Newcomers

Organizations working with recent immigrants are incorporating parts of the Institute's toolkit for teaching newcomers about workplace health and safety into their programming. Organizations in Ontario, Alberta, Northwest Territories and Nunavut, and even as far away as Australia, say the resource is just what they were looking for.

Published: December 2017

When immigrants and refugees come to Canada, they are handed a 140-page document that contains only one small paragraph about employee rights. Unfortunately, this might be the only OHS exposure these workers receive, writes Amanda Silliker, reporting on an Institute for Work & Health research project.

Published: Canadian Occupational Safety, November 2017

Settlement and integration involve helping recent immigrants and refugees find work and become economically solvent. Many newcomers end up in survival jobs that expose them to hazards and are precarious and physically demanding. In this plenary, presenters Dr. Agnieszka Kosny, Dr. Basak Yanar and Dina Al-khooly summarize a recent study investigating how newcomers come to understand their rights and where there are gaps in resources and training.

Published: October 2017

This project looked at the needs of recent immigrants and refugees to Ontario to help ensure they can safely integrate into the Canadian labour market.

Status: Completed 2017

While previous research has identified that recent immigrants are at increased risk of work injury and illness, little is known about the specific mechanisms that lead to this elevated risk. In this plenary, Institute for Work & Health (IWH) research associate Morgan Lay presents preliminary results from a recent IWH collaboration with settlement agencies to better understand the workplace and social contexts that lead to increased risk of work injury among new immigrants.

Published: May 2016

The toolkit, called Prevention is the Best Medicine, hopes to bridge the knowledge gap among newcomers of OHS and workers' compensation issues.

Published: April 2014

This is a plain-language report summarizing the findings of an Institute for Work & Health study that explored the experiences of recent immigrants who were injured on the job.

Published: July 2011

Many recent immigrants end up in jobs for which they are over-qualified, putting them at risk of poorer mental health within a relatively short period of time, according to a recent study from the Institute for Work & Health.

Published: May 2011

Institute for Work & Health researchers are helping fill a gap in the occupational health and safety system: the need for information tailored to immigrant workers, delivered to them through the services they regularly access at the community level.

Published: May 2011

In this presentation, Dr. Agnieszka Kosny and Marni Lifshen talk about a project that examined the services, programs and resources available to newcomers to Canada that focus on employment standards, occupational health and safety and workers’ compensation. They discuss trends in the types of resources available, identify important gaps, and highlight case studies of programs that present interesting opportunities for providing this information to newcomers.

Published: May 2011