(SOM4e) Sociology of Migration: Migration, gender, and intersectionality

It is widely acknowledged that gender and sexuality are integral in the processes of migration and in migration outcomes. Three papers presented in this session illuminate the complex ways in which gender and sexuality interact and influence migration. The first paper reveals how networks mediate how intimate relationships and sexuality shape the integration assets and behaviours of 60 opera singers, mostly from the Soviet Union. However, the most difficult problem for the informants of this study is the establishment of rapport with lower-level intermediaries rather than with more influential network actors. The second and third papers use queer migration scholarship with the following objectives. One paper disentangles gender and sexuality using data from 50 skilled Chinese LGBTQ + migrants and investigates the multi-relational dynamics associated with transnational relationships. Another paper investigates sexuality and the organization of economic, social, and political remittances, using data collected from Haiti and from the Haitian diaspora. The remaining paper in this session focuses on the variability associated with the number of siblings on abortion attitudes in interaction with generation status and the frequency of border crossings. Tags: Migration and Immigration, Policy

Organizers: Lisa Kaida, McMaster University, Lori Wilkinson, University of Manitoba, Monica Boyd, University of Toronto; Chair: Aryan Karimi, University of British Columbia

Presentations

Irina Isaakyan, Toronto Metropolitan University

Dynamics of elite migrant networks: the role of gender and sexuality

People migrate in networks, argues Alejandro Portes (1995) in his fundamental work. Therefore, migrants must learn to obtain membership in their networks and to deal with its requirements (ibid). In application to elite migrants such as musicians and artists, the unanswered question is how they manage to sustain challenges of their network membership on a daily basis. Seeking to answer it, this paper studies the dynamics of elite migrant-artists’ networks. Based on narrative biographic interviews with 60 opera singers from the former Soviet states who now live and work in Europe and North America, I examine the most challenging experiences that the informants had while navigating global opera networks. Those include understanding the network dynamics before or at the very beginning of migration, learning to meet the ‘right people’ in ‘right places’, building relations with them and managing to sustain those relations. Synthesizing the informants’ testimonies with the theories of ‘migrant network’ and ‘cultural production’, I explore their networking problems and associated coping strategies, particularly through the prism of gender relations. I specifically look into their network brokerage and other difficult and gender-biased relations and practices that my informants had with their networks. The analysis of the findings illuminates the work of migrant agency in relation to the most desired and undesired networking spaces they respectively sought to enter and exit. Seeking entrance to their networks, the informants use the strategies of socializing parties, personal friends’ connections and protection of a powerful network actors (network node). Very often these strategic, or agentic, activities are inter-connected, forming the ‘strategic (or agentic) staircase’: the informant may first participate in a socializing party, where s/he would meet a soon-to-be friend or mentor, who would eventually introduce him/her to an influential patron. The findings show that the most difficult problem for my informants in their elite networking was the socialization and establishment of a rapport with their low-level intermediaries rather than with more influential network actors. The informants confess having experienced many more serious and long-term hardships and vulnerabilities such as daily humiliation (both emotional and physical), over-exploitation (both as professionals and as persons, especially as young, vulnerable women) and persistent gender bias through the networking relations of this kind. Another difficult challenge of their networking was their inability to end the undesired relationship with a previously desired network patron and to terminate the undesired network membership quickly and without consequences for one’s career progression. It came to be a much more difficult challenge than the initiation of a network contact or the network entrance, especially for the women singers. Strange as it may sound, these “privileged” informants were mostly using the most traditional coping strategy of transnational marriage in the form of the marriage to a powerful network actor. They admit that it always produced the desired effect on the professional level. And this strategy was actively used by both the interviewed women and men. While spotting gender differences in my informants’ experiences of dealing with the challenging reality of their elite migrant networks, this paper also illuminates the role of sexuality as a strong factor affecting elite migrants’ decision-making and explores such a powerful mechanism of elite migrant networking as ‘sexuality navigation’.

