Chapter 16 Migration and Health Behaviors

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2026

Keywords

migration, health, migrant health, social determinants of health

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111349510-016

Abstract

The experience of migration shifts every aspect of life, with important consequences for health behavior. Recent work has challenged traditional individualist approaches, arguing for more holistic, integrative paradigms to best address health disparities and vulnerabilities and move the field towards social and structuralist frameworks. Furthermore, discussions of migrant health behaviors are complicated by migrant positionality vis-a-vis factors including gender, legal status, and life course contexts. This chapter discusses the contexts of health behaviors, focusing on how those such as healthcare avoidance and nutrition transitions can be analyzed via structure-oriented, ecological models of migrant health. We begin by examining approaches to migration and health behavior across time, exploring in particular the benefits of holistic frameworks to understand health behaviors in their contexts, and the insights gleaned from social epidemiology’s inherently transdisciplinary approach that has integrated novel concepts and insights on processes of racialization and health. We then turn our focus to life course considerations such as clinical encounters, strategies in times of illness, gendered experiences of reproductive health, and labor patterns as they impinge on migrant choices and thus impact health behavior. We end with a discussion of future research agendas considering the current state

Was this content written or created while at USF?

Yes

Citation / Publisher Attribution

Chapter 16 Migration and Health Behaviors, in T. D. Hill, T. Chandola 7 G. Garcia-Alexander (Eds.), De Gruyter Handbook of Social Epidemiology, De Gruyter, p. 161-173

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