Health and Wealth: A systems psychodynamic exploration of the migrant professional experience in Switzerland’s pharmaceutical industry

Little is known of the professionals who dedicate their careers to advancing science in the pharmaceutical industry: What might it mean for them to leave home and join this industry with its double focus on health and wealth? This qualitative research explores the experiences of migrant professionals who go to work in Switzerland’s highly regarded pharmaceutical industry, considering the question of how they take up their role given the concerns of health and wealth - easing suffering and creating profit. The question arose from my coaching work with migrant professionals where I noticed a pattern of addressing issues regarding role, power and authority through exploring the younger self whilst bracketing off the present self. This study’s research data draws from qualitative depth interviews with migrant professionals who work with or adjacent to the science. The lack of extant research opens up an opportunity for new ideas to be created using Biographic-Narrative Interpretive Method for data generation and Grounded Theory for analysis, and finally distilled into 3 ideas. The study looks at the research data through the lens of systems-psychodynamics, which, like a microscope, examines the less visible material, including unconscious communication. The ideas are: 1. A permanent state of temporality: competition and entry being regulated as migrant professionals contend with the tensions of health and wealth. 2. The bonding of migrant professional and molecule: the industry’s health and wealth focus creating an intense relationship between migrant professional and molecule. 3. Emotional refugeeism: a social defence against projections into the migrant professional and focusing on the task’s ‘uncontestable’ good. The implication for practice is a deepening view of social defences amongst migrant professionals in this industry. It may have relevance to sectors reliant on migrant professionals with a double humanitarian and financial task.