Introduction/framework/objectives

Occupational Health services are sometimes provided to employers who hire migrant labor, in some cases from very distant regions, geographically and culturally. The life circumstances of these workers and socio/economic/cultural characteristics will certainly be very different from the generality of Portuguese employees. The aim of this review is to summarize what was most relevant was published in this context.

Methodology

This is a Bibliographic Review, initiated through a research carried out in September 2021, in the databases “CINALH plus with full text, Medline with full text, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Methodology Register, Nursing and Allied Health Collection: comprehensive, MedicLatina and RCAAP”.

Contents

In general, migrants are left with "3-D" jobs: "dirty, demanding and dangerous" and/or even "degrading"- that is, with worse working conditions; they have usually jobs that require fewer qualifications and have more risk factors. As a rule, they do not work in the education or administration sectors, but rather in agriculture, construction and industry. However, Migrant workers also generally present greater occupational risks, due to unsafe behavior, namely associated with the use of Personal Protective Equipment, especially in small and medium-sized companies; due to the lower cultural level, migrants generally have a lower perception of risk and worse security behaviors. The time that the migrant has been with the institution does not seem to influence the perception of risk; in turn, the length of stay in the country is already able to do so. It is also modulated by safety climate, leadership, workload, safety knowledge and training; as well as personality, attitude and previous experience (accidents, morbidity).

It is possible that the COVID19 pandemic will allow employers and supervisory institutions to be more attentive to the improvement of some parameters in working conditions.

Males seem to be less available to participate in health education and promotion activities, have worse knowledge at this level and greater acceptance of risk. However, female migrants seem to need more medical care but have less access, even with chronic pathology.

Individuals with communication problems attend health services less often and have lower adherence to proposed therapies. The presence of an interpreter helps a lot, but it is not always possible.

Discussion and Conclusions

The development of an Occupational Health service that can adapt to the particularities of the assessed migrants will be more likely to have better efficiency and performance, bringing benefits to workers, managers and employers. In addition, these individuals generally accept worse working conditions more easily, tasks with higher risks and feel less need and/or capacity to demand their labor rights, so occupational accidents and occupational diseases will also be more prevalent and/or serious.

It would be relevant to estimate the number of migrants to work in Portugal, their origin and other sociodemographic characteristics, as well as possible correlations with various parameters of Occupational Health.

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