difference and her working hours. By the time she is home, her children are already asleep.
The emotional cost of being abroad is just too high, she says.
“One of my friends normally jokes about how we were given the wrong information coming here,” she says. “If you’re doing well in Zimbabwe … I don’t see a need of coming here.”
That’s a big question mark. Most people move because their governments have failed to keep their end of the bargain by providing workers with fair conditions such as adequate pay, says Chikanda, the professor.
If Tanya were employed as a care worker in Zimbabwe, she would earn an annual income of about 4,284 dollars — a sixth of what she is earning abroad.
Even so, she’s set a deadline for herself of this year to return to her family if they can’t join her in Ireland.
“What if they’ll be broken adults?” she says. “It’s not like I’m going to be rich, to be honest.”
Gamuchirai Masiyiwa is a Global Press Journal reporter based in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Gamuchirai Masiyiwa, GPJ, translated some interviews from Shona.