Rachel Rammal, McGill University

Family, migration, and attitude formation: The role of siblings in shaping gender attitudes

 The present study explores two main questions: 1. How do siblings shape individuals’ social and political attitudes on gender, such as views on abortion, perspectives on gender parity in the labour market, and self-reported household division of labour? 2. To what extent does the influence of siblings on these gender attitudes and behaviours vary among immigrants, the second generation, and the majority population? In the sociological landscape on attitudinal formation, siblings tend to assume the role of the often-overlooked middle child, somewhat overshadowed by the more traditional influences of education systems, peer dynamics, and parent-child relationships. These conventional factors are well-known to shape individuals’ social and political attitudes. However, emergent research reveals the independent influence of siblings in shaping attitudes on a range of social issues from gay rights to immigration—beyond the conventional trifecta of school, peers, and parents. Growing up with many siblings tends to correlate with more conservative views, with gender composition playing a role in shaping enduring attitudes toward gender roles. While this evolving literature predominantly centers on sibling dynamics within national majority populations, sociological and anthropological insights propose that sibling relationships in migrant families introduce unique dynamics. Migrant siblings, who frequently exhibit higher scores on familism values, increased contact and lower conflict levels, compared to their native-born peers, prompt the need for further exploration into how these dynamics influence gender attitude formation, particularly within the context of migration. This study utilizes the second edition of the French dataset Trajectoires et Origines (TeO2), a nationally representative survey that gathers data from 27,000 respondents. This dataset explores the living conditions and trajectories of first-generation immigrants, the second generation, and the descendants of France-born natives. To explore whether migrant-specific acculturation processes influence the relative importance of sibling effects on gender attitudes, I employ ordinal probit regression models. These models assess views on abortion, perspectives on gender parity in the labour market, and individuals reported division of household labour across each migrant category. The analyses include considerations for social network contact with friends, peers, family, and cross-border relations, while controlling for respondents gender, marital status, employment status, educational attainment, parental education, political affiliation, and religion. Preliminary findings on the abortion item indicate that an increase in sibship size, treated as a linear variable (ranging from 0 to 10 siblings), is linked to decreased support for abortion across the entire sample (p < 0.001). Subsequent models using precise sibship categories suggest varying levels of statistical significance among different migrant categories. Among first-generation immigrants, the most pronounced statistical significance (p < 0.001) is observed for respondents with 5 siblings or more, for the second-generation, 4 siblings, while for the majority population, having 3 siblings was sufficient to predict lower support for abortion. In the model assessing the presence of siblings (versus being an only child), the mixed gender composition (having both brothers and sisters) is negatively associated with support for abortion for first-generation (p < 0.001), second generation (p < 0.001), and descendants of France-born natives (p < 0.01). Frequent cross-border contact is associated with reduced support for abortion for first generation immigrant (p < 0.001), and the second-generation (p < 0.001), whereas it contributes to pro-abortion attitudes in the majority population (p < 0.01). Additionally, frequent contact with friends correlates with heightened support for abortion among first and second-generation respondents (p < 0.05), but not within the majority population. Lastly, frequent family contact is significantly associated with reduced support for abortion exclusively among the second-generation (p < 0.05). Initial observations suggest that growing up with a greater number of siblings correlates with higher conservative beliefs regarding abortion, irrespective of migrant background. However, a fewer number of siblings appears to contribute to this effect in the majority population. Notably, in the context of the second-generation, the effect of sibship size appears to be partly influenced by increased kin-based interactions. The discussion will assess the relevance of an existing mechanism in which larger sibships, by promoting increased kin-based interactions, mediate a shift toward more conservative beliefs marked by a decline in generalized trust toward out-group members. 

