Irregular Migrant Workers and Health: A Qualitative Study of Health Status and Access to Healthcare of the Filipino Domestic Workers in Mainland China

Abstract

In public health research, the health issues of irregular and vulnerable migrant populations remain under-explored. In particular, while mainland China has become a new and popular job-seeking destination for Filipino domestic workers (FDWs), the health status of FDWs and their access to healthcare have been invisible to public and academic concerns. This paper fills this lacuna by conducting a qualitative study that investigates FDWs’ self-reported health status and their healthcare-seeking behaviors. The results show that: (1) respondents do not report significant abusive and exploitative experience because the scarcity of FDWs in China in relation to the high demand enables them a certain degree of agency in labour market; (2) while FDWs do report some health problems, they tend to resort to self-medication and food-healing; (3) the main factors influencing health-seeking behavior include the fear of deportation, language gaps, the lack of knowledge of the local healthcare system and dependence on co-ethnic networks which serves as a double-edged sword; (4) these factors also lead to hesitation in health-seeking choice between public and private hospitals, which sometimes result in delayed treatment. This paper contributes to revealing the health conditions of FDWs in mainland China and calls for more inclusive health policy to enroll foreign domestic workers into the local health system in China.