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Influx of labor migrants into Russia makes it necessary to put TB prevention measures in place, both inside and outside of Russian borders. While inside Russia TB response is premised on testing migrants applying for work or residence permits for diseases of public significance, millions of migrants – specifically, those working without completing necessary paperwork – evade this requirement. In light of that, the purpose of this paper is to propose introducing disease screening in migrant-sending countries, i.e. testing of potential migrants for infectious diseases in local medical institutions certified by Russian authorities.

To support the proposal, the authors provide review of official data on TB prevalence among migrants in Russia as well as publications on international experience with conducting disease screening in migrant-sending countries.

Available studies demonstrate that conducting disease screening programs in migrant-sending countries is associated with earlier detection of TB cases, shorter period of infectiousness and hospitalization, and significant savings in health budget.

Taking into account this experience, the authors propose introducing disease screening programs in CIS both under current legal arrangements and with the requirement for labor migrants to produce medical certificate when entering Russia being introduced. The need for trans-border cooperation in assuring positive health outcomes among labor migrants is also highlighted.

This paper aims to analyse the factors influencing migration, the labour migration process and the status of migrant laborers in the informal sector, particularly those working in brick kiln factories. It will shed light on the precarious nature of their work, often characterized by informal and verbal contracts. The paper examines occupational and environmental health hazards affecting the labourers and their impact on their well-being, the vulnerability of women in the precarious work environment and the associated health risks in brick kiln factories in India.

The study relies primarily on primary data collection, supplemented by secondary literature and documents. Balangir district was chosen as the research region due to its historical deprivation, underdevelopment and the historical prevalence of environmental distress, leading to distress-driven migration. To gather primary data, 40 respondents were selected from five selected blocks in Balangir district, resulting in a total of 200 respondents. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with 35 individuals across the selected blocks, with approximately seven participants from each block. In addition, interviews of 10 kids were taken and around 10 key informants including the trade union leaders, intellectuals and civil society activists.

Migrant labourers, including men, women and children, face significant health issues and are exposed to similar occupational health hazards. Internal migrant women workers are more vulnerable as they face critical health risks during pregnancy in host areas due to unfavourable working conditions and limited access to health-care services. Factors such as strenuous work, long working hours, poor nutrition and inadequate maternal care contribute to adverse outcomes such as spontaneous abortion, premature delivery and abnormal postnatal development.

The brick kiln industry presents a distressing reality for men who are highly vulnerable to occupational accidents, and women workers are exposed to sexual abuse, exploitation and violence. The prevalence of physical harassment, ranging from leering to rape, is alarmingly high among women. These incidents not only inflict physical harm but also cause severe psychological trauma and increase the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Despite the existence of laws aimed at protecting women’s rights and addressing sexual offences, the workers often remain unaware of their rights. This lack of awareness further compounds the vulnerability of women workers and perpetuates their exploitation in the workplace.

To address health issues comprehensively, interventions should encompass the entire migrant population, including men and children. Strategies should focus on improving access to health-care services, promoting occupational health and safety measures, ensuring proper immunization and nutrition for children and addressing the broader social determinants of health. Empowering women with knowledge about reproductive health and rights, raising awareness about available health-care services and strengthening health-care providers’ capacity to cater to migrant populations are crucial steps towards addressing health disparities.

Urgent interventions and policies are needed to address the health vulnerabilities of internal migrant workers and women workers. It is required to ensure health-care accessibility, improving working conditions, ensuring access to maternal care and essential supplements and providing health-care services for both pregnant women and their children, regardless of migration status.

The study focused on precarious health and occupational hazards and accidents faced by migrant workers. It highlights women migrant labourer’s and children’s vulnerability in the Brick Klin sector, which is a value addition to the existing knowledge in social science.

The spread of COVID-19 from Wuhan to the global countries has a direct association with human mobility. Perhaps, human mobility increases the hazards of COVID-19 due to its communicable characteristic of human-to-human transmission. Thus, the volume of migrants and migration may have a significant role in the outbreaks of COVID-19 in any country. Given that India homes more than 45 crores of migrants, the present study aims to examine the linkages between migration flows and COVID-19.

