International recruitment in the health sector.

This research focuses on the need of (foreign) medical staff in a Belgian society that is growing older. The recruitment of medical personnel abroad raises some questions: what is the impact on the receiving country, what is the impact on the sending country and what is the impact on the migrant population itself? In the research, the Belgian situation will be described (labour market evolution; profile of the staff needed, profile of the staff already present; recruiting processes; recotnition of qualifications; activities of involved IGO's; INGO's and commercial actors; ethical consequences and codes of conduct in the recruitment process, etcetera..). In a short comparative part we will shed a light on best practices like existing codes of conduct, bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries of medical personnel. In a last part, we will focus on the possible negative impact of skilled migration on the region of origin.

Keywords:Code of conduct, Medical migration, Brain drain, International migration