Paper short abstract:

Through an analysis of epidemiological research, health policy texts and interviews with sexual health professionals and migrant health organisations, I propose a model in which mobile MSM (men who have sex with men) are understood as constantly migrating between differing internalised constructions of masculinity: out versus closeted, homeland versus promised land, over here versus out there, chronological time versus cyclical time.

Paper long abstract:

Much epidemiological research has been conducted on the sexual attitudes of MSM (men who have sex with men) migrating from countries with high levels of institutionalised homophobia to so-called ‘queer hubs,’ such as London. However, little work has been done on how the methodology employed by such research reinforces an exclusionary and misleading binary between risky, ‘Eastern’ MSM and enlightened, ‘Western’ MSM. Drawing on the ‘Patient Zero’ trope, I argue that sexual health risks which transcend borders are implicitly assumed in much epidemiological research to be distinctly foreign threats to the purity of the homeland. However, growing bodies of literature in both political geography and philosophy of science on the construction of risk, as well as biomedical research exploring the specific dynamics of migration (be it international or intranational), illustrate the more complex, chequered nature of sexual behaviours and sexual risk across borders. The conceptual binary currently upheld in epidemiological research and sexual health policy risks letting certain migrant MSM fall through the cracks in sexual health services, while contributing to the stigmatisation and social exclusion of others. It is thus necessary to reformulate our conception of migration in sexual health policy and research. Rather than occupying fixed states of being, I argue for an understanding in which mobile MSM are understood to move between temporal, as well as physical, spaces. The differing constructions of masculinity inherent to these differing temporal spaces raise a number of important questions around how we think about sexuality and sexual health.