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Contents
- Abstract
- Migration: Social Determinants of Health and the Context of COVID-19
- Hypercomplex Emergencies
- Structural Violence
- Migration and the United Nations’ SDGs
- SDG 1: Poverty and Migration
- Economic Factors
- Housing and Poverty
- SDG 3: Migration, Health, and Public Health
- Mental Health
- Health Care and Discrimination
- SDG 8: Migration: Seeking a Living Wage and Meaningful Work
- SDG 10: Migration May Reduce National Income Inequality
- SDG 16: Peace and Justice: Migration Amidst Conflict and Injustice
- Seeking Refuge From a Violent Society
- The Injustice of Prolonged Detention
- Recommendations
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Abstract
This article evaluates and elucidates the intersections across social and economic determinants of health and social structures that maintain current inequities and structural violence with a focus on the impact on imMigrants (immigrants and migrants), refugees, and those who remain invisible (e.g., people without immigration status who reside in the United States) from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. Psychology has a history of treating individuals and families without adequately considering how trauma is cyclically and generationally maintained by structural violence, inequitable resources, and access to services. The field has not fully developed collaboration within an interdisciplinary framework or learning from best practices through international/global partnerships. Psychology has also been inattentive to the impact of structural violence prominent in impoverished communities. This structural harm has taken the form of the criminalization of imMigrants and refugees through detention, incarceration, and asylum citizenship processes. Most recently, the simultaneous occurrence of multiple catastrophic events, such as COVID-19, political polarization and unrest, police violence, and acceleration of climate change, has created a hypercomplex emergency for marginalized and vulnerable groups. We advance a framework that psychologists can use to inform, guide, and integrate their work. The foundation of this framework is select United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to address health inequities.
This article introduces a framework for Refugee and ImMigrant Communities (RIC) to address health inequities and social determinants of health. The article also discusses hypercomplex emergencies and their impact on RICs.
Human migration—both international and internal—has increased over the past 50 years (International Office of Migration [IOM], 2020). As of 2020, 281 million international migrants lived outside their birth countries. These figures reflect an increase of 128...