Research in the field of sexuality and space has begun to explore the relationships between gay and queer sexual subjectivities and migration. Much of this research examines the regulation and ...policing of queer international migrants or identity formation processes among younger queer people migrating within countries. This study, although located partially within the second category, broadens and deepens existing accounts of gay men's migrations within countries by focusing on life circumstances and events beyond an initial coming-out process and considering the migration experiences of gay men at multiple points in the life course. This study uses life course theory to contextualize the migration narratives of 48 self-identified gay men in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, DC. The findings lend credence to recent claims that migration is central in the lives of gay men and other queer people but extends the concept of gay migration to include more than just the disclosure or initial development of a gay identity. They reframe migration as a tool used to negotiate a variety of life circumstances and transitions (e.g., establishing careers, creating meaningful community identities) rendered challenging by variegated landscapes of stigma and inclusion in North America.
HIV surveillance systems show that gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) bear a disproportionate burden of HIV in North American and European countries. Within the MSM category, ...HIV prevalence is often elevated among ethnic minority (i.e., Latino, Asian, and Black) MSM, many of whom are also foreign-born immigrants. Little research has focused specifically on foreign-born populations, though studies that provide data on the nativity of their samples offer an opportunity to investigate the potential role of transnational migration in informing HIV risk among ethnic minority MSM. This systematic review of ethnic minority MSM studies where the nativity of the sample is known provides a robust alternative to single studies measuring individual-level predictors of HIV risk behaviour. In this review, HIV prevalence, unprotected sex, drug use, and HIV testing are analysed in relation to the ethnicity, nativity, and location of the samples included. The results, which include high rates of HIV, unprotected sex, and stimulant use in foreign-born Latino samples and high rates of alcohol and club drug use in majority foreign-born Asian Pacific Islander (API) samples, provide baseline evidence for the theory of migration and HIV risk as syndemics within ethnic minority populations in North American and European countries. The findings also suggest that further research on the contextual factors influencing HIV risk among ethnic minority MSM groups and especially immigrants within these groups is needed. These factors include ethnic networks, individual post-migration transitions, and the gay communities and substance use cultures in specific destination cities. Further comparative work may also reveal how risk pathways differ across ethnic groups.
•Advances a theory of transnational migration and HIV risk among MSM as syndemic.•Establishes baseline prevalence data for HIV risk factors among ethnic minority MSM.•Provides a point of departure for inter-ethnic comparison of HIV risk factors for MSM.
This meta-analysis featuring 12 national adult studies and 16 state/regional youth studies of sexuality and mental health finds that sexual minorities—as a likely consequence of place-contingent ...minority stress—experience mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation much more frequently than their heterosexual counterparts. By interrogating the geographic variations in the findings, such as high rates of poor mental health outcomes in the United Kingdom, large gay-heterosexual disparities in the Netherlands, and lower and improving rates of both outcomes and risk factors in Vermont and British Columbia, this study asserts that policy regimes, health programming, and the ways in which sexual minorities are constructed in places all contribute to their mental health.
