publications

Medical Education: Mapping post-COVID19 Migration Aspirations of Religious Minority Medical Students of Hyderabad (India)

Rasipogula Vinod Kumar

Abstract
Medical education is one of the most widespread and elite professional education in the field
of education. It is widely respected, considered a remunerative career with greater prestige,
and often presumed to be a ticket to emigration. There is a growing number of medical
students who aspire to migrate to developed countries to advance better clinical experience,
employment opportunities and pecuniary benefits. Thus, the significant migration after the
undergraduate courses continues to skew the doctors’ distribution. The present study
attempts to examine why minority medical students aspire to migrate to different countries
post-COVID-19. Though Hyderabad city (Telangana state) has substantial capital investment
in health education, the desire to migrate remains a salient feature among the religious
minorities in the post-COVID-19 period and the ‘culture of migration’ has been discussed
among religious minorities. The present study argues that students with different forms of
capital, whose immediate relatives working abroad, especially in medicine, are most likely to
aspire to go abroad for higher studies and subsequent settlement in the host country because
of the ‘epistemological awareness.’ This study employed quantitative and qualitative
methods; thus, 200 quantitative and 20 qualitative samples from the students currently
enrolled in MBBS, MD and MS courses were interviewed and also who are practicing
medicine have been incorporated in the study; purposive and snowball sampling methods
were used. Most medical students perceived that migrating to developed countries would
promote their educational credentials with higher clinical experiences, eventually providing
them with employment security. Therefore, the present study highlighted that post-COVID-19
and medical education cultural capital has accelerated and shaped the idea of migration to
developed countries.

Keywords: Medical education, minority students, Migration, Medical educational
cultural capital, social networks.