Far From Home, Carried by Community: In Austria, a Quiet Network Sustains Filipino Nurses

Recruitment policy opens doors, but connection and care keep newcomers from falling through the cracks

When Minda Capinding arrived in Vienna in the summer of 2024, she knew the road ahead wouldn’t be easy. Adjusting to a new culture, refining her German, and navigating a health care system unlike the one she knew as a nurse in the Philippines—every day brought new challenges.

What helped her most, though, wasn’t in any manual or orientation packet. It was a warm “kumusta ka kababayan,” Tagalog for “How are you, fellow countryman,” from someone on the train. It was the invitation to a potluck dinner, one of the small moments of kindness from other Filipinos to remind her that even far away from home, she wasn't alone.

Capinding is one of hundreds of Filipino nurses recruited under a 2023 labor agreement between Austria and the Philippines—part of Austria’s urgent effort to address a looming shortfall of 200,000 health care workers by 2050. This policy opens the door, but what happens after arrival determines whether these professionals thrive.

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For Capinding and many others, stability depends on one thing: community. Members of Austria’s Filipino diaspora, both new and longstanding, have built a quiet network offering strength and stability, especially when formal systems fall short.

“I’m really grateful I’ve found support from several Filipino communities,” Capinding said. “It helps a lot, especially when I miss home or feel a little bit down.”

A bureaucratic bottleneck

Recruitment promises stable employment and support, but many Filipino nurses face unexpected challenges upon arrival. The biggest is nostrification, Austria’s process for recognizing foreign nursing qualifications, which nurses must complete before they can work in the roles they were trained for.

Recruited nurses start as pflegeassistenten, Level 1 nursing assistants, a role that requires less clinical judgment and more basic care tasks. After completing theoretical coursework and clinical training, they can progress to Level 2 nursing assistant roles and, after several years of further study, become licensed nurses. Moving from one level to another is accompanied by a pay raise, and recruitment agencies are contractually obligated to disclose this difference in compensation.

Delmer Cruz, labor attaché of the Migrant Workers Office in Vienna, a department of the Philippine embassy dedicated to supporting Filipinos working overseas, says having the three-level position system is unique to Austria. In neighboring Germany, where Filipino nurses are also being recruited, the system only has two levels. Cruz hopes to conduct a comprehensive review to examine how both Austria and the Philippines can better align curricula to “streamline and simplify” the nostrification process.

Such improvements would benefit nurses like Rexil Ortega Bordaje, who holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in nursing and arrived in Austria on a student visa before the current agreement was finalized. He works as a nursing assistant at a care home for the elderly in Linz, a city with a population of 200,000.

Nearly all recruited nurses are placed in nursing homes or in-home hospice care—roles driven by Austria’s aging population. But in the Philippines, end-of-life care typically happens within the family home, meaning many have received little formal training in this kind of work, Bordaje says.

Bordaje says his current role can become repetitive—a sentiment echoed by other Filipino nurses who have arrived in recent years. He hopes to transfer to a hospital setting but says bureaucratic obstacles remain, as the greatest demand continues to be in elder care.

Capinding also works in an elder care setting, though her position allows her to travel from one patient’s home to another. She says this, coupled with being in Austria’s capital city of Vienna, helps her day-to-day work be more dynamic. Eventually, Capinding hopes to specialize in one type of nursing, but she must first complete the nostrification process.

For both Bordaje and Capinding, language continues to present a barrier in the workplace. Recruitment agencies offer language training prior to arrival in Austria, but many nurses report that the courses don’t prepare them for the complexity of spoken workplace German, which is filled with regional accents and a cultural subtext.

“The most difficult thing here is the language,” Bordaje says. “Yes, we learned it in the Philippines, but it’s hard to get good at it, because you aren’t using it.”

Cruz is concerned about how language barriers impact a nurse’s performance, and is searching for a way to improve the language training workers receive prior to arrival. He says that while the nurses undergo a great deal of technical training in the Philippines, navigating an unknown setting in a new language can lead them to feel uncertain.

“Even if the Filipino nurses are equipped with the skills, once they’re in a situation where they’re unable to communicate or understand an instruction, they start to lose confidence,” Cruz said. “And that could affect their performance.”

Reality upon arrival

Not only do nurses encounter bureaucratic obstacles, but they must also adjust to cultural differences when they arrive in Austria—one of the greatest being the perception of the nursing profession.

In the Philippines, nursing is considered a respected career, and nurses play an active role in patient care. In Austria, nursing is often seen as a low-status job. Nurses are perceived as overworked and underpaid, which discourages many people from entering the field.

To navigate these challenges, nurses like Bordaje and Capinding find strength in their communities, like the Filipino diaspora and broader networks of migrant support. Exact statistics on Austria’s Filipino population are difficult to obtain due to changing residency status, but community members estimate approximately 30,000 people of Filipino heritage live in the country—representing less than 1% of Austria’s total population.

Though relatively small, the Filipino community maintains a strong presence through annual events and celebrations, supported by over 70 organizations catering to different interests and groups. From organizations specific to health care workers to others dedicated to song and dance, all focus on promoting Filipino culture.

Beyond the Filipino community, Bordaje says, he’s found support from other health care workers who have come to work in Austria. This support, bonding over the shared experience of adapting to a new system, provides a powerful lifeline.

As the Filipino nurses find their way, the dream of living and working abroad, particularly in Europe, acts as a powerful motivator. Capinding, who has long envisioned building a life in Europe, where she can have a higher quality of life, stays hopeful despite the obstacles.