The present study has used secondary sources such as data sharing portals, census, news and media reports and Web sources. The updated COVID-19 data was retrieved from the www.covid19india.org, whereas migration rates were analysed from the D-series of census 2011.

Nearly 23% of total inter-state migration occurred for the livelihood only. The numbers of cases have raised much earlier and faster in migrant's destination states than in migrant's origin states. Further, as shown in the scatterplots, that positive association between “COVID-19 and in-migration” is found to be more robust than “COVID-19 and gross-migration”. On the other hand, the migrant's origin states are also experiencing a rapid increase of COVID-19 cases due to large numbers of returning migrants. These return-migration flows have created major administrative, social and public health challenges, particularly in the origin states, and as a whole in India.

This paper has potential to help policy planners to identify the COVID-19 vulnerability of various states in respect to the migration perspectives. Moreover, it also enhances the understanding to establish the linkage between COVID-19 outbreaks and migration.

This study aims to understand the socioeconomic impact of flood events on households, especially household welfare in terms of changes in consumption and coping strategies to deal with flood risk. This study is based on Bihar, one of the most frequently flood-affected, most populous and economically backward states in India.

Primary data were collected from 700 households in the seven most frequently flood-affected districts in Bihar. A total of 100 individuals from each district were randomly selected from flood-affected villages. Based on a detailed literature review, an econometric (probit) model was developed to test the null hypothesis of the availability of consumption insurance, and the multivariate probability approach was used to analyze the various coping strategies of these households.

The results of this study suggest that flood-affected households maintain their consumption by overcoming various losses, including income, house damage and livestock loss. Households depend on financial transfers, borrowings and relief, and migrate to overcome losses. Borrowing could be an extra burden as the government compensates for house damage and crop loss late to the affected households. Again, there is no compensation to overcome livelihood loss and deal with occurrences of post-flood diseases, which further emphasizes the policy implications of strengthening the health infrastructure in the state and generating alternative livelihood opportunities.

This study discusses flood risk in terms of changes in household welfare, identifies the most effective risk-coping capabilities of rural communities and contributes to the shortcomings of the government insurance and relief model.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-07-2023-0569

This paper aims to contribute to sex tourism literature by placing it into a contemporary context of globalisation, harm reduction and disease migration.

The paper takes a public health and social science approach to map sex tourism, drawing on sex worker and tourist situations alongside global forces including technology, human rights, law enforcement and health.

A new, holistic conceptual model is presented, containing interacting, multi level associations. Whilst the separate micro, contextual, meso and macro levels are versatile, decision makers and practitioners will be equipped to understand sex tourism in its entirety.

The paper’s originality is found in the proposed conceptual model.

全球化、减害和疾病迁移时代的性旅游：一种新的概念模型

该论文采用公共卫生和社会科学方法, 利用性工作者和旅游者的情况以及包括技术、人权、执法和健康在内的全球力量, 分析了性旅游的状况。

本文将性旅游文献置于全球化、减少危害和疾病迁移的当代背景下, 为性旅游文献做出了贡献。

本文提出了一个新的、整体的概念模型, 包含相互作用的多层次关联。虽然单独的微观、背景、中观和宏观层面是多变的, 但决策者和从业者将可以全面的了解性旅游。

该论文的独创性体现在提出的概念模型中。

El turismo sexual en la era de la globalización, la reducción de daños y la migración de enfermedades: un nuevo modelo conceptual

Este artículo contribuye a la literatura sobre el turismo sexual situándolo en el contexto contemporáneo de la globalización, la reducción de daños y la migración de enfermedades.

El documento adopta un enfoque de salud pública y ciencias sociales para delimitar el turismo sexual, basándose en las situaciones de los trabajadores del sexo y los turistas junto con las fuerzas globales, como la tecnología, los derechos humanos, la aplicación de la ley y la salud.

