Health and safety risk of migrant construction workers–a systematic literature review

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to review and analyze the research literature on the health and safety issues of migrant workers in the construction industry from 2000 to 2022.

Design/methodology/approach

5 steps method is used to conduct a systematic review to achieve the objectives. After scanning two authoritative search engines “Web of Science” and “Scope”, 60 articles are selected from 225 publications for identification and review. These identified articles are classified by research fields, countries and time span.

Findings

The review finds that with the increasing influence of migrant construction workers, the number of publications on the health and safety of migrant workers has shown a rapid upward trend. Moreover, language barriers are the most dominant safety risk factors encountered by on-site migrant workers. This systematic literature review also summarizes the definition of migrant workers and solutions to reduce safety risk factors.

Originality/value

The research data on the health and safety issues and risk factors of migrant workers in the construction industry is still limited. This literature review summarizes the research trends and contributions of the literature in this field in the past 22 years and provides theoretical support for future research on the safety management of the migration construction field.

Citation

Guan, Z., Yiu, T.W., Samarasinghe, D.A.S. and Reddy, R. (2024), "Health and safety risk of migrant construction workers–a systematic literature review", Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 1081-1099. https://doi.org/10.1108/ECAM-02-2022-0129