Others, like Bordaje, find the road remains uncertain. Though grateful for the opportunity Austria has given him, he continues to look for other possibilities, including working in the U.S.

The investment from both governments and recruitment agencies is substantial, with companies spending thousands of euros per nurse to provide training and secure placements. But as long as systemic barriers—from nostrification to language proficiency to limited career mobility—persist, the promise of stable work abroad remains more complicated than it appears.

The recruitment push

Austria’s aging population and ongoing health care staffing crisis has made international recruitment an urgent policy priority. In response, the country has welcomed professionals from across Europe and beyond—including the Czech Republic, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, and more.

Most of this recruitment is driven by private agencies, but the bilateral government-to-government agreement between Austria and the Philippines specifically promotes opportunities for Filipino nurses. The goal is to recruit about 400 nurses annually from the Philippines.

The Philippines has a long history of training nurses for employment overseas, where opportunities for higher salaries are abundant. The U.S. has traditionally been a top destination for Filipino nurses due to its streamlined approval process and the absence of a language barrier, as the Philippine education system is modeled after that of the U.S. In recent years, Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also become popular destinations, partly because of minimal language barriers in clinical settings.

In Europe, the number of Filipino nurses is increasing more gradually, particularly in English-speaking countries like Ireland and the United Kingdom, as well as in Germany and German-speaking Austria.

Austria’s 2023 agreement is modeled after an original form of the agreement from half a century prior. The first Filipino nurses arrived in 1974, with the program continuing for several years after.

Under the new agreement, Filipino nurses are encouraged to apply for Austria’s Red-White-Red Card, a point-based visa that allows family reunification and potential long-term residence. Raphael Rey Bacolod—grandson of one of the first Filipino nurses to arrive in Austria and the director of Indonesia and Philippines at WORK in Austria, a department of the Austrian Business Agency—explains that this is especially important culturally for Filipinos working abroad.

“Other countries that try to attract Filipino professionals and skilled workers often impose restrictions,” Bacolod says. “For example, only the professionals themselves are allowed to enter. Or, if family members are permitted to come, they are restricted from being able to work.”

Those limitations, Bacolod notes, force Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and their families to make significant sacrifices, like being away from one’s children or working long hours, in pursuit of better opportunities.

“Austria is very aware of this challenge and has removed that barrier,” Bacolod says. “With the Red-White-Red Card, spouses and children can join you—and your spouse can work in Austria.”

Bacolod supports the process of attracting skilled workers to Austria through the Austrian Business Agency, but does not engage directly with the private agencies that handle the nurses’ placements. Still, as he travels to the Philippines to support recruitment, he brings a perspective that blends cultural fluency with family history. To him, the story of Filipino migration to Austria is deeply personal, and impacts how he carries out his work.

“We have a history of Filipinos here,” Bacolod says. “It’s more authentic when I tell them about what it’s like to come here and live and work.”

Legacy of care

From the first Filipino nurses who arrived in Austria, an invisible infrastructure of mutual care has taken shape. Today, that tradition continues. New arrivals are welcomed not just by employers, but by a multigenerational Filipino community that understands what it takes to thrive far from home.

In the days after a group of Filipino nurses arrive in Austria, a welcome ceremony might be held, or members from specific Filipino organizations might reach out to offer support. The goal is to establish a point of connection with the local Filipino community, who can help break down cultural and systemic differences that might exacerbate the challenges of arriving in a new country.

One of those helping carry the legacy forward is Daniel Garces. Born and raised in Austria, the son of a Filipino nurse who arrived in the 1980s, Garces is a nursing home manager and vice president of the Association of Filipino Health Workers in Austria, a volunteer group that supports newcomers from recruitment through integration. Similarly, Cruz is working with the Philippine Nurses Association–Austria to establish a mentorship program and best understand what newly arrived nurses need.

Garces understands both the expectations of Austrian employers and the resilience of Filipino workers—and that those realities can clash.

“Having worked as a nurse, I understand it,” Garces says. “Managers need to make sure everyone has the same information.”

An important element of this information includes technical lessons about housing costs and taxation systems. It is common for OFWs to send remittances to their families in the Philippines, but Garces wants to make sure those who arrive in Austria understand all of the costs they must cover for themselves first.

He’s also focused on the long term. Many nurses arrive overqualified for their roles, and Garces is determined to show them that starting small doesn’t mean they’re stuck there. As a Filipino in a health care management role, he’s become a mentor to others navigating the same path. He sees the challenges new recruits face as largely systemic, and he says the role of nursing needs to be transformed not just for international recruits, but for Austria’s health care sector as a whole.

“They need to see that there’s a future here, not just a job,” Garces says.

That’s where Austria’s greater Filipino community comes in. Despite digital connectivity, today’s generation still faces the emotional toll of migration. Language barriers persist, and many nurses say they feel undervalued in a society that doesn’t place the same cultural importance on nursing that the Philippines does.

Yet with every arrival, the support network grows stronger.

Austria’s health care system today relies on foreign labor not as a stopgap, but as a core component. Stability rests not on visa programs or bilateral agreements, but on what happens after the plane lands.

The Alpine nation may recruit workers, but it’s the Filipino community that keeps them whole. The same quiet acts of care that welcomed Capinding on a train in Vienna now ripple outward, shaping the experiences of every new arrival.

“Even if life gets hectic, I’m grateful for the small moments, the new experiences, and the memories I’m making along the way,” Capinding said.