Se presenta un nuevo modelo conceptual holístico que contiene asociaciones interactivas de varios niveles. Mientras que los niveles micro, contextual, meso y macro separados son versátiles, los responsables de la toma de decisiones y los profesionales estarán equipados para entender el turismo sexual en su totalidad.

La originalidad del artículo se encuentra en el modelo conceptual propuesto.

Investigación

Migrants historically and currently form an integral part of South Africa. Their importance and contribution to the country’s economy and development are undeniable. Yet, life for African migrants in South Africa is becoming increasingly difficult. An analysis of migrants mortality until now has not been conducted. The purpose of this paper is to compare the trends of the cause of death among South African Citizens (RSA) and African migrants from countries that form part of the South African Development Community (SADC), that make up nearly 70% of the migrants in the country.

Using Stats SA data of all registered deaths in South Africa (2002-2015), this paper compares all causes of death (COD) between RSA and SADC migrants. This paper studies the patterns in COD among these population groups for the years 2002 to 2015 in deaths due to infectious diseases and unnatural causes. Logistic regression was used to quantify the odds of dying due to infectious disease and unnatural causes for each population group. This paper included a calculation of the odds of dying due to assault, as a sub-group within unnatural deaths.

A total of 7,611,129 deaths were recorded for the local South African population and 88,114 for SADC migrants for the period under study (2002–2015). The burden of mortality for both infectious diseases and unnatural causes was higher for SADC migrants as compared to RSA. SADC migrants were 1.22 times more likely to die from infectious diseases than RSA (P < 0.001, 95% confidence interval (CI) (1.12, 1.23). Similarly, SADC migrants were 2.7 times more likely to die from unnatural causes than South Africans (P < 0.001, 95% CI (2.17, 2.23). The odds of dying from assault was the same as that of unnatural causes. Also, it was found that women were more likely to die from infectious diseases (OR = 1.11, P < 0.001, 95% CI (1.11, 1.11) compared to men, regardless of nationality.

The bias resulting from migrants who return home to die due to illness, described in the literature as the salmon bias, is present in this paper. This paper, therefore, concludes death due to infectious diseases could be higher among migrants.

The heightened mortality among SADC migrants can be related to the impact of social determinants of health such as living and working conditions and barriers to access to health care. Moreover, the higher probability of death due to unnatural causes such as assaults constitute a proxy to estimate the impact of xenophobic violence observed in the country over the past decade. Policy interventions should focus on migrant health-care systems. Also, programmes to mitigate and curb xenophobic sentiments should be carried out to address the growing disparity of preventable unnatural causes of death.

This study offers the first quantification of mortality due to infectious diseases and unnatural causes among RSA and SADC migrants.

The world is increasingly complex and the most serious challenges are global in nature. Questions to do with sustainable and equitable development, democratic change, terrorism and transnational crime, for instance, require collaborative action among governments, international organizations, corporations, universities, and nongovernmental organizations. This article, which describes 15 global challenges compiled as part of the Millennium Project’s 2002 State of the Future report, assesses the global and local prospects for humanity.

Why use an artificial intelligence (AI) system to determine crucial, major changes in a post-COVID-19 world? Globalisation is both a system and a process characterised by complexity, that is, a referential in which heterogeneous agents are constantly interacting. It therefore requires an integral and dynamic approach, and even more so a tool in tune with complexity. That is the case of the AI system Mileva, specifically designed for tackling complexity, highlighting the fabric of its reality, its core issues, and to forecast the probabilities of the different possible evolutions. In this chapter, the authors first briefly describe globalisation with regard to complexity, at the crossroads of computational complexity theory and sociological complexity theory (Edgar Morin). The authors then present the AI system Mileva, its key principles and the main lines of its architecture. Finally, the aforementioned points will be illustrated by two examples of analyses provided by Mileva on the issue of major changes in a post-COVID-19 world: the situation of the international organisations and that of the world of work in relation to health, environment, development, and democracy.