It is a well known fact that qualified health professionals generally migrate to high-income, developed regions. Nevertheless, the perceptions of this immigrant skilled health workforce on access to opportunities or feeling discriminated in their host countries, have not yet been explored or adequately addressed.

This work has focused on the perceptions of immigrant psychiatry trainees in several European countries about their views on having equal access to opportunities as natives or feeling discriminated.

A semi-structured 61-item questionnaire was circulated by National Coordinators in each country and was completed by 2281 psychiatric trainees from 33 European countries between year 2013 and 2014. Data has been analysed using the Software Package for Social Sciences for Windows v. 22.0 (SPSS Inc. Chicago, IL).

In these findings, more than one in ten psychiatry trainees across Europe were immigrants, with top host countries being Switzerland, Sweden and UK. Satisfaction with migration and the perception of having equal opportunities as the native trainees varied depending on the host country they migrated to. More than one-third of the trainees felt discriminated, not having the same opportunities as the local colleagues, especially concerning the work opportunities and the academic conditions. Still, nearly two-thirds considered having the same opportunities than natives.

A high number of immigrant psychiatry trainees subjectively feels they do not have the same opportunities as local trainees. Further research about factual and perceived discrimination by immigrant workforce should be done.