"Health is my life”: female refugee health in Glasgow

Abstract

This Global Health MSc dissertation explores how female refugees define health, how they take care of themselves and what helps or hinders their efforts. It fulfils this aim by providing insights into how these three lines of enquiry manifest across participants’: definitions of health; physical health; mental health; social and structural contexts.
Its approach is infused with theory from a range of social research disciplines and has employed a case study design to explore female refugee health among members of a refugee integration network in Glasgow. It provides in-depth qualitative insights that contribute to existing academic research and inform local services and policy makers in their decisions affecting the health of female refugees in Glasgow.
In taking these lines of enquiry and through using such methods, the findings contribute to gaps in existing research about female refugees while also contributing to academic theories debate about agency and health. It finds a complex interplay between the ways in which female refugees take care of their health and the structures which help or hinder their efforts, sometimes in multiple, cross-cutting and ambiguous ways. Further, insights into how female refugees cope with miscarriages are provided, about which few studies have been undertaken. Concluding remarks highlight the positive role that such a network can play alongside other organisations in supporting and enabling female refugee health, cautioning that changes to the asylum system arguably need to be made if their health is to flourish