Migration and Mental Health

The relationship between migration and mental health is controversial, contested, and pertinent. In a highly mobile world, where voluntary and enforced movements of population are increasing and likely to continue to grow, that relationship needs to be better understood, yet the terminology is often vague and the issues are wide-ranging. Getting to grips with them requires tools drawn from different disciplines and professions. Such a multidisciplinary approach is central to this book. Six historical studies are integrated with chapters by a theologian, geographer, anthropologist, social worker and psychiatrist to produce an evaluation that addresses key concepts and methodologies, and reflects practical involvement as well as academic scholarship. Ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, the book explores the causes of mental breakdown among migrants; the psychological changes stemming from their struggles with challenging life circumstances; and changes in medical, political and public attitudes and responses in different eras and locations.

Marjory Harper is Professor of History at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Her research interests and publications are primarily in the Scottish diaspora since 1800, and her two most recent books have both won international prizes. She co-authored Migration and Empire (2010) and is currently working on two further monographs.

PART I. - 1. Introduction by Marjory Harper. - 2. Unravelling 'Mental Illness': What Exactly Are We Talking About? by John Swinton. - 3. Critical Perspectives on Histories of 'Madness' and 'Migration' by Sergei Shubin. - PART II: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES. - 4. On Being Insane in Alien Places. Case Histories from British India, c. 1800-1930. - Waltraud Ernst. - 5. Unsettled States: Madness and Migration in Cape Town, c. 1920. - William Jackson. - 6. Ethnicities and Environments: Perceptions of Alienation and Mental Illness among Scottish and Scandinavian Settlers in North America, c. 1870 - c. 1914 by Marjory Harper. - 7. Stories of Immigrant Isolation and Despair: Canadian Novels and Memoirs since the 1850s by Marilyn Barber. - 8. Mad Migrants and the Reach of English Civil Law by James Moran and Lisa Chilton. - 9. Canada's Deportation of 'Mentally and Morally Defective' Female Immigrants after the Second World War by Ellen Scheinberg. - PART III: ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND PERSONAL REFLECTIONS. - 10. Between the Past and the Future: Migration and Melancholic Nationalism in Iceland by Arnar Árnason. - 11. Doing Harm or Doing Good? Some Reflections on the Impact of Social Work and Social Policy on the Mental Health of Commonwealth Immigrants to the UK in the Twentieth Century by Juliet Cheetham. - 12. Is Migration Good For You? A Psychiatric and Historical Perspective by James Finlayson and Marjory Harper