Migration and health

Rural-to-urban migrants are a new and constantly growing segment of the population that has emerged in Chinese cities since the beginning of the reform era. Their lack of access to health care has resulted in various alternative health seeking practices. While existing research on health seeking is characterized by an abundance of empirical studies and a lack of theoretical grounding, in this paper I present a new approach that conceptualizes the various interlinkages and interdependencies of structure (e.g. regulation in health care and occupational systems, cultural norms and health beliefs), different types of agents (e.g. administration, health practitioners, NGOs, social organizations and networks) and individual practices. A mixed methods research approach is applied. The primary data that is used consists of 39 qualitative interviews with migrants and a quantitative survey with 450 migrants living in Guangzhou as well as 29 qualitative interviews with representatives of administrative units of different levels, health services providers, representatives of NGOs and social organizations. The transfer of the theoretical approach to the example of Chinese rural-to-urban migrants showed that it has the potential to detect a substantial number of factors influencing health seeking that have not been regarded in existing works.

This study examines effect of rural-rural migration in the Northeastern Thailand where next to the Cambodia border which have a highly density of rural-rural migration. The purpose of move is seeking for land to grow cassava sugarcane corn etc. The research looks at effect of individual and household well being that affect probabilities to have infectious diseases such as malaria dengue fever diarrhea and HIV/AIDS. Data are from longitudinal survey of Nang Rong Project between 1984 and 2000. Number of sample is 28,298 individual, and 134 cases die because of infectious disease. Cause of death measured by verbal autopsy. Cox’s proportional hazard models are employed. Results show that, controlling for origin communities development factors such as accessing to sub-district health center, number of health personal in the communities, those who used to have rural-rural migration more than two months are more likely to die because of infectious disease. Males are more likely to die more than females. The younger age people are more likely to get contact to infectious disease than the older ages. Those who are under low level of socioeconomic well being which are measured from household assets and number of cattle household have are more likely to die because of the disease.

Refugees have greater problem in accessing health services compared with general population and with other migrants. This study is an attempt to highlight the access to utilization of health care services and problems faced while accessing facilities by Chakma refugees in India. Study is based on the primary survey from the 400 head of the households. Result indicates that most desired facility for them is hospital, followed by electricity and school facilities. However fact is that Chakma refugees are living in such a deplorable situation of absences of heath facilities and health personals nearby that on an average they travel around 10 to 12 kilometers on foot or use bicycle to reach nearest government facility. In spite of 87 percent of them face shortage of money to spend on health care they opt private medical store even at the time of fatal ailment like malaria. Only 1 percent refugees are satisfied with the government facility and around 14 percent says that they are somewhat satisfied. On being asked about reasons, at least 95 percent of them feel that government facility is too far and around 27 percent says that problems they face are the negligence from the health personals.

In explaining the health trajectory of immigrant populations in the U.S., the conventional acculturation theory (uni-dimensional model) has been prevailing. According to this theory, immigrants who are selectively healthy at migration tend to adopt health-deteriorating U.S. culture and behaviours, as their acculturation proceeds. Although there have been arguments that acculturation process may be segmented by their social characteristics (e.g. race, nationality, socioeconomic status and time/age at migration), such perspective has rarely been applied in understanding the health of immigrant populations. Therefore, this study examines if the health trajectory of Asian immigrant populations is different by the segments of acculturation process. The hypotheses are (1) Asian immigrants whose SES is low at migration show a deteriorating health trajectory as they are more acculturated to the U.S. society, and (2) Asian immigrants whose SES is high at migration show a progressive, or at least non-deteriorating, health trajectory as they are more acculturated.

