Engendering Migrant Health

Voluntary migrants to Canada are generally healthier than the average Canadian, but after ten years in the country they report poorer health and higher rates of chronic disease than those born here. Troublingly, women — particularly those from non-European countries — experience the most precipitous decline in health. What contributes to this deterioration, and how can its effects be mitigated? Engendering Migrant Health brings together researchers from across Canada to address the intersections of gender, immigration, and health in the lives of new Canadians. Focusing on the context of Canadian policy and society, the contributors illuminate migrants' testimonies of struggle, resistance, and solidarity as they negotiate a place for themselves in a new country. Topics range from the difficulties of Francophone refugees and the changing roles of fathers, to the experiences of queer newcomers and the importance of social unity to communal and individual health.

Voluntary migrants to Canada are generally healthier than the average Canadian, but after ten years in the country they report poorer health and higher rates of chronic disease than those born here. Troublingly, women -- particularly those from non-European countries -- experience the most precipitous decline in health. What contributes to this deterioration, and how can its effects be mitigated? Engendering Migrant Health brings together researchers from across Canada to address the intersections of gender, immigration, and health in the lives of new Canadians. Focusing on the context of Canadian policy and society, the contributors illuminate migrants' testimonies of struggle, resistance, and solidarity as they negotiate a place for themselves in a new country. Topics range from the difficulties of Francophone refugees and the changing roles of fathers, to the experiences of queer newcomers and the importance of social unity to communal and individual health.

At the turn of the new millenium, war, political oppression, desperate poverty, environmental degradation and disasters, and economic underdevelopment are sharply increasing the ranks of the world's twenty million forced migrants. In this volume, eighteen scholars provide a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary look beyond the statistics at the experiences of the women, men, girls, and boys who comprise this global flow, and at the highly gendered forces that frame and affect them. In theorizing gender and forced migration, these authors present a set of descriptively rich, gendered case studies drawn from around the world on topics ranging from international human rights, to the culture of aid, to the complex ways in which women and men envision displacement and resettlement.

A new introduction to a timeless dynamic: how the movement of humans affects health everywhere. International migrants compose more than three percent of the world’s population, and internal migrants—those migrating within countries—are more than triple that number. Population migration has long been, and remains today, one of the central demographic shifts shaping the world around us. The world’s history—and its health—is shaped and colored by stories of migration patterns, the policies and political events that drive these movements, and narratives of individual migrants. Migration and Health offers the most expansive framework to date for understanding and reckoning with human migration’s implications for public health and its determinants. It interrogates this complex relationship by considering not only the welfare of migrants, but also that of the source, destination, and ensuing-generation populations. The result is an elevated, interdisciplinary resource for understanding what is known—and the considerable territory of what is not known—at an intersection that promises to grow in importance and influence as the century unfolds.

Should migrants have the same rights as citizens to health care services? What do we mean by rights and by health? And how do we uphold such rights when diasporic networks provide a diversity of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to maintain or restore their health? Answering these pressing questions, this book highlights recent developments in the areas of migration, human rights and health from a range of countries. Looking at diverse health issues, from HIV to reproductive and maternal health, and a variety of forms of migration, including asylum seeking, labour migration and trafficking, this timely volume exposes the factors that contribute to the vulnerability of different mobile groups as they seek to uphold their wellbeing. Migration, Health and Inequality argues that we need to look beyond host country responses and biomedical frameworks and include both the role of transnational health networks and indigenous, popular or lay ideas about health when trying to understand why many migrants suffer from low levels of health relative to their host population. Offering a broad range of linkages between migrant agency, transnationalism and diaspora mechanisms, this unique collection also looks at the impact of migrant health on the health and rights of those communities that are left behind.

Migration is now firmly embedded as a leading global policy issue of the twenty-first century. Whilst not a new phenomenon, it has altered significantly in recent decades, with changing demographics, geopolitics, conflict, climate change and patterns of global development shaping new types of migration. Against this evolving backdrop, this Handbook offers an authoritative overview of key debates underpinning migration and health in a contemporary global context.

Part IV. Approaches to understanding the relationship between migration and health.The relevance of culture for migrant health /Tilman Lanz --The sociology of migration and health : the decline in migrants' health due to adverse environments and limited options for care /Steven J. Gold --Economics in migrant health : migrant-sensitive service improvement as a driver for cost savings in health care? /Ursula Trummer, Lika Nusbaum, and Sonja Novak-Zezula --Multilevel and mixed-methods studies of migration and health /Joshua Breslau and Lilian G. Perez -- Epidemiology and the study of migrant health / Nadia N. Abuelezam -- The humanities of migration and health / Carrie J. Preston -- Law, migration, and health in the US context / Sondra S. Crosby, Michael R. Ulrich, and George J. Annas --Migration : a health-equity lens /Felicity Thomas --Part V. Case studies in migration and health.The United States as a case study : policy, access, and outcomes /Sana Loue --Eastern Mediterranean and Balkan migration route /Karl Philipp Puchner --Migration and health in Nepal /Sabrina Hermosilla, Emily Treleaven, and Dirgha Ghimire --Persian Gulf migrants /Maria Kristiansen --South Africa /Jo Vearey --Migration and health in China /Bingqin Li --Asian immigrants in New Zealand /Eleanor Holroyd and Jed Montayre --Mobility and health in the Pacific Islands /Celia McMichael --Venezuela and Latin America /Oscar A. Bernal Acevedo, Jovana A. Ocampo Cañas, Jhon Sebastian Patiño Rueda, Laura Baldovino-Chiquillo, and Salma S. Baizer Cassab --The South Asian context /Muhammad H. Zaman, Reshmaan Hussam, and Hulya Kosematoglu --Part VI. The future of migration and health.Preparing the next generation of scholars in migrant health /Zelde Espinel and James M. Shultz --Migration and health : taking stock and looking to the future /Muhammad H. Zaman, Catherine K. Ettman, and Sandro Galea.