Human rights in countries of origin and the mental health of migrants to Canada

Marie-Pier Joly; Blair Wheaton

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100571

Human rights in countries of origin and the mental health of migrants to Canada

SSM Popul Health. 2020 Mar 20:11:100571. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2020.100571. eCollection 2020 Aug.

Authors

Marie-Pier Joly¹, Blair Wheaton²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Sociology, University of Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073, Göttingen, Germany.
² Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 725 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5S 2J4, Canada.

Abstract

This study explores the effect of human rights violations in countries of origin on migrants' mental health, using archival data on human rights violations from 1970-2011, merged to a representative probability sample of 2412 adults living in a large Canadian metropolitan area. The context of exit is defined at the country level, as opposed to self-reported individual experiences of trauma. While most studies start from a question about direct exposure to human rights violations, they may miss the effect of the national-level social context - threat, instability, disruption of lives, and uncertainty - on mental health. Findings indicate that high levels of human rights violations in countries of origin have long-term effects on migrants' mental health. The impact of human rights violations is substantially explained by the combined effect of stressors both before and after migration, suggesting a cumulative process of stress proliferation following this context of exit.

Keywords: Contexts of exit; Human rights violations; Migrants; Migration; Psychological distress; Stress.