The roumain travail en france worker is an indispensable figure for the French healthcare system, especially in a certain set of hospitals and specialties disdained by French physicians. Whether in emergency situations or remote rural areas, or even in psychiatric hospitals inherited from lunatic asylums, the skills of these professionals are required by both national and local French actors to ensure continuity of care. This workforce is the result of a combination of professional and personal motivations. Physicians who send remittances regularly are mainly those whose spouse or adult children remain in Romania and who wish to support the health, illness or incapacity for work of close relatives. This long-distance caregiving constitutes a form of intergenerational solidarity.
With the number of work permits granted to Romanian citizens having tripled in recent years, France is a major destination for migrants from this country. Yet the reliance on this type of labor demonstrates the extent to which European migration policies are increasingly based on economic considerations, as evidenced by the fact that most non-EU migrant workers do not stay in their host countries for an extended period of time.
The article draws on a corpus of articles from national and local newspapers covering 12 departements in western France, focusing on the presence of Romanian physicians in these places. It reveals that the image of a Romanian worker in France is highly contested, despite the fact that this community contributes to meeting the needs of French healthcare and public services in particular.