Health and migration. Psychosocial determinants

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the contemporary literature on the social and psychological factors which are associated with migration. Derived from the operationalisation of "migration" and an examination of the methodological peculiarities of migration research, a (transactional) stress model of migration is proposed incorporating potentially stress-eliciting influences of migration including occupational pressures, social isolation and/or family-related problems and their impact on psychological and physical health. There are inconsistencies in the findings regarding psychological health, which can in part be explained through the phenomena of the "healthy migrant effect", duration of stay in the host culture or the culture-specificity. Moreover, a discussion is provided of the extent that disorders associated with differentially stressed migrants will be manifested in the health care system. Finally, concluding remarks are offered together with a short discussion of the implication of these findings for future research and social and health policy decision-making.

Dissimilarities in Social Support as Described by Swedish- and Foreign-Born Persons Diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and Living in Sweden

“…The results also showed, in accordance with previous investigations of migrants, that foreign-born persons had weaker social networks [5]- [7] and thus described having less emotional aid than Swedes. Although they seemed to compensate for this deficiency with more contacts with health care staff and counsellors, this needs to be attended to as the higher contact frequency might be related to the fact that they had lost an important contact in their network during the previous year.…”

“…In foreign-born persons the acculturation process in the host country acts as an additional stressor, requiring further adaptation [4]. It also includes migrational background, experiences of uprooting, and broken or limited social networks negatively affecting health [5]- [7]. Social support is claimed to play an important role in self-management of DM [8] by influencing compliance with advice about management of the disease, and this influences glycaemic control [9] [10].…”

Health Among the Elderly in Germany. New Evidence on Disease, Disability and Care Need

“…In addition, the socioeconomic position of immigrants is, on average, lower than that of the non-migrants in the destination country (Massey 1981). Since socio-economic disadvantages are correlated with health inequalities, immigrants may have worse mental health than non-migrants (immigrant disadvantage hypothesis; Kirkcaldy et al 2006).…”

“…In about 24% of the observations in the sample, the respondent had been unemployed at some point in his or her work history. We assume that people who experienced unemployment may have also had lower levels of mental health later in life (Hurh and Kim 1990;Abbott et al 1999;Ronellenfitsch and Razum 2004;Assion 2005;Kirkcaldy et al 2006). The public transfer variable, which often fluctuated by calendar year, indicated whether any person in the household received public transfers, such as housing subsidy or social assistance.…”

“…In an exploratory analysis, we also used homeownership and income as additional time-varying covariates. We expected to find that mental health increases with income (Vega et al 1987;Kirkcaldy et al 2006). Since income correlated with the other economic indicators, and the other indicators had more predictive power, we dropped income from the final analysis.…”