Gay men have been implicated in neoliberal urban development strategies (e.g. the creative city) as a 'canary' population that forecasts growth. Paradoxically, both neoliberal re-development of North ...American inner-cities and the ways in which gay men become neoliberalised as individuals contribute to the dissolution of urban gay communities. In contrast to discourses of homonormativity, which suggest that gay men's declining attachments to gay communities stem from new equalities and consequent desires to assimilate into the mainstream, this article argues that gay men in DC have internalised neoliberal discourses that call for career development, home ownership and social hypermobilities. The narratives of 24 gay-identified men living in DC indicate that the social and spatial dissolution of the gay community is linked with individual aspirations that are increasingly difficult to achieve. These aspirations include career advancement in a transient local economy, property ownership in an out-of-reach market, and the attainment of social status based on an ability to move through multiple neighbourhoods and venues with ease. As might be expected, African American and working class men are often left beyond the fray of these new neoliberal ideals.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals experience high rates of adverse mental health outcomes due to the stressors they experience in families, communities, and society ...more broadly. Work and workplaces have the potential to influence these outcomes given their ability to amplify minority stress, and their ability to influence social and economic wellbeing in this already marginalized population. This study aims to identify how sociodemographic characteristics and characteristics of work, including degree of precarity, industry and perceived workplace support for LGBTQ people, influence self-reported mental health among LGBTQ people in two Canadian cities. Self-identified LGBTQ workers greater than or equal to16 years of age (n = 531) in Sudbury and Windsor, Ontario, Canada were given an online survey between July 6 and December 2, 2018. Multivariate ordinal logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (OR) to evaluate differences in gender identity, age, income, industry, social precarity, work environment, and substance use among workers who self-reported very poor, poor, or neutral mental health, compared with a referent group that self-reported good or very good mental health on a five-point Likert scale about general mental health. LGBTQ workers with poor or neutral mental health had greater odds of: being cisgender women or trans compared with being cisgender men; being aged <35 years compared with greater than or equal to35 years; working in low-wage service sectors compared with blue collar jobs; earning <$20,000/year compared with greater than or equal to$20,000/year; working in a non-standard work situation or being unemployed compared with working in full-time permanent employment; feeling often or always unable to schedule time with friends due to work; feeling unsure or negative about their work environment; and using substances to cope with work. Both precarious work and unsupportive work environments contribute to poor mental health among LGBTQ people. These factors are compounded for trans workers who face poorer mental health than cis-LGBQ workers in similar environments.
An established body of research in psychology, psychiatry and epidemiology links social stigma and stress with poor mental and sexual health outcomes among gay-identified men. Less work considers how ...these linkages are mediated by place and almost none considers the role of movement across places. This qualitative study, based on the migration narratives of 48 gay-identified men living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, D.C., U.S.A. gives more careful consideration to the ways in which mental and emotional health issues (e.g., anxiety, depression, substance use) in this population both precipitate migration and stem from migration. The narratives show that decisions to migrate often emerge from men׳s experiences of place-based minority stress and associated health outcomes. At the same time, moving to urban gay communities, when coupled with other life circumstances, can create or reinforce physical and emotional insecurities that lead to low self-esteem, substance use and sexual risk-taking.
•Examines migration narratives of 48 gay-identified men in Canada and the United States.•Outlines mental health experiences precipitating migration among gay men.•Provides qualitative evidence for syndemics of gay migration and sexual health risks.•Offers understandings of how minority stress affects health across the gay life course.
► Challenges an emergent discourse of gay village decline. ► Contests ‘evolutionary’ models of gay villages. ► Offers a case study of gay/queer communities and spaces outside Canada’s largest cities. ...► Suggests alternative formations of gay villages and reasons for their creation.
Gay villages, usually defined as spatially concentrated configurations of bars, entertainment venues, community spaces, and homes associated with a gay-identified population, have received considerable attention from urban geographers studying gentrification. Frequently, gay villages have been critiqued as commodified spaces that serve mostly upper- and middle-class patrons. Yet they are also culturally and historically significant sites of mobilization, community building, and identity formation. During the last decade, media outlets in some North American cities have begun to dismiss gay villages as ‘declining’ or ‘dead.’ In models of ‘gay village evolution,’ decline is often positioned as a natural end precipitated by the commercialization and normalization of gay community spaces, the emergence of alternative venues in out-of-centre neighborhoods, and recent advancements in gay rights that render ‘safe’ spaces unnecessary. Using the case study of Ottawa, Canada’s Le/The Village, a gay village designated by the municipal government in November 2011, this paper argues that gay village decline, more a discursive trend than a foregone conclusion, is contingent upon both the historical and cultural particularities of cities and the intersecting subjectivities of those who encounter the village. The Ottawa case runs counter to discourse that dismisses gay villages as normalizing, over-commercialized, exclusionary, or simply passé. Using the narratives of 24 gay-identified men living in Ottawa, this article suggests that the absence of a village, as much as the creation and concretization of one, can perpetuate extant class and locational privilege within gay communities and that ‘new’ gay villages in smaller cities—perhaps more symbolic and psychic than capitalistic—may work to challenge the perpetuation of privilege.
