Migrant farm workers and sexual health

Key take-home messages

• The instability and mobility of migrant farm workers create unique barriers to accessing health care services including: transportation, cultural, language, and legal barriers. These barriers may prevent the diagnosis and treatment of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and encourage their transmission.
• Data on the behaviours of migrant farm workers show: lower rates of condom use; higher rates of use of workers in the sex trade; multiple sex partners; needle-sharing activities, and higher rates of substance use.
• Migrant farm workers may hold misconceptions about safer sex and HIV infection, as well as cultural values, beliefs, and customs that may facilitate HIV acquisition.
• Engagement in higher-risk behaviours may also be a direct response to daily stress of the migrant farming lifestyle, such as separation from family and community, lack of social support, and lack of control over working and living conditions.

• Determinants of Health
  • Health services
  • Stigma/discrimination
• Population(s)
  • Immigrants/Refugees/Non-status
  • General HIV- population
  • Other
• Prevention
  • Sexual risk behaviour
• Substance Use
  • Nonmedicinal drugs
• Mental Health
  • Depression