Mortality research highlights the surprisingly low mortality of migrants to Europe and the US, despite their imminent disadvantages. Three main mechanisms may contribute to these patterns: 1) the so called “salmon effects” in mortality, being produced by situations when migrants opt to return to their country of origin in anticipation of death, 2) selective immigration of healthy migrants, and 3) the under-reporting of emigration. In our study, we test these hypotheses by focusing on the migration effects that may occur within a single country. We apply hazard regression to Swedish population registers to examine the age, duration-specific and time-varying influences of migration status on individual mortality during 1971-2007. The study covers 11.9 million Swedish born. About 473,000 people were born in Norrland and had moved, about 131,000 of them had returned. To distinguish between healthy-migrant and salmon effects we ask whether migrants from Norrland to Southern Sweden have lower mortality than the general population of Norrland and lower mortality than the population of Southern Sweden, whether return migrants to Norrland have a higher mortality than those who stay in the South, and whether patterns are altered by age. First results confirm that both mechanisms can be observed for the internal migrants in Sweden.

Migration is an important livelihood strategy for households with limited sources of income. It helps in the upward mobility of migrants and their families. Using a nationally representative cross-section data for India, we compare consumption expenditure and intake of calories and proteins of households which migrated with those which did not migrate. We also compare outcomes across households with and without a short-term migrant. Since the decision to migrate is itself affected by other factors, we use certain regional and demographic indicators as instruments. Valid instruments include location quotient (i.e. agglomeration of economic activities), estimates of population living in urban and peripheral urban areas and migrant flows into the district. Two-stage instrumental variable technique is used for analysis purposes. Our main finding is that migrant households and households without a short-term migrant have higher consumption expenditure, calorie and protein intake than their respective counterparts. Also migrant households in urban areas are found to be better off in terms of consumption and nutrient intake than those in rural areas.

We used a longitudinal analysis to assess the differences in health outcomes (physical, mental and self-rated health), among Foreign-Born (FB) from English Speaking Countries (ESC) and non-English Speaking Countries (NESC) relative to Native-Born (NB) Australian over a 10 year period. We used hybrid regression models for evaluation of these health outcomes in 5,795 NB and 1,665 are FB from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. After adjusting for all the time varying and time in-variant covariates, FB from NESC who had been living in Australia for more than 10 years were more likely to have poor physical health, mental health and self-rated health. We did not find any significant differences in the mental health of FB from ESC and NB Australiana throughout this 10 year period. However, FB from ESC maintained their physical health and self-rated health advantage over a longer period (more than 20 years).

Migration is radically changing the socio-economic, demographic and development profile of India. Hence an attempt has been made to explore the impact of male out-migration on the left-behind wives and compare the situation of these women with the wives of non-migrants using the National Family Health Survey-3 (2005-2006) data. The main focus of the study is on the health of the left-behind wives including RTI/STI and HIV. The study reveals that most of the out-migration is taking place from the rural areas in India. In a nutshell, one can say that migration of men provides some economic relief to their families, but the women have to pay a heavy price in the form of excessive stress. It does not improve the health status of the left-behind wives; rather, it puts them at a greater risk of developing STDs. Hence, male out-migration portrays dual predicament (positive and negative) for left-behind wives.

Process of economic development in urban communities does not incorporate the entire population. State of being exposed to danger and abuse comprises of both the physical and mental weakness, defenselessness, unproductiveness and exposes to the undesired condition and factors (i.e., demographic, socio-economic, culture etc.) features the degree of vulnerability in society. With respect to access to the health care services and health status, there exist big disparity between the poor and the better of people. Among the poor also those who are migrants of recent years face the major problem in reaching and using these services. The vulnerability of migrants, in terms of livelihood insecurity, negligence and alienation in the new socio-cultural environment is obvious than others. Leads to less control over available resources, meant for all members of communities including migrants. Henceforth migrants often experience lack of access resulting in under-utilization of health care services. These people are often excluded from the healthcare schemes. This forces migrants to delay the health-seeking till the condition is sufficiently hazardous to justify going to emergency clinics.

The aim of this paper is to study mortality differences between migrants and natives in the Western European port cities of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Stockholm (1850-1920). We will make use of life-course data from the Antwerp COR* database, the Historical Sample of the Netherlands and the Stockholm Historical Database. For the description of differences in mortality between migrants and natives we will make use of Kaplan Meier curves. We will fit an event history model (Cox proportional hazard model) in which time to death functions as the dependent variable. Independent variables of interest are sex, country of origin, socio-economic status, marital status, literacy (as an indicator of education), urban-rural background, city quarter of residence and cohort.