A bibliometric analysis of the study of health equity of migrants

Research on migrants has grown significantly over the past 20 years. However, systematic reviews and summaries of the health equity of migrants are lacking.

This bibliometric analysis aims to reveal the knowledge structure, cooperation networks, and research frontiers in immigrant health equity for the first time, providing a framework and guidance for future studies.

Publications related to health equity of migrants from 1993 to 2024 were collected from Scopus. The publications collected were restricted to certain categories (articles and reviews). VOSviewer and Citaspace were used to analyze the country/region, institution, research topic, keyword co-occurrence, and highly cited papers.

Four hundred nine articles were included in this study. It was found that the field entered a period of rapid growth after 2013, with an average of 29.67 articles per year, and the research enthusiasm has continued to rise. Articles originated from 63 countries/regions and 160 institutions. The study found that in terms of international cooperation and output, the United States (US) (55.74%), Canada, the United Kingdom, and China are the main research forces, with the University of California, San Francisco ranking first in the number of published papers; the US-United Kingdom, US-Canada, and US-China have formed the strongest cooperation networks. This study also reveals its interdisciplinary research characteristics, covering multiple fields such as medicine (75.31%) and social sciences (23.72%), and forms 5 core research clusters: healthcare services and social determinants: focusing on the impact of healthcare resource accessibility and socioeconomic status on health equity; demographic differences: paying attention to health inequalities caused by factors such as age, gender, and race; family income and Asian health: revealing for the first time the unique impact of family income on the health of Asian immigrants. Highly cited literatures highlight political factors (such as policy discrimination), group inequalities (such as the "Latino health paradox"), and methodological differences as academic focus, providing a theoretical basis for policy-making.

The study confirms international and interdisciplinary trends. Future research should deepen multidisciplinary collaboration, explore group difference mechanisms, evaluate policies, strengthen international cooperation, use diverse methods, and support global immigrant health policy optimization.