CHALLENGES FACED BY MIGRANTS
SOCIAL , ENVIRONMENTAL, CULTURAL AND PSYCHO-SOCIAL CHALLENGES OF THE MIGRANTS.
ABSTRACT:
Migrants are more vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation as many of them are poor, illiterate and live in slums and hazardous locations prone to disaster and natural calamities. There is a lack of urban policies and programmes catering to the needs and settlements of migrants.The study is summarized under the following sub-headings:
⦁ Introduction — Meaning and purpose of the study.
⦁ Content: Challenges faced by the migrants-
⦁ Social Challenges
⦁ Environmental challenges
⦁ Cultural Challenges
⦁ Psycho-social Challenges
⦁ Case studies — Under each challenges
⦁ Need & Suggestions
⦁ Conclusion
INTRODUCTION:
International migration has accelerated over the last fifty years. Globalization processes have set in motion vast and often uncontrolled international migration flows and, thus, turned the international migration into the most important global phenomena, which influences the world economy and international security. Today, more people live outside their countries of origin than ever before, and international migration has become much more diverse in terms of origins and destinations of migrants.
SOCIAL CHALLENGES :
Urban employers on grounds of quality of education, skill, efficiency, caste and class backgrounds also discriminate against them. An important social consequence of migration is its effect on the processes of acculturation and adjustment and integration of migrants in the receiving areas. The following factors will give a clear view on this social challenges.
Coercion: Undocumented migrant workers may not be willing to report a workplace injury because they are afraid of being reported to immigration authorities or losing their jobs and not being able to find another employer willing to take them on. Some workers are promised jobs to entice them to come to the U.S., but are not given the same type of job when they arrive. Sexual or physical assault incidents are also underreported in the migrant worker population because of the fear of consequences.
Lack of Benefits: Because they are often paid in cash off the books, migrant workers are not eligible for company benefits such as pensions and insurance plans. They also miss out on unemployment, disability and Social Security benefits from the government. Breaks, overtime, sick pay and minimum wage laws may not be followed because there is no recourse for the worker.
Dangerous Conditions: Workers may be housed in unsanitary conditions, which are especially dangerous for children. If the company provides food for its employees, it is often low quality and not very nutritious. With many families living together in the same facility, important items such as showers, ovens and toilets may break down. Migrant workers are also subject to harsh conditions on the job, such as working in extreme weather for long hours with no breaks.
Cultural Differences: Cultural differences present problems for migrant workers even when they are away from the job site. Local residents may discriminate or resent migrant workers for taking the available jobs in the area. Migrant workers are often isolated from their neighbors because they do not speak the language and shop mostly at ethnic stores. The language barrier can also make it difficult to understand legal documents such as leases and tax forms.
Educational Issues: Children of migrant workers often miss school and fall behind their peers because they have to work along with the rest of the family. Child labor laws are typically not enforced among the migrant population, so there is no protection for the children. Even when the child does not perform any actual work, he may spend the day at the job site with his parents because there is no available daycare. Families tend to move according to the seasons, which makes it even more difficult for the children to keep up in school.
CASE ON SOCIAL CHALLENGE:
The Rohingya crisis
Since August 2017, over a million refugees have entered Bangladesh, crossing the border of Myanmar where the state military launched a cleansing operation against the Rohingya.
The situation cannot yet be assessed fully and independently, as Myanmar has refused access to human rights investigators. Satellite imagery showing burned villages confirm the situation as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing — the military of a Buddhist majority country attacking a Muslim minority.
They promoted fierce nationalism based on the country’s Buddhist identity and when they needed a common enemy to help unite the population, the Rohingya were singled out as a threat. Tensions between the Burmese Buddhist population and the Rohingya go back to WWII, when each group supported opposing sides.
The Rohingya with a population of about one million became a stateless people in 1991, and Myanmar’s military launched a campaign to rid them, resulting in 250,000 Rohingya fleing to Bangladesh. Tensions continued to build in the 2000s. Violence broke out in 2012, when four Muslim men were accused of raping and killing a Buddhist woman in Rakhine. Buddhist nationalists, backed by security forces, attacked Muslim neighbourhoods and burned homes, displacing tens of thousands.
The Rohingya were persecuted, disenfranchised, and stateless in 2016. A Rohingya militant group called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) emerged and coordinated small-scale attacks on border police stations. An attack on August 25th 2017 left 12 police officers dead, and sparked the current crisis against Rohingya civilians. A brutal retaliation by the state security forces has led to thousands of deaths, and the mass exodus to Bangladesh.
ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES:
Environmental migrants are persons or groups of persons who, for compelling reasons of sudden or progressive changes in the environment that adversely affect their lives or living conditions, are obliged to leave their habitual homes, or choose to do so, either temporarily or permanently, and who move either within their country or abroad. The two principal impacts that migration is likely to have on the environment are its contribution to GHG emissions, and therefore climate change, and to the ‘amenity’, ‘enjoyment’ or ‘benefit’, that is provided by aspects of the natural environment that are seen to be of value by many people, and which might be affected by the impact of migration on population numbers.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A number of gases are responsible for the ‘greenhouse effect’. Many of these occur naturally, but they can also be produced by human activity. The most significant of these is carbon dioxide — responsible for around 80 per cent of emissions.
Increasing global emissions: Movement of people from ‘low-carbon’ to ‘high-carbon’ parts of the world will cause an absolute increase in GHG emissions if migrants from ‘low-carbon’ areas increase consumption of carbon-intensive products once they have migrated. Although this effect is likely to occur, its scale is uncertain, because it depends on income levels and consumption patterns amongst migrants relative to the ‘host’ populations of the countries they are migrating to and from. Over time, consumption patterns of migrants would tend to converge with those of the host country into which they migrate, so any discrepancy would become less significant over time. Migration is also a key driver of international travel by air, a rapidly growing source of carbon emissions.
Impacts of Urbanization on ‘Amenity’ and Ecological Changes: Increasing urbanization by definition causes loss of countryside and the rural environment. This has potential impacts on these environmental and social aspects:
⦁ Biodiversity
⦁ Habitat for specific types of wildlife
⦁ Carbon ‘sequestration’
⦁ Visual and physical amenity that some people may derive from countryside
The psychological well-being and happiness that occurs as a result of more intense contact with nature. According to a report5 for the RSPB, the countryside is a ‘natural health service’, with a ‘quantifiable health value’, offering ‘considerable mental health benefits’.
CASE ON ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES:
Bangladesh has been considered one of the countries most affected by climatic change impacts. Increases in natural hazards, perceived to be due to climate change, have affected the southwestern coastal environments of Bangladesh and people’s livelihoods in this area. Remarkably, the numbers of human deaths due to floods, cyclones, and tidal surges have decreased, primarily because of mitigation strategies such as safe houses. However, the number of homeless people has increased sharply, contributing to internal migration in Bangladesh, including migration between neighboring cities. This chapter discusses the influence of climate-induced hazards on the decision to move, and the circumstances that prompt migrants to take decisions to migrate. Semistructured questionnaires were used to collect data in the Gabura union in the Shyamnagar thana in the Satkhira district, and qualitative analysis and case studies were conducted to further elaborate the outcomes. The results showed that along with anthropogenic causes — such as government policy implementation to protect the Sundarbans (the largest mangrove forest in the world) and changes of paddy cultivation fields into saltwater fish and shrimp farms — natural hazards such as periodic cyclones and tidal surges have damaged the territory of poor workers and/or day laborers, leading them to move to places where employment is more readily available. In this regard, climatic hazards have played a fundamental and influential role with other factors in the process of migration.
CULTURAL CHALLENGES:
Our cultural and language peculiarities reflect our personalities and temperaments, roles and relations, social and ethnic identities. Most migrants consist of migrant students and workers, economic refugees, political refugees, immigrants , or executives and businessmen from different countries. Migrants from different parts of our world are obvious representatives of certain language, ethnicity, culture and other differences, which may lead to cultural and language difficulties faced by migrants as the members of a certain ethnic community.
The loss of one’s social structure and culture can cause a grief reaction, as has been described by Eisenbruch. Migration involves the loss of the familiar, including language (especially colloquial and dialect), attitudes, values, social structures and support networks. Grieving for this loss can be viewed as a healthy reaction and a natural consequence of migration; however, if the symptoms cause significant distress or impairment and last for a specified period of time, psychiatric intervention may be warranted. Eisenbruch has defined cultural bereavement as “the experience of the uprooted person — or group — resulting from loss of social structures, cultural values and self-identity: the person — or group — continues to live in the past, is visited by supernatural forces from the past while asleep or awake, suffers feelings of guilt over abandoning culture and homeland, feels pain if memories of the past begin to fade, but finds constant images of the past (including traumatic images) intruding into daily life, yearns to complete obligations to the dead, and feels stricken by anxieties, morbid thoughts, and anger that mar the ability to get on with daily life”.
