Youths from the Global South migrating for further education often face
various forms of discrimination. This Caribbean case study discusses how
conditions in the home country can provide a foundation for educational
migration that helps the migrants overcome such obstacles and even develop
a strong sense of agency and self-empowerment. In the post-WWII period,
numerous Caribbean women trained in nursing at British hospitals that have
been described as marred by race and gender related inequality and associated
forms of exploitation. Yet, the nurses interviewed about this training
emphasised its high quality and downplayed the problems encountered. This
positive attitude, it is argued, must be understood in the light of the key
ideological role of education, particularly for a profession, as an avenue of
social and personal mobility in the late-colonial Caribbean societies and the
ways in which it enabled these Caribbean women to stake out a new life for
themselves.