Professional Citizenship Denied: Black Internationally Educated Health Professionals and the Politics of Recognition in Canada

Black Internationally Educated Health Professionals (IEHPs) face significant barriers to professional integration in Canada’s healthcare system, despite ongoing workforce shortages. Drawing on mixed-methods data from surveys, semi-structured interviews, and key informant interviews involving 132 participants in Canada and Nigeria, this article introduces the concept of professional citizenship to examine how credential recognition systems shape professional integration. Sixty-five percent of respondents reported barriers to credential recognition, 62% maintained transnational professional engagement, and 46% expressed a conditional willingness to return under improved professional conditions. The findings demonstrate that brain drain, brain waste, and transnational engagement coexist within contemporary health worker migration systems. Building on Margaret Walton-Roberts’s scholarship on migration governance and ethical recruitment, this article argues that equitable workforce integration requires recognition systems that support the full professional participation of internationally educated Black health professionals.