The DSM-IV notes that the “duration and expression of ‘normal’ bereavement vary considerably among different cultural groups”. A major depressive episode is diagnosed, instead of bereavement, if symptoms Of depression are present two or more months after the loss or the following symptoms are present:
a) guilt about things other than actions taken or not taken by the survivor at the time of the death;
b) thoughts of death other than the survivor feeling that he or she would be better off dead or should have died with the deceased person;
c) morbid preoccupation with worthlessness;
d) marked psychomotor retardation;
e) prolonged and marked functional impairment; and
f) hallucinatory experiences other than thinking that he or she hears the voice of, or transiently sees the image of, the deceased person
CASE STUDY ON CULTURAL CHALLENGES:
Marginalization has been received by Indonesian migrant workers is caused by a lack of knowledge about cultural differences between countries, education, and understanding of culture and the laws of the destination country. Lack of understanding of local languages, habits,and social interactions makes migrant workers slow in adjusting to the local environment. Crosscultural communication competencies refer to the ability of individuals to communicate effectively. Therefore, this research would like to describe the understanding of the language and culture of the Indonesian migrant workers that work in Taiwan in the Informal sector in reducing conflict with employers. A qualitative method is used in this study with a case study approach that tries to explore social reality and contemporary limited systems, through a detailed and in-depth process of collecting data. The weakness of the cross-cultural communication competence of Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan can be seen from the difficulty of understanding paralinguistic messages in The Taiwanese language. This happened because, before the departure to Taiwan, Indonesian migrant workers received inappropriate language training. Migrant workers only get basic Mandarin training. While most Indonesian migrant workers work in Taiwan as a decrepit nurse, that decrepit in Taiwan mostly use Tai Yu language. On the other hand, language training is carried out only in a short time and the emphasis on training is only in verbal language.
PSYCHO-SOCIAL CHALLENGES:
Immediate concerns faced by such migrant workers relate to food, shelter, healthcare, fear of getting infected or spreading the infection, loss of wages, concerns about the family, anxiety and fear. Sometimes, they also face harassment and negative reactions of the local community. Stresses involved in immigration and resettlement experiences can cause or exacerbate mental health difficulties, including anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), somatic complaints, sleep problems, behavioral problems in children, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and severe mental illness. For the purposes outlined in this paper, our understanding of the term “psychosocial” is guided by the definitions in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM 1V Revised. American Psychiatric Association)
• The term Psychosocial is used to underscore the dynamic connection between the psychological and the social realms of human experience.
• Psychological aspects are those that affect thoughts, emotions, behaviour, and memory, learning ability, perceptions and understanding.
• Social aspects refer to the effects on relationships, traditions, culture and values, family and community, also extending to the economic realm and its effects on status and social networks.
• The emphasis on psychosocial also aims to ensure that family and community are fully integrated in assessing needs.
However, to capture the breadth and depth of the domains that involve wellbeing and to understand their interconnectedness we also embellish our understanding of psychosocial wellbeing drawing from the Psychosocial Assessment of Development and Humanitarian Interventions (PADHI) frame work.
The PADHI framework elaborates the aspects of life involved in the psychosocial domain as directly connected to a person’s wellbeing:
“Wellbeing can refer to a positive state of being. It often refers to a person’s overall sense of health and wellness; it can also refer to a person’s feelings of happiness or general satisfaction with his/her quality of life; it also points to the experience of contentment and fulfillment with one’s life circumstances. Wellbeing is said to be experienced when a person’s individual, relational, and collective needs are fulfilled” (Prilleltensky 2005).
CASE STUDY OF PSYCHO-SOCIAL CHALLENGES:
Pandemic Effects
Migrants are less familiar in their new environment in which they temporarily live. They are prone to various social, psychological and emotional trauma in such situations, emanating from fear of neglect by the local community and concerns about wellbeing and safety of their families waiting in their native places. Migrants are forced to leave their native places in search of better opportunities and earnings, sometime leaving behind their families. In many instances, the families in native places depend partially or entirely on the money sent by the migrant earning members of the family. During outbreak of communicable diseases, such a COVID-19, and the restrictions imposed on routine activities as part of social distancing norms to prevent the spread of the disease, scores of migrant workers tend to move back to their native places. During the prevailing COVID pandemic also, many migrant workers used all possible means to reach their destinations. Many of them are however stuck at borders, including state, district and at national border areas. These are the most marginalized sections of the society who are dependent on daily wages for their living, and in times of such distress need sympathy and understanding of the society.Immediate concerns faced by such migrant workers relate to food, shelter, healthcare, fear of getting infected or spreading the infection, loss of wages, concerns about the family, anxiety and fear. Sometimes, they also face harassment and negative reactions of the local community. All this calls for strong social protection. As an immediate response, measures to be taken should include, ensuring community shelters and community kitchens, making other relief material available, emphasising on the need for social distancing, identification of suspected cases of infection and adherence to protocols for management of such cases, putting up mechanisms to enable them reach to the family members through telephone, video calls etc. and ensuring their physical safety.
