Demographic and Occupational Differences Between Ethnic Minority Workers Who Did and Did Not Complete the Telephone Survey in English

Abstract

The participants who chose to complete the study interview in their native language had several demographic differences from those participants who completed it in English, and were more likely to be exposed to carcinogens at work. Prevalence studies that offer only English language study instruments are unlikely to produce representative samples of minority groups, and may therefore produce biased results.

How Refugees Experience the Australian Workplace: A Comparative Mixed Methods Study

“…(1) India, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and New Zealand are in the top 10 group of countries Australia receives migrants from. (2) Earlier focus group discussions we had undertaken highlighted that workers of Arabic-speaking ancestry were particularly disadvantaged in the workplace, in terms of exposure to hazards, and this was confirmed in our quantitative survey [12,13]. (3) Similarly, earlier work of ours had shown that workers born in New Zealand had higher hospitalisations for work-related injuries and higher work-related fatalities than Australian-born workers or workers born in any other country [23].…”

“…Migrant workers are more likely to work in jobs that are characterised by high complexity and low control [9,10] and in jobs that are insecure and precarious [11]. Other work from Australia reports disparities in exposure to carcinogens among migrant and native-born workers [12,13]. Furthermore, a recent survey in Australia reported that one-third of temporary migrant workers in Australia, principally backpackers and international students, incur wage theft, earning about half of the legal minimum wage [14].…”

“…The aim of this mixed methods study was to compare the working conditions of refugee workers in Australia with those of workers of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Arabic speaking ancestry, workers born in India, the Philippines, and New Zealand [22,23], and Australian-born workers of Caucasian ancestry [12,13,24,25]. The second objective was to learn more about how refugee workers experience the workplace.…”

Role of Occupation in Shaping Cancer Disparities

“…Consistent results are available from recent studies, where ethnic minorities are reportedly more exposed to occupational carcinogens than other workers [ 45 , 46 ].…”

“…An approach to quantify the proportion of the association between SES and cancer risk, which is due to other factors, is mediation analysis. Here, we review the potential role of occupation in mediating the association between two important contributors of social inequalities to cancer risk, race/ethnicity and education ( Table 2 [ 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ]).…”