🎬 Migrant workers: housing as a social determinant of workers’ health

In a province with a relentless housing crisis, an overstretched health care system and a recent uptick in xenophobia—the risks to migrant workers’ health and safety don’t end when the workday is over.

Social determinants of health are the non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. For migrant workers (who already face unique occupational and environmental hazards), precarious housing conditions and systemic barriers to health care compound the vulnerabilities they experience on the job.

Given this context, what if we treated safe and secure housing for migrant workers as an investment in our health care system?

We examine housing as a fundamental social determinant of migrant health. Drawing on public health policy, community-engaged research, and frontline advocacy, our panel explores how living conditions, migration status and workplace protections intersect to shape the physical and mental well-being of migrant workers.

• In this webinar, we explore:
• Housing as a core social determinant of health in the context of global migration.
• The intersecting impacts of status, workplace rights, environmental hazards and living conditions on migrant workers’ health.
• How to build collaborative strategies across policy, practice and community organizing to support migrant justice and health equity.

Panelists

Byron Cruz, organizer and outreach coordinator for the BC Federation of Labour’s Occupational Health and Safety Centre’s Migrant Worker Program

Anelyse Weiler, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria

Rebecca Cheff, Knowledge Translation Specialist at the National Collaboration Centre for Determinants of Health (NCCDH)

Other resources mentioned in this session