Being A Doctor Over Here or Over There Collective Action: The Foundation Of The Capacity For Agency in The Migratory Process?
Being A Doctor Over Here or Over There Collective Action: The Foundation Of The Capacity For Agency in The Migratory Process?

Author(s): Ariel Mendez
Subject(s): Health and medicine and law, Migration Studies
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: Doctor; collective action; migratory; French Public Health code;
Summary/Abstract: February 13, 2015. Djamila’s name appeared on the list of practitioners who passed the examination required in articles L. 4111-2-I and L. 4221-12 of the French Public Health code. She was now a doctor and registered with the French National Medical Council. Her husband was so happy that he took a photo of her registration card at the Council and sent it to their friends and family. I met her a few weeks later. During the interview, she took her card out of her wallet: “it’s unbelievable,” she says, “it took me ten years...” And yet, a few years earlier, Djamila who had graduated with a DEMS (Specialized Medical Studies Diploma) from the University of Algiers, was working as a traveling nurse in a private French clinic. As a surgeon, she found the situation unbearable and incredibly humiliating. The other nurses working with her continually reminded her of her lower status. One day, Djamila reacted a little more brutally than usual to a remark that she had heard practically every day. “Are you a doctor in your country? And now you’re a nurse? […] Don’t you prefer being a doctor? Why don’t you go home? You’ll never be a doctor here.” Djamila’s answer to her colleague was quite direct: “The difference between you and me is that you’re a nurse and for you the elevator is stuck on the ground floor. Whereas I can get in the elevator and one day I’ll be on the top floor.” The nurse complained to the management and Djamila was fired from her position as a traveling nurse because of issues with her relations with her colleagues.

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