Nurses on design: Triple Win in Indonesia as a testing ground for fair migration in transforming migration systems

Abstract For more than a decade, a global race to recruit nurses from middle-income countries to work in aging, high-income nations has been underway. But very soon, middle-income countries will also face shortages in healthcare personnel. Germany, a country where, by 2040, 9 % of the population will be over 80 years of age and 28 % over 65, has reacted relatively quickly to these developments by establishing, in 2010, a specialized approach for the fair recruitment of nurses from Vietnam and the Philippines called Triple Win. Meanwhile, Indonesia has been actively pursuing new international cooperations beyond its established migration circuits involving several Asian and Arab countries. In 2021, when Indonesia was no longer part of the World Health Organisation safeguard list for healthcare personnel, Germany and Indonesia signed a government to government agreement on nurse recruitment. It contains clear elements of the migration pathways adopted for other Asian countries under this approach. This article analyses the Indonesian case as a relative latecomer in nurse migration towards Europe. It analyses ongoing recruitment under the Triple Win scheme as part of an attempt to formalize Indonesian migration dynamics through bilateral agreements. Although much is known about the functioning of global care chains in general, there is relatively little research on the “making” and design of the care chains themselves, on how institutional dynamics and spatial arrangements shape the migratory process and on how migrant agency shapes the process.