The COTIDIES project delivers its first results on psychosocial risks among migrants and their association with mental health

Anne Gosselin, Inès Malroux, Diane Desprat et al., « Preva­lence of psycho­so­cial risks among immi­grants in France and asso­cia­tions with mental health : findings from the national French Working Condi­tions Survey », Inter­na­tional Archives of Occu­pa­tional and Envi­ron­mental Health, 2021.

> Direct acces to article


Acces to the projects” page and ressources

Abstract

Purpose
Few studies examined psycho­so­cial risks among immi­grants and explored their asso­cia­tion with mental health. Our study aims to 1) describe the preva­lence of job strain and iso-strain accor­ding to migra­tory status and model the proba­bi­lity of expo­sure, 2) verify whether the asso­cia­tion between job strain, iso strain and anxiety holds for all immi­grant groups.

Methods
We used the natio­nally-repre­sen­ta­tive cross-sectional French Working Condi­tions Survey (N = 24 640). Anxiety was measured with the GAD-Mini. We described the preva­lence of job strain and iso-strain accor­ding to migra­tory status and sex. We used multi­va­riate Poisson regres­sions to model the proba­bi­lity to be exposed to job strain and iso-strain. We described the preva­lence of anxiety accor­ding to migra­tory status and sex. In each immi­grant group, we modelled the proba­bi­lity of anxiety accor­ding to socio­de­mo­gra­phic charac­te­ris­tics, life­time suicidal attempt and job strain/iso-train.

Results
Overall, there were impor­tant varia­tions in psycho­so­cial risks preva­lence, with immi­grants groups more exposed than majo­rity popu­la­tion. After adjust­ment, being first-gene­ra­tion immi­grant from Africa remained asso­ciated with job strain (aIRR = 1.21 [0.99 ; 1.47]), and being second-gene­ra­tion immi­grant from Africa with iso-strain (aIRR = 1.33 [1.05 ; 1.69]). The preva­lence of anxiety was the highest in second-gene­ra­tion immi­grants from Africa (12%). In this popu­la­tion, job strain and iso-strain were asso­ciated with anxiety (aIRR job strain = 2.70[1.22;6.01]; aIRR iso-strain 4.26 [2.29;7.92]).

Conclu­sion
Our study provides first esti­mates of psycho­so­cial risks among first and second-gene­ra­tion immi­grants in France and shows that immi­grants are parti­cu­larly exposed to job strain and iso-strain, which could contri­bute signi­fi­cantly to their mental health.