Health Rights and Health Problems of Migrants Living in the Thai-Burma Border Region: Narcotics, Debt Bondage, and Refugee Camps

Abstract

Migration is one of the most important social phenomena of this century and it contributes to the human movement and trade and information flows that are part of globalisation. Some of that human flow is forced as increasing numbers of people flee across borders to escape conflict and poverty induced by development and disasters. Migration, development and health are interactive within a socioeconomic political framework. This book examines this frameworks which impacts the lives of migrants who make up the asylum-migration nexus - those migrants who are recognised formally as refugees and those migrants who self-settle in a host country without the formal recognition of refugee status. Global institutions such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation have provided treaties, conventions and funding arrangements to assist nation-states with managing migration and forced migration, in particular, so that human and health rights are upheld. Professionals work with these displaced people in varying contexts, and it is necessary to understand the issues and processes involved.