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. 2025 Jul 7.
doi: 10.1007/s10926-025-10307-1. Online ahead of print.

"He was Threatened and Told to Cooperate": Immigrant Worker Experiences with the Workers' Compensation System in the Canadian Context

Sonja Senthanar  1   2   3 , Bahar Ahmadi  4 , Gillian Creese  5 , Suhail Marino  6   7 , Christopher B McLeod  6   7 , Mieke Koehoorn  6   7
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"He was Threatened and Told to Cooperate": Immigrant Worker Experiences with the Workers' Compensation System in the Canadian Context

Sonja Senthanar et al. J Occup Rehabil. .

Abstract

Purpose: To understand immigrant workers' experiences when navigating the workers' compensation system for access to benefits following a work injury or illness.

Methods: Interviews were conducted with 17 injured immigrant workers recruited in British Columbia through partnerships with settlement organizations, social media and professional networks. A situational analysis approach was used to analyze interview data and to identify contextual reasons for immigrant workers' experience with the workers' compensation system.

Findings: The findings describe a tension between how the workers' compensation system is intended to work and how injured immigrant workers experienced the system. Workers described challenges with accessing and communicating with their case managers for timely access to benefits, work accommodation that did not align with their needs and disrupted their rehabilitation, and complicated claim trajectories stemming from perceptions of procedural unfairness. Immigrant workers described how these experiences were perpetuated by their different contexts including language barriers, unfamiliarity with the workers' compensation system, and their identity as immigrant workers.

Conclusion: This study identifies contextual factors for the experiences of immigrant workers, within the Canadian context, for consideration by workers' compensation system in the management of injury and illness to reduce inequities where they may exist.

Keywords: British Columbia; Immigration; Return to work; Work disability; Workers’ compensation system.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Conflicts of Interest: Authors SS, SM, CBM and MK receive research funding from the workers' compensation system in British Columbia (WorkSafeBC). All inferences, opinions, and conclusions drawn in this manuscript, however, are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of the Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia. Ethical Approval: Ethical approval was obtained from the Behavioral Research Ethics Board at The University of British Columbia (H22-02766). Consent to Participate: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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