Migration as a global public health priority: towards an Africa-focused research agenda
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This document discusses migration and health, focusing on an Africa-centered research agenda. It notes renewed global focus on migration through frameworks like the SDGs and WHO, but also competing political agendas around securitization of migration. Four priority areas are identified for achieving the WHO resolution on migrant health: monitoring health, partnerships, sensitive health systems, and policy frameworks. The document then focuses on migration trends in Southern Africa involving mixed flows, vulnerabilities, and implications for public health responses and overburdened systems. Structural violence and anti-foreigner attitudes are also raised as challenges. It concludes by calling for a public health approach, renewed regional conversation, and scaling up of good practices.
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Migration as a global public health priority: towards an Africa-focused research agenda
- 1. Jo Vearey, PhD Associate Professor African Centre for Migration & Society University of the Witwatersrand 16th May 2018 jovearey@gmail.com Migration as a global public health priority towards an Africa-focused research agenda www.mahpsa.org
- 2. A renewed focus on migration and health • SDGs: leave no-one behind • World Health Assembly; WHO; IOM • Global Compacts • Universal Healthcare Coverage • Justice & public health • Migration-aware and mobility- competent health responses Competing agendas • Politics and power • Securitisation of migration • Fear of the other • Health security
- 3. • Calls on member states to promote equitable access to health promotion, disease prevention and care for migrants. Four priority areas have been identified for achieving the WHA resolution: 1. Monitoring migrant health; 2. Partnerships and networks; 3. Migrant sensitive health systems; and 4. Policy and legal frameworks.
- 5. A focus on African Union processes
- 7. 1. Southern Africa is associated with mixed migration flows: internal > cross-border; livelihood seeking > forced migration; urban refugees; marginalised and hidden migrant groups; spaces of vulnerability; negative assumptions persist 2. Current public health responses do not engage with, migration and mobility: implications for communicable disease control (TB and HIV, malaria); chronic treatment continuity; challenges in accessing the public system for non-nationals 3. Public health and social welfare systems are overburdened and struggling: challenges are raised in a context of high inequality where nationals are also struggling to access their basic rights 4. Structural violence - increasing anti-foreigner sentiments and xenophobic attitudes: migration management is associated with increased securitisation; a lack of regional responses; a restrictive immigration act; limited understanding of migration dynamics; violence; fear; securitisation of health
- 8. What is needed? 1. A public health approach. 2. A renewed regional conversation. 3. Scaling up of good practice examples.
Editor's Notes
- Recent years have seen an increase in global migration policy discussions being driven by moral panics – public anxiety about issues thought to threaten the moral standards of society. Most notable is the current development of two Global Compacts – agreed principles to guide an international response - for (1) ‘Refugees’ and (2) ‘Safe, Regular, and Orderly Migration’. Whilst the need to address migration and health globally is increasingly recognised, concerns have been raised about if – and if so, how - this will be reflected in the final Compacts. The Compacts focus on the securitisation of migration: an approach that aims to restrict the movement of people – particularly from the African continent into Europe. This presents potentially negative consequences for people who move, particularly within global south contexts, and may create barriers to the development of much-needed migration-aware health and HIV programming. This is a particular concern for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) – a regional economic community associated with high levels of migration and the largest population of people living with HIV globally.
- Discussions and lessons shared during the Consultation indicate that – with some notable exceptions – progress is limited and the increasing focus on the securitisation of (im)migration presents challenges internationally to the development and implementation of appropriate public health responses to migration and mobility. The discussions held in Colombo reflect the challenges that continue to prohibit the development of appropriate policy and programming on migration and health within the Southern African Development (SADC) region, and in South Africa (SA)
- The ‘draft zeros’ of the two Global Compacts were released in early 2018 (18,19) and, whilst they do acknowledge health, conce Concerns remain that health – and other social justice issues – will be left off the final agenda (9,20).
- CAP Jan - DIRCO South Africa regards this Ministerial Conference on Migration as one of the avenues for consolidating the Common African Position (CAP) on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. As we engage negotiations towards the Global Compact, we should strive for integrated border management, the treatment of refugees in a humane manner, including through the abolishing of camps and management of irregular migration. In opposition to DHA language / migration policy
- An increasing recognition that “healthy migration” is required to achieve development targets in the region