Processes developing global flows of capital and commodities also increasingly restrict the circulation of people, including by managing their inclusion or exclusion in foreign job markets. In the European Union (EU), where shifts in borders in the 2000s have created new barriers for non-EU citizens and workers, a growing literature has explored labour market and educational opportunities and impediments for a group whose skills and qualifications may be thought to travel easily: healthcare workers. This article seeks to explore a particular case, France, and the French healthcare system, which, despite shortages, depends less on foreign healthcare workers than many other countries in the global North. It asks whether and how the French healthcare system “mainstreams” migration-related diversity by promoting better inclusion for workers qualified outside the EU. Results are based on content analysis of a desktop study of policy documents and 18 semi-structured interviews with policy, employment, education, and training stakeholders conducted between May 2024 and May 2025. Interviewees’ accounts highlight the complexities of policy choices and the competing nature of the goals between which they are required to navigate and arbitrate. The article concludes that the uneven development of the French regulatory framework defining how workers born or trained outside the EU access healthcare work, as well as the multiplicity and autonomy of employment stakeholders, create conditions likely to promote the temporary or permanent downward mobility of these workers. These tendencies also often leave the onus for professional integration on migrant workers, rather than on sectoral stakeholders.

Processes developing global flows of capital and commodities also increasingly restrict the circulation of people, including by managing their inclusion or exclusion in foreign job markets. In the European Union (EU), where shifts in borders in the 2000s have created new barriers for non-EU citizens and workers, a growing literature has explored labour market and educational opportunities and impediments for a group whose skills and qualifications may be thought to travel easily: healthcare workers. This article seeks to explore a particular case, France, and the French healthcare system, which, despite shortages, depends less on foreign healthcare workers than many other countries in the global North. It asks whether and how the French healthcare system “mainstreams” migration-related diversity by promoting better inclusion for workers qualified outside the EU. Results are based on content analysis of a desktop study of policy documents and 18 semi-structured interviews with policy, employment, education, and training stakeholders conducted between May 2024 and May 2025. Interviewees’ accounts highlight the complexities of policy choices and the competing nature of the goals between which they are required to navigate and arbitrate. The article concludes that the uneven development of the French regulatory framework defining how workers born or trained outside the EU access healthcare work, as well as the multiplicity and autonomy of employment stakeholders, create conditions likely to promote the temporary or permanent downward mobility of these workers. These tendencies also often leave the onus for professional integration on migrant workers, rather than on sectoral stakeholders.