Flourishing: migration and health in social context

Abstract

Health and the capacity to flourish are deeply intertwined. For members of vulnerable migrant groups, systemic inequalities and structural forms of marginalisation and exclusion create health risks, impede access to needed care and interfere with the ability to achieve one’s full potential. Migrants often have limited access to healthcare, and they frequently are portrayed as less deserving than others of the resources needed to lead a healthy and flourishing life. Under these circumstances, clinicians, healthcare institutions and global health organisations have a moral and ethical obligation to consider the role they can—and do—play in either advancing or impeding migrants’ health and their capacity to flourish. Drawing on case studies from three world regions, we propose concrete steps clinicians and health institutions can take in order to better serve migrant patients. These include recommendations that can help improve understanding of the complex circumstances of migrants’ lives, strengthen collaboration between care providers and non-medical partners and transform the social, economic and structural circumstances that impede flourishing and harm health. Developing new strategies to promote the flourishing of precarious migrants can strengthen our collective ability to re-envision and redesign health systems and structures to value the health, dignity and bodily integrity of all patients—especially the most vulnerable—and to promote flourishing for all.

The Impact of Social Capital and Social Environmental Factors on Mental Health and Flourishing: The Experiences of Migrants in France

“…Expanding on the notion of well-being, Willen et al (2021) further explores the relationship between ourishing and health among migrants (Willen et al, 2021). For migrants, systemic inequalities and structural forms of marginalization and exclusion create health risks, impede access to needed care and interfere with their ability to ourish (Willen et al, 2021). Johan Galtung, a well-known Norwegian sociologist and liberation theologian coined the term 'structural violence' in the 1960s to describe longstanding social structures-economic, political, legal, religious, and cultural-that impede individuals and groups from ourishing or reaching their full potential (Galtung, 1969).…”

The Impact of Social Capital and Social Environmental Factors on Mental Health and Flourishing: The Experiences of Migrants in France

“…A previous study with French migrants demonstrated how if asylum seekers were granted access to work after one month or less, negative attitudes between migrants and French nationals would be drastically reduced, therefore, positively impacting social cohesion (Chenus, 2019). These limitations imposed by macro-level legal barriers ultimately harmed migrants' capacity to ourish within their host society (Willen et al, 2021).…”

Rapid health evaluation in migrant peoples in transit through Darien, Panama: protocol for a multimethod qualitative and quantitative study

“…4,37 Such issues have described a perceived idea of 'deservingness' that categorizes patients, particularly migrant peoples, as more or less deserving of access to quality health care. 38 There are few published data on health care needs of migrant peoples in transit through Latin America en route to the United States. Gray literature from UN and other international nongovernmental organizations suggest the greatest health needs include treatment of fever, skin problems, diarrhea and prenatal care.…”