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This article explores spatial inequality as a conceptual framework to understand the link between poor housing, environmental degradation, and mental health. The dire housing conditions are one of the many struggles that refugees face in South Africa. This paper emerged from fieldwork carried out between 2020 and 2022 among Congolese refugees in Yeoville, a suburb of Johannesburg. They were included in a research project investigating the existing association between displacement, gendered violence, and mental ill-health among internally displaced persons, refugees, and asylum seekers. The article highlights that while mental health challenges can result from various factors, poor housing adds profound psychological distress to Congolese refugees in South Africa. Drawing on 83 interviews with male and female Congolese refugees, this article highlights how precarious housing disrupts traditional, social, and cultural structures. It also weakens parents' control over their children, invades privacy, exposes women and girls to sexual violence, and contributes to the fragility of family bonds. The findings of this paper emphasize the importance of spatial inequality in examining the precarious housing conditions experienced by refugees in South Africa. These conditions, which occur in seemingly abandoned environments, have a detrimental impact on the mental health of Congolese refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The health of refugees has been widely documented, as has the impact of a range of factors throughout the migration journey from being exposed to violence to the impacts of immigration detention. This study adds to our understanding of health-related quality of life amongst refugees and asylum seekers by evaluating health-related quality of life as measured by the Short-Form 36 (SF-36) Health Survey using meta-analysis. The aims of this study were to (1) provide a summary and overview of health-related quality of life (as measured by the SF-36), including the extent to which this varies and (2) explore the factors that influence health-related quality of life (as measured by the SF-36) amongst refugees and asylum seekers. A search was undertaken of MEDLINE, CINAHL, PSYCINFO and SCOPUS, returning 3965 results. Papers were included if they sampled refugees (or asylum seeker or those with refugee-like experiences) and used the SF-36 (or its variants) as an outcome measure. Mean scores and standard deviations were pooled using a random effects model. The pooled sample size was 18,418. The pooled mean scores for the SF-36 physical summary measures was 54.99 (95% CI 46.01–63.99), while the mental health summary measure was 52.39 (95% CI 43.35–61.43). The pooled mean scores for each of the sub-scales ranged from 49.6 (vitality) to 65.54 (physical functioning). High heterogeneity was found between both summary measures and all sub-scales. In comparison to SF-36 results from general populations in high and middle income countries, these results suggest that refugee quality of life is generally poorer. However, this varied substantially between studies. One issue that is not well clarified by this review are the factors that contributed to health-related quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]