The Mental Health and Wellbeing of EU Citizens in the UK: A Systematic Review of the Qualitative Literature

Abstract

Moving to a new country impacts on migrants’ mental health and wellbeing. There are over 3.6 million European Union citizens living in the United Kingdom. We conducted a systematic review of the qualitative literature to explore what is known about their mental health and wellbeing at the post-migration stage in pre-Brexit period. We searched five databases from 1st January 2009 to 19th February 2019; Web of Science, MEDLINE, CINAHL, SocIndex and Scopus for studies. Ten papers reporting nine studies were included in this review. Two themes were constructed; a narrative of adjustment and of employment realities. The former focuses on the process of settling in and the role of social connectedness. The latter concerns employment realities with included studies exploring the financial position and employment experiences of migrants. Findings indicate that we still know relatively little about the range of post-migration experiences among EU citizens and their implications for mental health

The perceptions of general practice among Central and Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom: A systematic scoping review

“…We identified four core question concepts, relating to the population (Central and/or Eastern European; Migration), location (United Kingdom) and ‘intervention’ (General Practice). Relevant search terms were identified from Medical Subject Heading codes and peer‐reviewed publications 46,47 . Nine medical bibliographic databases were searched (Applied Social Sciences Index Abstracts; Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature; Embase; International Bibliography of the Social Sciences; OvidMEDLINE; PsycInfo; Scopus; Sociological abstracts; and Web of Science).…”

“…Relevant search terms were identified from Medical Subject Heading codes and peer‐reviewed publications. 46 , 47 Nine medical bibliographic databases were searched (Applied Social Sciences Index Abstracts; Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature; Embase; International Bibliography of the Social Sciences; OvidMEDLINE; PsycInfo; Scopus; Sociological abstracts; and Web of Science). Single‐item searches were combined through Boolean operators to develop concept‐wide searches.…”

Immigrant Integration and COVID-19

“…Further, immigrants' economic concerns transcend those at their personal level only; they also impair their ability to send money to family members who stayed behind and to use other instruments of remittance (Carling, 2014). Overall, then, the coronavirus places immigrants at a dual disadvantage: its direct effect on their own economic wellbeing "looming job loss, income loss, workload decline" (Witteveen and Velthorst, 2020: 27222) and its indirect impact on their families abroad ("transnationality")-possibly heightening their psychological stress as well (Teodorowski, Woods and Kennedy, 2020).…”

Brexit, acculturative stress and mental health among EU citizens in Scotland

“…One of the core principles of the EU, the free movement of persons, allows EU citizens to move freely and reside in other member states without any visa requirements and to exercise the same rights (e.g., employment and benefits) as citizens of the host country. A recent systematic review (Teodorowski et al, 2020) reported found that prior to Brexit, many EU citizens experienced difficulties, including poor employment conditions or pay (e.g., Christensen & Manthorpe, 2016), social isolation (e.g., O'Brien & Tribe, 2014) and language barriers (e.g., Farr et al, 2018). As the referendum approached, many also directly experienced or were aware of increasing anti‐migrant rhetoric and abuse towards EU citizens, particularly Eastern Europeans (Rzepnikowska, 2019).…”