What is (not) distinct about asylum seekers' violence exposures? New insights from a novel network-based survey

Violence is a substantial public health concern because it can portend both immediate and longer-term physical and mental health consequences. To date, most research assessing migrants' violence exposures before migrating has focused on asylum-seekers or refugees alone, leaving open important questions about exposures among those who leave violent contexts but do not seek these statuses. To that end, we conducted a network-based survey to recruit a novel sample of migrants in need of international protection (MNP) in Costa Rica (N = 400) who migrated away from the same countries in the same years but only some of whom applied for asylum. This study offers one of the first accounts of (dis)similarities in the amount and types of pre-migration violence exposures between those who sought asylum and those who did not. Results reveal three key takeaways: (1) the majority of both groups report violence exposures the year before migrating, although the probability is higher among asylum-seekers; (2) differences between asylum-seekers and non-are concentrated among select demographic groups, especially women, young adults, and the least educated; and (3) asylum-seekers are more likely to report primary victimization, greater numbers of perpetrators and persecution types, and victimization by political actors than are non-asylum-seekers. Focusing on asylum-seekers alone thus likely underestimates the size of violence-affected migrant populations and heterogeneity within them. Our findings underscore the importance of screening for violence among all migrants who left violent contexts, regardless of immigration status, and of applying more inclusive sampling methods to extend our scientific lens beyond asylum-seekers alone.