Abstract
Housing is an important social determinant of health; however, little is known about the impact of housing experiences on health and wellbeing for people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds. In this paper, we outline a qualitative component of a study in South Australia examining these links. Specifically, interviews were conducted with 50 refugees and asylum seekers who were purposively sampled according to gender, continent and visa status, from a broader survey. Interviews were analysed thematically. The results indicated that housing was of central importance to health and wellbeing and impacted on health through a range of pathways including affordability, the suitability of housing in relation to physical aspects such as condition and layout, and social aspects such as safety and belonging and issues around security of tenure. Asylum seekers in particular reported that living in housing in poor condition negatively affected their health. Our research reinforces the importance of housing for both the physical and mental health for asylum seekers and refugees living in resettlement countries. Improving housing quality, affordability and tenure security all have the potential to lead to more positive health outcomes.
Highlights
People from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds represent some of the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in the world [1,2,3,4] facing a range of risk factors for poor health and wellbeing, including experiences of trauma, dislocation and violence, with associated loss of family and community support and ontological insecurity
We outline the general links that participants made between housing and health and wellbeing, as well as discuss the impact of specific elements of housing that emerged from the analysis: housing affordability, the physical elements of housing such as cold and damp and space and layout, social elements of housing such as safety and disorder and social relations and insecurity of housing tenure
Many asylum seekers and refugees have suffered a range of human rights violations, prolonged exposure to trauma and torture so that when they arrive in Australia, they often present with complex health issues [10,67,68,69,70]
Summary
People from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds represent some of the most marginalised and vulnerable groups in the world [1,2,3,4] facing a range of risk factors for poor health and wellbeing, including experiences of trauma, dislocation and violence, with associated loss of family and community support and ontological insecurity (e.g., see [1,2,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]). When resettling in new countries, there are a range of factors that are important for successful health outcomes, such as finding employment, engaging in education, building social connections and accessing services. Amongst these factors, housing is of key importance, and secure housing is a human right and an important social determinant of health [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. Public Health 2017, 14, 1036 wellbeing, and whether there were any differences amongst the group on the basis of demographic criteria such as visa status and family size
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