Health and Social Services among International Labor Migrants

The contributors to this volume, representing a wide variety of disciplines (including medicine, social work, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and biology), are in agreement that the health and human services offered in industrial nations are generally monocultural, and not well suited for migrants from other cultures. One article even arrives at the disquieting conclusion that the mental health services offered to immigrants not only do not respond to their needs, but rather serve to reinforce negative perceptions regarding immigrants from third-world countries. This book represents a timely and urgently needed contribution to the discourse on health services for migrants. It demonstrates that the issues and problems of immigration in the United States and Europe have many commonalities, and that much can be learned from examining the experiences, successes, and failures of both.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.