Migration and occupational health: Shining a light on the problem

This issue is devoted to migration and occupational health, an important topic that has been largely ignored by occupational health professionals and by those concerned with the health of migrants around the world. The manuscripts cover several high-risk occupations, geographic regions of the world, and special populations and conditions. The topics are addressed frommultiple academic disciplines, both quantitative and qualitative, and include descriptive reports, etiologic studies, and interventions to reduce the increased occupational health burden of immigrant workers. Many of these papers were first presented at two conferences in 2008: (1) The Center for Occupational and Environmental Health Symposium, ‘‘Immigrant Workers: A Population at HighRisk forOccupational Injury and Illness,’’ held inApril, 2008, in Oakland, California; and (2) the 20th International Conference on Epidemiology and Occupational Health, held in June, 2008, in Costa Rica. Several clear messages emerge from the manuscripts in this issue: (1) migrant workers around the world are at increased risk for a wide range of occupational illnesses and injuries (including fatal injuries); this increased health burden is often associatedwith the ‘‘precariousness’’ of work among migrants; (2) poverty is the norm among migrant workers and is associated with inadequate health care, housing, and food security; (3) health care, includingworkers compensation, is seriously deficient amongmigrant workers; (4) migrants tend to work in high-risk industries, but even within these industries the fatal and non-fatal injury rates are higher for migrant than for non-migrant workers; (5) migrant workers and their families are a vulnerable population, with increased risk of stress, mental illness, and personal victimization; these risks may be particularly increased in sub-groups including women, children, and recent migrants; (6) there has been little research on this subject by public health professionals, and research efforts need to be multidisciplinary and utilize new research paradigms; (7) public health agencies should includemigrant workers equally in all health and prevention programs as a matter of good public health practice and social justice; such efforts would also adhere to the UN international convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families. This is the first full issue of a journal to focus on occupational health among migrant workers. As such, it is a small step in documenting the magnitude of this problem, understanding its causes, and developing effective prevention and intervention strategies.Aswith all such public health efforts, this onewill require efforts frommultiple disciplines, including epidemiology, cross-cultural medicine, anthropology, law, behavioral science, communication, and others. In addition to the traditional academic public health disciplines, solutions will require new laws and better legal enforcement of existing laws, educational interventions, and improvements in workplace health and safety directed to this vulnerable population. All of these efforts must be done in a context of multi-lingual and multi-cultural understanding and, ideally, with a binational perspective. Migrants have too often been viewed as a difficult population to study and, even worse, as a group not worth the