Foreign Practices

Sasha Mullally is professor of history and associate dean at the School of Graduate Studies at the University of New Brunswick. David Wright is professor of history and Canada Research Chair in the History of Health Policy at McGill University.

"Now more than ever, we need scholarship which lifts the history of medicine out of national silos and sets it in proper global context. Mullally and Wright give an expert demonstration of this approach, founded on meticulous research into medical migration which moves deftly between individual experience and broader patterns. The result is a study which not only enhances our understanding of Canada's health politics, but also illuminates the underpinnings of professional mobility in an earlier era of globalisation." Martin Gorsky, Centre for History in Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine "One of the many strengths of this study is the sustained effort to weave together the lived experiences of immigrant doctors and the policy environment in which they worked. The contrast between the speedy acceptance and apparent acculturation of the early migrants is striking. As we prepare for a postpandemic world, more than ever, the insights provided by studies of this nature make clear that health policies and their implementation rarely play out the way that their advocates intended. Using historical analysis provides the nuance and complexity that are needed to ensure that twenty-first-century policymakers have the background knowledge to "build back better."" Social History / Histoire Sociale