Full Description
Migrant architects of the NHS draws on forty-five oral history interviews and extensive archival research to offer a radical reappraisal of how the National Health Service was made. It tells the story of migrant South Asian doctors who became general practitioners in the NHS. Imperial legacies, professional discrimination and an exodus of UK-trained doctors combined to direct these doctors towards work as GPs in some of the most deprived parts of the UK. In some areas, they made up over half of the general practitioner workforce. The NHS was structurally dependent on them and they shaped British society and medicine through their agency.
Aimed at students and academics with interests in the history of immigration, immigration studies, the history of medicine, South Asian studies and oral history. It will also be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about how Empire and migration have contributed to making Britain what it is today.
Contents
Introduction: writing the history of the 'International' Health Service
Part I: Healthcare and migration in Britain during the post-war period
1. The making of a cornerstone
2. Empire, migration and the NHS
Part II: The colonial legacy, racism and the staffing of surgeries
3. The empire of the mind and medical migration
4. Discrimination and the development of general practice
5. From 'pairs of hands' to family doctors
Part III: Shaping British medicine and British society
6. 'The more you did, the more they depended on you': memories of practice on the periphery
7. Beyond the surgery boundaries: doctors' organisations and activist medics
8. Adding to the mosaic of British general practice
Conclusion: Historicising a 'revolution'
Bibliography
Index
