Abstract
BackgroundA systematic attempt to summarize the literature that examines working conditions and occupational health among immigrant in Europe and Canada.MethodsWe established inclusion criteria, searched systematically for articles included in the Medline, Embase and Social Sciences Citation Index databases in the period 2000–2016 and checked the reference lists of all included papers.ResultsEighty-two studies were included in this review; 90% were cross-sectional and 80% were based on self-report. Work injuries were consistently found to be more prevalent among immigrants in studies from different countries and in studies with different designs. The prevalence of perceived discrimination or bullying was found to be consistently higher among immigrant workers than among natives. In general, however, we found that the evidence that immigrant workers are more likely to be exposed to physical or chemical hazards and poor psychosocial working conditions is very limited. A few Scandinavian studies support the idea that occupational factors may partly contribute to the higher risk of sick leave or disability pension observed among immigrants. However, the evidence for working conditions as a potential mediator of the associations between immigrant status and poor general health and mental distress was very limited.ConclusionSome indicators suggest that immigrant workers in Europe and Canada experience poorer working conditions and occupational health than do native workers. However, the ability to draw conclusions is limited by the large gaps in the available data, heterogeneity of immigrant working populations, and the lack of prospectively designed cohort studies.
Highlights
A systematic attempt to summarize the literature that examines working conditions and occupational health among immigrant in Europe and Canada
We prepared one list of search terms related to immigration, a second related to occupational health or occupational exposure based on the search string suggested by Mattioli and co-workers [9], and a third related to the country of immigration
Our study shows that immigrant workers report higher levels of poor self-reported health (SRH) [21, 23, 25, 35, 47, 82] and mental distress [10, 25, 32, 35, 52, 55, 69, 84, 87, 89] than do natives, which is consistent with the findings of two previous reviews [115, 116]
Summary
A systematic attempt to summarize the literature that examines working conditions and occupational health among immigrant in Europe and Canada. Immigrant workers are commonly defined as all Sterud et al BMC Public Health (2018) 18:770 in low-skilled jobs [1]. Both immigrant status and unskilled labour are thought to constitute particular risks of unsafe and unhealthy working environment, relatively little is known about working conditions and work-related health of migrants in host countries [3]. Not all jobs provide equal opportunities, and some are characterized by occupational hazards such as heavy physical work, risk of injury or exposure to toxic substances or poor psychosocial working conditions (e.g., excessive mental work load, low job autonomy or negative social interactions). Other factors such as the reason for migration, geographical origin, age at migration and residence time in the new country likely contribute to differences in health status between immigrant groups and the native population [7]; these topics were considered to be beyond the scope of the systematic search in present study
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