Aims:
In Denmark, all residents regardless of nationality are ‘de jure’ entitled to a wide range of free-of-charge healthcare services. There is, however, only scarce quantitative knowledge on ...immigrants’ experiences of their ‘de facto’ access to healthcare and on how access relates to immigrants’ types of residence permits. The study aims to address these gaps.
Methods:
Survey data on access to healthcare, employment and housing were collected among adult, newly arrived immigrants in Denmark (n=1711) at 26 publicly contracted Danish language schools in September–December 2021 by national cluster-random sampling stratified by region. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression.
Results:
In total, 21% reported general difficulties obtaining good healthcare. Commonly experienced barriers related to financial constraints (39%), communication (37%) and lack of knowledge about the healthcare system (37%). Refugees and their families had higher odds of reporting barriers related to finances (odds ratio (OR) 2.58; confidence interval (CI) 1.77–3.76), communication (OR 3.15; CI 2.39–4.14) and knowledge (OR 1.84; CI 1.16–2.90), while other family reunified immigrants had lower odds of reporting knowledge barriers (OR 0.71; CI 0.54–0.93) compared with immigrants with EU/EEA residence permits, adjusted for gender and residential region. These results remained significant when further adjusted for age, length of stay, education, income, rural/urban residence and household size.
Conclusions:
Difficulties accessing healthcare are experienced by a large share of newly arrived immigrants in Denmark and are dependent on residence permit type. The findings suggest strengthened efforts to reduce barriers related to finances, communication and knowledge, while focusing on the most vulnerable immigrants.
The punctuation of time through visas and residence permits intimately affects temporary migrants’ everyday lives. The temporal forms of control engendered through the global border and visa regime ...and their impact on fragmenting lived time have received little attention in comparison to the extensively studied spatial aspects of migration, particularly in the research context of mobility conceptualised as skilled migration. By drawing on in-depth interviews with migrants holding a temporary student status in Finland, the article examines the ways in which temporal borders bring about punctuated temporalities among non-EU/EEA student-migrants. Moreover, it demonstrates how the time limits of the student permit offer fruitful ground for the production of a low-paid labour force and how temporal borders assist in hierarchising this labour force in terms of mobility and rights. The article contributes to the sociological literature on migration and precarious labour markets by emphasising the analytical relevance of examining temporal borders as engendering a hierarchising function of the border regime and the role of temporal borders in facilitating the production of precarious migrant labour.
Temporariness of refugee protection has started to emerge as a new standard in the policies of European countries. Given this development, the article focuses on one specific issue related to this ...temporariness: how refugee status intertwines with the conditions for the granting, revocation and prolongation of national residence permits. What are the interconnections between refugee status, including its cessation and revocation, on the one hand, and national residence permits and their revocation and prolongation, on the other? How are these interconnections regulated by international law, EU law and national law (with Sweden as an example)? Inaddition to the detailed analysis of the relevant legal norms, the article situates the questions within a more general discussion about residence in the national community. In this way, it is shown how temporariness creates tensions at national level where the refugee qua resident in the national community, benefits from safeguards in favour of individual certainty. This explains why residence permits, as opposed to refugee status, have central organizing role at national level.
Flows of external labor migration in most cases occur under the influence of the internal economic and political situation in the country; however, in 2020 these trends changed significantly for ...reasons which did not depend on the socio-economic situation. In order to determine the volume of labor migration in 2020, an analysis was conducted. According to the results, it has been concluded that, despite the restrictive quarantine measures implemented in the European Union (EU) that caused the partial return of migrants to their countries, the rise in unemployment and slow economic growth, labor migrants are highly employed in key occupations of EU that are vital in the fight against coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It has been noticed that EU countries increase the number of officially issued residence permits to citizens of non-member countries every year, and Ukraine has become the absolute leader in the number of received residence permits, as well as the leader among European countries by the volume of the received remittances. An abstract-logical and systematic approach, analytical, comparative, graphical, and critical methods were used in the study. Prospects for external labor migration of Ukrainians to European countries have been identified.
Do asylum‐seekers respond to policy changes in their destination country, and to what extent? We approach this question by using high‐frequency data, and we focus on a sudden liberalization in ...Swedish policy toward Syrian asylum‐seekers, which implied permanent instead of temporary residence. We show a clear and fast, yet temporary, increase in Syrian asylum applications in Sweden after the policy change. Also, the policy caused a shift – not limited to the short term – in the share of individuals arriving without family, and consequently in the share applying for family reunification. Our study adds quasi‐experimental evidence to the literature on inter‐country asylum flows and migration policy.
In the context of European Union standards, our understanding of victims’ protection has to be redefined. Unconditional support for trafficked persons is manifested in EU Directive 2011/36/EU. Yet, ...both the right to and access to psycho-social counselling, to residence permits and to compensation is hindered through an inconsistent international legal framework. Victims’ rights have to be at the centre of victims’ protection, with a focus on their individual vulnerabilities and needs. Therefore this paper argues that victims’ protection of trafficked persons has to be understood in a broader safety frame.
On 27 May 2010, the newly formed UK Coalition government announced the cancellation of national identity cards for UK citizens. Yet, foreign nationals remain subject to a separate biometric identity ...card scheme-renamed 'Biometric Residence Permits' (BRPs)-currently being rolled out to various categories of migrant. To date, over 300,000 such cards have been issued to various foreign-national groups, including international students, visiting scholars, entrepreneurs, investors and domestic workers. Although research has been conducted on UK immigration policy, there has been little investigation into how foreign nationals view, experience and negotiate BRPs. In this paper, we draw on our own empirical work to examine the impact of BRPs on migrants. From March to December 2010, interviews and participative research were conducted with the Home Office, the UK Border Agency, advocacy and civil society groups, Higher Education Institutions and individual migrants. We consider the extent to which this scheme acts as a means of exercising surveillance and control over foreign nationals, and the ability of these migrants to negotiate around such constraints.
An analysis of thirty-two cases of foreign patients with tuberculosis (TB) who had overstayed their residence permits was done at Minatomachi Medical Center over the past three years. The ratio of ...male to female patients was 2.5 to 1 the age of the subjects was evenly distributed. By country of origin, 87 % of the cases were from Southeast Asia and East Asia. As none of the patients belonged to health insurance schemes because of their illegal status, their access to medical care was restricted, and the delay in visiting clinics was notable. As 22 % of the cases were diagnosed as a result of programs to provide free TB screening for foreigners, it is important to ensure easy access to TB screening and medical facilities for early detection of TB. Amongst the cases, the proportion of cases of extrapulmonary tuberculosis occupied 28%, which is higher than that of Japanese. Although the defaulting rate among patients during the nine years period from 1990 to 1998 was high (41 %), it decreased to 12% during the past three years of this study. The following active measure was vital for preventing defaulting from treatment and ensuring clinical cure: 1. Utilization of the Tuberculosis Prevention Law to reduc the economic burden of the patients. 2. Interpreters available in various native languages. 3. Provision of adequate information of TB before starting treatment. 4. Strict follow-up of patients to ensure coherence to treatment. 5. Establishment of an international network of governmental organizations, NGOs, and medical facilities to exchange informations on preventive and curative cares in the home and host countries.
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