Carlo Handy Charles, University of Windsor

Transnationalism and Sexuality: How Haitian gay men negotiate economic, social, and political remittances in their intimate transnational relationships

Situated at the intersection of transnationalism and sexuality, this paper offers a framework to examine the ways in which transnationalism and socioeconomic inequality intersect with homosexuality to shape the transnational process of negotiating economic, social, and political remittances in cross-border relationships among gay Haitian men. Second, it provides a lens to study how the transnational process of negotiating migrant remittances in the Haitian context shapes, in turn, the dynamics of intimate transnational relationships that gay men in Haiti develop and maintain with their migrant partners across the Haitian diaspora. In doing so, this research innovates existing transnationalism and sexuality scholarship that focuses mainly on the relationships that heterosexual couples and families maintain across international borders (Portes et al. 1999; Mazzucato and Schans 2011; Mackenzie and Menjívar 2011; Carling and Menjívar 2012; McLeod and Burrows 2014; Baldassar and Merla 2014; Baldassar et al. 2016) by adding a much-needed analysis of how homosexuality shapes transnational relationships among gay migrants and non-migrants. In 2022, international migrants sent an estimated 647 billion US dollars in remittances to their families and friends in low- and middle-income countries. This figure represents a five-percent increase compared to the 597 billion US dollars they remitted in 2021. While this remittance increase varies across regions, the World Bank reports that remittances migrants sent to Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 9.3 percent compared to the previous year. This increase exemplifies the strong transnational connections migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean maintain with their loved ones back home. Also, it points to their vital role in the region’s socioeconomic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic. Among Caribbean nations, Haiti was one of the top remittance-recipient countries in 2022. The estimated 3.1 billion US dollars Haitian non-migrants received from migrants across the Haitian diaspora represented more than 60 percent of foreign cash inflows. In 2020, Haitian remittances made up 37 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, making Haiti one of the largest recipients of remittances in the world. These numbers point to the significant impact that Haitian migrants have had on Haitian society. While Haitian migrants are often perceived as having a positive economic impact on the country, some are criticized for engaging in homosexual behaviours, seemingly infringing on ‘traditional’ Haitian family values in a largely conservative ‘Christian’ society. This revives old debates about migrants’ role in using their money to normalize homosexual romantic/intimate relationships and to pervert sexual morality and acceptable gender norms among non-migrants in Haiti. Although homosexuality has always existed in Haiti (Lescot and Magloire 2002; Migraine-George 2014; Smith 2017) and romantic/intimate relationships and remittances between gay men in Haiti and those abroad have long existed, these cross-border relationships and transnational processes have rarely been the object of sociological research. My overall research project aims to fill this gap. My paper uses a mixed-method qualitative approach consisting of eleven months of ethnography and forty-four semi-structured interviews with gay men in Northern Haiti to examine their transnational romantic/intimate relationships with migrant partners across the Haitian diaspora in the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Chile, and the Dominican Republic. I use ethnographic field notes to provide background information and contextualize the interview data. I use semi-structured interviews to examine how gay men in Northern Haiti negotiate economic, social, and political remittances within the heteronormative context of their family and community while navigating intimate transnational relationships with gay migrant partners across the Haitian diaspora. The ethnography allows me to account for how the socio-structural conditions of life in Northern Haiti shape intimate cross-border relationships and the transnational process of negotiating migrant remittances among gay men in Haiti and those in the Haitian diaspora. The interviews provide a space to account for gay men’s perceptions, perspectives and experiences negotiating remittances in Northern Haiti while navigating intimate relationships with migrant partners from the Haitian diaspora. More importantly, the interviews allow me to delve into participants’ sense-making, which is essential to understand how they make sense of the economic, social, and political remittances they receive from their gay migrant partners in the Haitian context of stigmatization and discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.The main finding I will discuss in this conference paper is that homosexuality shapes and organizes intimate cross-border relationships and the transnational process of negotiating economic, social, and political remittances among gay non-migrants in Haiti and their migrant partners across the Haitian diaspora in the United States, Canada, France, Brazil, Chile, and the Dominican Republic. Research on immigration and sexuality has shown that sexuality is a dimension of power (Foucault 1978, 1991; Rubin 1984) that shapes and organizes how LGBTQ+ people migrate and incorporate into their host societies (Luibhéid 2005; Manalansan 2006; Cantú 2009; Carillo 2017; Tamagawa 2020; Murray 2020). By arguing that sexuality is a dimension of power, Luibhéid uses a queer theory approach to demonstrate how sexuality thoroughly “shapes families, communities, state institutions, and economies as well as how sexual norms, struggles and forms of governance always articulate hierarchies of gender, race, class and geopolitics” (Luibhéid 2005). From this perspective, Luibhéid and other queer migration scholars show that sexuality not only motivates the migration of LGBTQ+ people but also shapes how they incorporate into their host societies. Drawing on this scholarship, this paper shows that sexuality is a dimension of power (Foucault 1978, 1991; Rubin 1984) that shapes transnational processes and cross-border relationships involving gay migrants and non-migrants. By transnational processes, I refer to the economic, social, and political remittances that gay migrants and non-migrants share, affecting their lives and projects in their home and host countries. The economic remittances capture the transnational process (Glick Schiller et al. 1994; Goldring 1999; Landolt 2001; Carling 2008; Castles et al. 2014) through which gay migrants who live in wealthier countries often send money transfers to gay non-migrants. Social remittances (Levitt 2001; Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011) cover the transnational process of transferring ideas, sociocultural norms, knowledge, information, and advice about sexuality and migration among migrants and non-migrants. Political remittances (Lacroix et al. 2016) are ideas and strategies that some gay migrants share with non-migrants about mobilizing and fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in the homeland. In contrast, transnational relationships encompass the romantic and intimate relationships that gay men develop and maintain across international borders. In this paper, I show that paramount to an understanding of sexuality as a dimension of power is that homosexuality makes transnational connections and relationships between gay men possible. In turn, these connections and relationships shape the sexuality of those involved and the transnational processes described above. Applying this conceptualization of sexuality to this paper, I show that homosexuality enables connections between gay men in Northern Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Second, homosexuality shapes how they develop and maintain intimate relationships and organizes the sending of economic, social, and political remittances across international borders. The processes of sending money and sharing ideas, information, advice, and strategies among Haitian gay men structure their lives and projects in both Haiti and the Haitian diaspora and shape the dynamics of their intimate cross-border relationships. Given the homophobic and impoverished social reality of Haiti, nonmigrants in Northern Haiti negotiate the economic, social, and political remittances they receive from gay migrants as they navigate significant contradictions and conflicts with their homophobic families and the local community at the meso level and power struggles and tensions with their migrant partners at the micro level. This paper discusses the significance of such relationships and processes for the literature on transnationalism.