Migrant workers faced with the situation of spending a few days in temporary shelters, which may be quarantine centres, while trying to reach to their native places,are filled with anxieties and fears stemming from various concerns, and are in need of psycho-social support. As part of such support, following measures can be adopted :
1. Treat everyone migrant worker with dignity, respect, empathy and compassion
2. Listen to their concerns patiently and understand their problems
3. Recognise specific and varied needs for each person/family. There is no generalisation.
4. Help them to acknowledge that this is an unusual situation of uncertainty and reassure them that the situation is transient and not going to last long. Normal life is going to resume soon.
5. Be prepared with all the information about possible sources of help. Inform them about the support being extended by Central Government, StateGovernments/ NGOs/ health care systems etc.
6. Emphasise on the importance of their staying in their present location and how mass movement could greatly and adversely affect all efforts to contain the virus.
7. Make them realise their importance in the community and appreciate their contributions for the society.
8. Remind them that they have made their place with their own efforts, acquired the trust of their employer, sent remittances to their families and therefor deserve all respect.
9. Reassure that even if their employer fails them, local administration and charitable institutions would extend all possible help.
10.Out of desperation, many may react in a manner which may appear insulting. Try to understand their issues and be patient.
11.If somebody is afraid of getting affected, tell them that the condition is curable, and that most recover from it.
12.Remind them that it is safer for their families if they themselves stay away from them.
13.Instead of reflecting any mercy, seek their support in the spirit of winning over the situation together.
NEEDS & SUGGESTIONS:
Migration poses specific stresses, yet most immigrants do well with the transitions of resettlement. Systematic enquiry into the migration trajectory and subsequent follow-up on culturally appropriate indicators of social, vocational and family functioning will allow clinicians to recognize problems in adaptation and undertake mental health promotion, prevention or treatment interventions in a timely fashion.
⦁ Because the evidence is limited, research is needed to develop and evaluate primary care strategies for promoting mental health and preventing mental illness that respond to the increasing diversity of immigrants and refugees.
⦁ Among immigrants, the prevalence of common mental health problems is initially lower than in the general population, but over time, it increases to become similar to that in the general population.
⦁ Refugees who have had severe exposure to violence often have higher rates of trauma-related disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder and chronic pain or other somatic syndromes.
⦁ Assessment of risk for mental health problems includes consideration of premigration exposures, stresses and uncertainty during migration, and postmigration resettlement experiences that influence adaptation and health outcomes.
⦁ Clinical assessment and treatment effectiveness can be improved with the use of trained interpreters and culture brokers when linguistic and cultural differences impede communication and mutual understanding.
CONCLUSION:
The complex relationship between migration and health remains poorly understood. This has demonstrated that several of these relationships are of fundamental importance to the eradication of poverty and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the subregion. Monitoring variables related to migrant health is a critical aspect of improving both the health status and utilization of health services by migrants (WHO 2010). Only on the basis of such knowledge Governments can develop sound policies that can maximize not only the benefits of migration but also minimize its costs. With the existing mechanisms in place, the challenge now lies in implementing these recommendations, priorities, and actions at the country level. Governments, in partnership with other stakeholders, must consider their national migration and health context and take the lead in translating these recommendations into policies and legal frameworks that spur the development of migrant-sensitive health systems.Another area of importance in the subregion is building capacity of the health and relevant non-health service sector to address the health and social issues associated with migration. Some Governments have moved forward on this issue through the following actions:
⦁ establishing a focal point to facilitate inter-ministerial and inter-agency coordination;
⦁ setting standards and frameworks for development, management, monitoring and delivery of migrant-sensitive and migrant-inclusive services; and
⦁ sensitizing relevant service providers and stakeholders.
With careful evaluation, these initiatives could provide models for other countries to replicate or to adapt in their context. Given the varying forms of migration and its importance to the present situation, approaches to migration health also need to further promote the rights of migrants and recognize the public health principles of disease transmission, its prevention, mitigation and where possible, eradication. Fraklin D. Roosevelt once said,
“Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists”
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REFERENCES:
⦁ ILO Information System on International Labour Standards http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en.
⦁ Migration in an Interconnected World: New Directions for Action. Report of the Global Commission on International
⦁ http://www.iom.int/jahia/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/ shared/mainsite/policy_and_research/gcim/GCIM_Report_Complete.pdf
⦁ MigrantClinician.org: Migrant Health Issues
⦁ http://www.iea.org/co2highlights/co2highlights.pdf
⦁ http://www.cabe.org.uk/publications/making-the-invisible-visible
⦁ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277903376_Migration_An_Overview_and_Relevant_Issues
⦁ https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/migration_icpd.pdf
