1st Edition

Transnational Mobility and Global Health Traversing Borders and Boundaries

By Peter H. Koehn Copyright 2021
    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    Transnational Mobility and Global Health spotlights the powerful and dynamic intersections of human movement, inequality, and health. The book explores the interacting political, economic, social, cultural, and climatic drivers of health and migration, proposing innovative ways to enhance global health and care provision in an era of transnational mobility. As health security continues to rise up the agenda in international politics, the book also analyses the political determinants of health and migration.

    Within the framework of key drivers of unequal mobilities, this book treats interconnected health and migration themes not covered elsewhere under one cover: health tourism, conflict-induced and other vulnerable-population movements, humanitarian crises, human rights, the health-development linkage, migrant health-care, and health-competency education. The book also considers global health vulnerabilities in the wake of climate change, and the biomedical, ethical, and governance challenges of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. Finally, the book suggests ways of evaluating mobility-influenced health outcomes and equity impacts, and explores how the global circulation of health expertise could help to rectify care-provider shortages.

    The challenges to global health considered in this book are only likely to become more intense as the 21st-Century surge in transnational migration continues. Readers will gain interdisciplinary appreciation for the relevance of health for migration and of migration for global health. Researchers, students, practitioners, and policy makers interested in individual and population health, sustainable development, and migration studies will find this book a useful and inspiring guide to contemporary global challenges.

    Forewords by Ilona Kickbusch, Susan F. Martin, & Unni Karaunakara

    Introduction: The Interconnected Nature of Contemporary Population Movements and Global Health

    1. Transnational Travel as Health Insurance

    2. Health Challenges for Refugees and Conflict-induced Migrants: Transit Conditions, Camps, and Settlements

    3. Health Challenges for Other Survival Migrants on the Move North: Transit Conditions and Detention Centers

    4. Migrant Health in Northern Reception Countries

    5. Migration, Health, and Sustainable-development Linkages: Exploring Southern Contexts

    6. Pathogens Without Borders: ERIDs as Privilege Leveler?

    7. Climate Change, Health, and Migration: The Wild Card in the Deck

    8. Where Should We "Move" from Here? 21st Century Global-health Education and Service

    Biography

    Peter H. Koehn is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Global Public Health program, and a Distinguished Scholar at the University of Montana, USA, a Fulbright New Century Scholar, and recipient of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities' (APLU) 2011 Michael P. Malone award for international leadership.

    "Globalization is and always has been about movement: of people, ideas, technologies, and goods. Koehn’s book provides an important and innovative analysis of these movements and their impacts on health, focusing throughout on inequalities and the complex, interconnected drivers of mobility. Koehn engages in an impressive analysis of diverse health and migration themes, including medical tourism, refugee experiences, the challenges of providing care to migrant communities, nativism and pandemic fears, climate change, and the challenges of this new and intensifying phenomenon to global governance. This is a must read for students and scholars of globalization and health."Craig Janes, Professor and Director, School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, Canada

    "This book is a masterpiece in articulating trans-boundary mobility and global health. The book presents and analyzes compelling and timely global health cases involving cross-country travelers, infectious and chronic disease risk, migration, and refugee issues.  A must read for researchers and practitioners in the development field."Rajib Shaw, Professor, Keio University, Japan and Chair, UN Science Technology Advisory Group (STAG) for disaster risk reduction

    From the forewords:

    "Many books with global health in their title deal exclusively with health challenges in developing countries. This book though goes to the heart of what global health is about: the transborder flows of health determinants, ideas, people, capital, goods and services."Ilona Kickbusch, Director, Global Health Centre, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland

    "Peter Koehn has put together a masterful examination of the interconnections between migration and health among people moving for different reasons, through different channels, and in different economic and regional contexts. What sets this book apart and makes it so important are the ways in which it brings the disparate issues (including sustainable development and climate change) together into a holistic analysis of the nexus between migration and health. This book holds great potential to educate researchers and policymakers alike on the issues and offers cogent recommendations for moving forward in finding solutions for clear and growing problems while seizing opportunities that migration can present in building healthier societies."Susan Martin, Donald G. Herzberg Professor Emerita of International Migration, Georgetown University, USA

    "In Transnational Mobility and Global Health, Peter Koehn expertly discusses the global challenges that arise from increasing migration. The precarity faced by migrants is a failure of politics and leadership. Koehn rightly zeroes in on the need for a robust trans-national response to migrant-health needs. If the drivers of insecurity and migration are operating at a global scale, then any solution that hopes to succeed must also operate at that scale. Policy proposals put forward by this book must be considered and developed further." Unni Karunakara, Professor of Public Health, Yale University, USA and International President (2010-2013), Médecins Sans Frontières

    "Peter Koehn’s sweeping overview is a useful guide to the contemporary issues around health and mobility that transcends the impulse to focus on the latest trend inmigration studies, and instead provides a necessary survey some of the major global health challenges of our time and speculates about those of our future." - Emma Bider, Nordic Journal of Migration Research