•Sexual minority youth have historically smoked more than heterosexual youth.•We examined whether tobacco use has changed over time among diverse youth.•Tobacco use declined for all youth over ...time.•Sexual minorities still share a disproportionate burden of tobacco use.•Some sexual orientation disparities in smoking are getting worse over time.
An established body of research documents that sexual minority (i.e., lesbian, gay, and bisexual) populations are at higher risk for several adverse health behaviors and outcomes compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Smoking is one behavior where the gap is especially large, particularly among youth. Researchers have increasingly drawn attention to contextual determinants of health behaviors affecting sexual minority youth.
Although these factors have evolved over time, few scholars have examined time as a contextual factor that affects sexual minority health behaviors or the level of inequality with heterosexual populations. We aimed to fill this gap.
We used eight years of data from the Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey (MYRBS), pooled into four waves, to determine whether gaps between sexual minority and heterosexual youth have widened or narrowed for three different indicators of smoking: having ever smoked, early onset smoking, and daily cigarette smoking in the past 30 days.
We find that, though rates of smoking for all youth in Massachusetts have declined since the late 1990s, significant disparities remain between sexual minority and heterosexual youth.
Findings may suggest that targeted tobacco control programs in Massachusetts are needed; perhaps shifts in social attitudes toward smoking have affected smoking behaviors in diverse segments of society.
Drawing on recent work that examines the contingent, personal nature of queer migration, this paper provides empirical support for recent claims that coming-out journeys are more complex than the ...linear, often rural-to-urban typologies that have framed them during the past two decades. Since coming-out journeys are rarely elaborated beyond a conceptual level, overly teleological understandings involving homophobic, rural places, inclusive urban homelands, and one-time, linear 'flights' and 'escapes' persist. Employing the migration narratives of 48 self-identified gay men who settled in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, DC, USA, this paper challenges the linearity and finality of coming-out migration by highlighting particular segments of the journey. These include short-term trips to scout the gay life potentials of places, migrations that result in a degree of re-entry into 'the closet,' relocations that allow men to test or try on different places and identities, and moves (or imminent moves) that 'trigger'-rather than stem from-a coming-out process. Taken together, these segments suggest that coming-out journeys are ongoing, relational, and often discontinuous journeys influenced by both queer individuals' intersectional subjectivities (e.g., age, race, and class) and the social contexts of the places they encounter.
•English LGB groups may be overlooked in strategies to reduce smoking inequalities.•Lower mental wellbeing is a key pathway into smoking for English LGB individuals.•LGB smoking risks may be distinct ...from those affecting lower social class groups.•National context may explain lack of age- or exposure-based pathways for LGB groups.•English LGB groups require more targeted smoking prevention and cessation efforts.
Previous research has shown that lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) populations smoke more than their heterosexual counterparts. Little is known about the pathways into smoking among LGB populations in England relative to the lower social class populations that are the focus of the current Tobacco Control Plan (TCP).
Using the 2013/2014 waves of the Health Survey for England (HSE), we created a structural equation model to analyze pathways and interactions between sexual orientation, social class, and the number of cigarettes smoked daily. The path analysis assessed whether three intervening factors—age of initiation, mental wellbeing score, and exposure to smoke—are implicated similarly in smoking among LGB and lower social class populations, and whether interaction between sexual orientation and class is further associated with smoking.
Bivariate analysis showed that LGB-identified individuals and individuals in lower occupational classes smoke more cigarettes daily, respectively, than heterosexual individuals and those in professional/managerial-class populations. Path analysis showed that the number of cigarettes smoked daily was mediated by age of initiation, mental wellbeing score and weekly exposure to smoke among routine and manual workers; by mental wellbeing score and exposure to smoke among intermediate class workers, and by mental wellbeing score in the LGB population. Interactions between sexual orientation and social class were not significant.
The differential nature of pathways into smoking for lower social classes and LGB populations in England suggests the need for tailored prevention and cessation efforts, with programming for LGB populations focused on the distinct stressors they face.
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