Migration and health in an increasingly diverse Europe

Health consequences of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration programme: a quasi-experimental study

“…From a public health perspective, it is well recognised that the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the USA 1 and 8 million in Europe 2 are at risk of poor health outcomes. [3][4][5][6] In particular, the results of studies from both the USA and European settings suggest that immigration policies that raise the risk of deportation or place limits on legal rights and access to social services might raise the risk of poor mental health outcomes, such as depression and anxiety, and curtail access to health care more generally. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] In recent years, the USA has witnessed substantial changes in policies towards undocumented immigrants.…”

The (Un)Healthy Migrant Effect. The Role of Legal Status and Naturalization Timing

“…Other cross-national studies also point out immigrants' health disadvantage when looking at self-rated health (Malmusi 2015) or mental health outcomes (Safi 2010;Sieberer et al 2012). The authors often explain the poor health of migrants by invoking the exposure to health hazards in their country of origin, the precarious residential and employment conditions in the host country, but also the stress of the migration process itself (Rechel et al 2013). While integrating into a new society, immigrants commonly face a complex and strenuous set of social, cultural, economic and institutional hurdles, increasing their vulnerability to physical and mental illness (Davies et al 2010).…”

“…From a utilitarian point of view, low immigrant health has direct costs in terms of healthcare expenses. It also produces indirect costs by reducing immigrants' economic input in the host country as well as in their country of origin via decreased international remittances (Kennedy et al 2006;Neuman 2014;Rechel et al 2013). From a humanitarian point of view, an advanced and inclusive society ought to make efforts to reduce social inequalities in health, and to ensure that the human needs, primordially good health, of all of its residents are met, irrespective of origin or nativity (Davies et al 2010).…”

New times for migrants' health in Europe

“…Migrants from outside the EU are particularly affected by these challenges, which have been exacerbated following the economic crisis due to high rates of unemployment and job loss 7 . The situation of irregular immigrants (people who do not comply with country regulations of entry, stay or employment) is more precarious, because they tend to be excluded from social and health services, while often being exposed to high-risk working and living environments [7][8] . …”