Investigating the Role of English Language Proficiency on Humanitarian Migrants’ Health in Australia: A Longitudinal Study

Santosh Jatrana , James Cook University

Understanding the dynamics of humanitarian migrants’ health is an important and timely issue for the Australian economy. Australia has a long history of offering resettlement to refugees and other humanitarian migrants. The good health of humanitarian immigrants is important to fully realise their social and economic potential. Protection of humanitarian immigrants’ health and access to quality health care is recognised as a human right and as essential for the integration and social cohesion. Using the “Building a New Life in Australia”, a longitudinal study of humanitarian migrants (n = 2,399 in Wave 1), this paper aims to investigate the role of English language proficiency on the self-rated health and mental health of recently arrived humanitarian migrants. Preliminary analysis of waves 1 and 3 indicated that improvements in English language proficiency between waves 1 and 3 were associated with higher odds of reporting self-rated health in Wave 3. Using fixed-effects regression models and the first three waves of the BNLA, this paper will investigate the role of improvements on English language proficiency on health outcomes at the individual level. The policy implications of the research findings will be discussed.

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 Presented in Session 23. Legal status and life course of immigrants