Fair Recruitment of Nurses through Voluntary Ethical Codes: Evolution and Discourse

The global migration of nursing professionals has increased significantly in recent years, driven in part by skills shortages in the healthcare sector. Today’s migration infrastructure is far more sophisticated than it was in the 1960s. Labor migration intermediaries (LMIs) are playing an expanding role in labor migration processes, not only in Germany but worldwide. Ensuring ethical recruitment has become increasingly important in international discourse, even though initial frameworks and guidelines were first established in the 1970s by organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and International Labor Organization (ILO). This article provides a systematic literature review on the discourse and on the role of voluntary ethical codes as regulatory instruments to ensure the fair recruitment of nurses. It identifies three main strands of research: the development and evaluation of such codes, conceptual ambiguities around “ethical recruitment”, and structural and regulatory challenges linked to the role of LMIs. The findings highlight both the historical continuities and the current trends in the migration industry concerning ethical recruitment practices.