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This research paper aims to delve into the perceptions of health susceptibility among Iranian, Afghan and Tajik individuals hailing from asylum-seeking or refused asylum-seeking backgrounds currently residing in Finland, Norway and Sweden.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted between May and October 2022 involving a sample size of 27 participants. An adapted framework based on the health belief model along with previous studies served as a guide for formulating interview questions.

Notably influenced by cultural background, religious beliefs, psychological states and past traumatic experiences during migration journeys – before arrival in these countries till settling down – subjects’ perception of health concerns emerged significantly shaped. Additionally impacting perspectives were social standing, occupational status, personal/family medical history, lifestyle choices and dietary preferences nurtured over time, leading to varying degrees of influence upon individuals’ interpretation about their own wellness or illness.

Insights garnered throughout the authors’ analysis hold paramount significance when it comes to developing targeted strategies catering culturally sensitive health-care provisions, alongside framing policies better aligned with primary care services tailored explicitly around singular demands posed by these specific communities dwelling within respective territories.

This investigation represents one among few pioneering initiatives assessing perceptions regarding both physical and mental well-being within minority groups under examination across Nordic nations, unveiling complexities arising through intersecting factors like individual attributes mingling intricately with socio-cultural environments, thereby forming unique viewpoints towards health-care belief systems prevalent among such population segments.

This paper aims to understand the discrepancy between Germany’s immediate positive response to the so-called “Europe 2015's refugee crisis“ and the strict asylum legislation adopted in Germany in the following year.

The discrepancy is attributed to external and internal forces. The external force is Germany’s obligation to adhere to the Common European Asylum System. The internal force is the role of the different policy actors. The paper focuses on the role of the media as an example of a private policy actor. Through adopting the theory of the social construction of target populations, the paper studies how the media constructs “asylum seekers”, the target of the new asylum legislation. The role of the media is analyzed using the methodology of qualitative content analysis of a selected number of newspaper articles.

The majority of the studied articles problematized receiving and hosting refugees and focused on the reason behind migration differentiating between asylum seekers fleeing conflict areas and all others who might be abusing the asylum channel. The findings of the content analysis, as such, resonate with the amendments that focused on facilitating the integration of accepted “refugees” but restricted further entry. As such, it could be argued that these findings explain the influence of the media on the amendments and as such provide an explanation to the discrepancy between the initial response and the amendments.

The analysis focused on one newspaper. The findings, as such, are not representative. The aim is only to provide an example of how the German media dealt with the refugee crisis and to suggest using the theory chosen by the paper to analyze the link between asylum legislation and the construction of asylum seekers. To understand how asylum legislation is influenced by how asylum seekers are constructed, more studies are needed. Such studies could analyze the role played by other media outputs and/or the role played by other policy actors in constructing the target of the policy.

The media’s response is based on analyzing a sample of newspaper articles published by a German newspaper following the so-called 2015 refugee crisis. Accordingly, the findings represent an original endeavor to understand how the media reacted to the crisis.

This article aims to explore the engagement of refugees and asylum seekers (RAS) in informal and precarious jobs from a civil society actors' perspective. Despite a burgeoning literature on refugee integration and a focus on institutional integration programmes, little is known about the early insertion of RAS into informal and precarious employment as an alternative to subsidised integration programmes, when these are available.

This article draws on rich qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews with social workers, volunteers and other professionals supporting migrants.

Data analysis shows that migrants' insertion in informal jobs and their rejection of integration programmes may be the result of people's need to access financial capital to cover actual and future needs. Although such an engagement may be criticised for hampering RAS’ integration, it can be seen as an important source of agency against insecurity surrounding one's legal status.

This article highlights the importance of legal status precarity in shaping informal workers' agency and perceptions of them, opening up a debate on the relevance of informal work in terms of long-term integration and future migration trajectories.

The population of internationally forcibly displaced people, which includes refugees and asylum seekers, is large and heterogeneous. To determine the varying reasons for and experiences during the migration journey, including exposure to violence and health- and integration-related needs, there is an urgent need to involve children with refugee backgrounds in research and development activities. This chapter describes a model for the child participatory approach developed at Barnafrid, a national competence centre on violence against children at Linköping University in Sweden. The model has been tested in the Long Journey to Shelter study, which investigated exposure to violence and its consequences on mental health and functional ability among forcibly displaced children and young adults. As part of this project, we conducted workshops with children (n = 36, aged 13–18 years) to design a questionnaire on exposure to community violence in the country of resettlement. Experiences recounted during the child participatory workshops indicated no problems involving newly arrived children with refugee backgrounds and Swedish-born adolescents in research activities. However, attention should be paid to proper preparatory work and the need for adjustments. We discuss the results in light of other studies on refugee child participation, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child and diversity considerations.

The reasons for and experiences during migration, as well as additional stressors in the new host country, may give rise to mental health problems and additional need for public services. The purpose of the study was to investigate factors related to service utilization among newly arrived refugee youth.

Cross-sectional data were gathered in Sweden where 37 youth aged between 19 and 23 reported on factors related to service utilization, encompassing health-care and support services in school. These factors included predisposition (demographic), need (migration status and mental wellbeing) and enablement (living situation). Service utilization was estimated using multiple logistic regression analysis.

About a fourth of the sample used psychosocial services. Use of general support was more common. Neither predisposing, need nor enabling factors were associated with the use of psychosocial or general health-related services.

Self-reported factors related to use of health-related services have previously not been investigated for refugee youth, which is important in assuring access to appropriate services for this exposed youth population.

The Case Valdesi (Waldensian Houses) are non-profit structures, managed by the Diaconia Valdese, that propose a value-based and value-driven model of hospitality. There are nine hospitality facilities (six guest houses, two hotels and one hostel) located in different Italian venues, open to individual travellers, families or groups who look for unconventional tourism experiences such as slow-paced visits to artistic and natural attractions, retreats, informal symposia, as well as creative projects. The guest houses welcome international students and volunteers who provide hospitality services. They host refugees and asylum seekers when needed and encourage connections and mutual exchanges among people with diverse life experiences. Moreover, they use the hospitality revenues to support educational and social welfare projects. This chapter will present the Waldensian model of hospitality through a case study based on observations and qualitative data collected during fieldwork, proposing it as one of the possible sources of inspiration for the creation of human destinations.

This study aims to compare the impact of Australian onshore and offshore immigration detention centres (IDCs) on detainees’ health and health-care events.

It uses data extracted from the Australian Government’s quarterly health reports from 2014 to 2017. These reports contain a range of data about the health and well-being of detainees, including complaints/presenting symptoms and number of appointments and hospitalisations. To compare onshore and offshore data sets, the authors calculated the rate of health events per quarter against the estimated quarterly onshore and offshore detention population. They ran a series of two-proportion z-tests for each matched quarter to calculate median z- and p-values for all quarters. These were used as an indicator as to whether the observed differences between onshore and offshore events were statistically significant.

The results suggest that adults detained onshore and offshore have substantial health needs, however, almost all rates were far higher in offshore detention, with people more likely to raise a health-related complaint, access health services and be prescribed medications, often at two to three times the rate of those onshore.

This paper adds to a modest body of literature that explains the health of people detained in Australian IDCs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to explore health service utilisation and a range of other variables found in the Australian Government’s quarterly health reports. These findings bolster the evidence which suggests that detention, and particularly offshore detention is particularly harmful to health.