The impact goals of this network are to:
a) Increase research collaboration on health & well-being issues of transnational South Asian and South-East Asian labour migrants in the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Malaysia with the active engagement of non-academic stakeholders.
b) Strengthen research capacity and enhance the visibility of migrant workers’ health-related researchers, professionals and academics from South Asia, South-East Asia, and the countries of GCC and Malaysia.
c) Become the ‘reference group’ for South Asian migrant workers’ health issues.
Who might benefit and how?
Health issues of migrant workers are linked to many academic disciplines such as economy, politics, demography, psychology, development studies. Thus, it could have a broader impact in multiple areas. However, the key beneficiaries and ways they will be benefitted will include:
a) Health policy planners in the countries of GCC, Malaysia, South Asia, and South-East Asia: Health policy planners from both labour migrant-sending and receiving countries will have influence from network activities (via reports, media coverage, meetings, publication etc.). Most importantly, network activities will foster interdisciplinary research and research capacity building which will eventually lead to generating quality scientific evidence for an informed policy decision on migrant workers’ health. Health policy planners may include people from Ministries of Health and Labour in the countries of GCC, Malaysia, and labour sending South Asian countries.
b) Researchers from the GCC, Malaysia, South Asia, and South-East Asia: The proposed network will provide specific opportunity to early career researchers for capacity building on migrant workers’ health research, hence strengthen their research output and network. For senior researchers, it will provide an opportunity for extensive research collaboration and engagement with interdisciplinary people related to migrant workers’ health.
c) Migrant and health-related organisations in the countries of GCC, Malaysia, South Asia, and South-East Asia: It is expected that increased and quality scientific evidence from research collaboration of the network members will benefit migrant related organisations such as migrant workers’ organisations, advocacy organisations, World Health Organization (WHO), International Organization for Migration (IOM) so that they can lobby for evidence-based policies, interventions and programmes.
d) Migrant workers’ related businesses in the countries of GCC, Malaysia, South Asia, and South-East Asia: Labour migrants recruitment agencies in both sending and receiving countries and employers in the latter countries will be benefitted. They will have increased knowledge and evidence on migrant workers’ health issues. Our network activities, and publicity around it, will put pressure on employers in host countries to improve the working and living conditions of labour migrants. Recruitment agencies may only work with employers which provide decent working and living environments for labour migrants as envisioned by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).