Tori Yang, University of British Columbia

Gendering Queer Migration: Evidence from Chinese LGBTQ+ Migrants

Since the 1970s, gender and migration scholarship has emerged as a vibrant subfield in migration studies. Evolving from critiquing androcentric perspectives that take men’s experiences as the default principle, this body of work has profoundly transformed our understanding of how migration, like all other social phenomena, is a gendered process. Despite promising developments in the area, assumptions about heterosexuality still largely structure foundational arguments about the context of migration and its process. Most discussions of gender in the family are what Ingraham (1994: 204) calls “heterogender,” a concept which draws our attention to heterosexuality as an unquestioned and invisible social arrangement. However, gender does not simply distribute men and women in relations of inequality across multiple social terrains, but it also involves the marginalization of non-normative gender identities and forms of intimacy. Left under-examined by scholars of gender and migration is the distinct influence of sexuality. To this end, queer migration scholarship provides a crucial intervention. By focusing on “how sexuality constitutes a ‘dense transfer point for relations of power’ that structure all aspects of international migration” (Luibheid 2008: 169), queer migration provides a critical entry point to interrogate the “heterosexual imaginary” (Ingraham 1994) in migration theories, including in gender and migration scholarship (Manalansan 2006). Developments in gender and migration scholarship create opportunities to examine gender not only in the broader context of migration but also within the realm of queer migration, especially given its ontological distinctiveness. However, in its focus on sexualities, queer migration scholarship insufficiently conceptualizes gender as a relational and differentiating mechanism. This oversight inadvertently homogenizes queer migrants as a singular group defined primarily by their non-normative sexualities, an assumption that does not adequately reflect the more complex understandings that are emerging from gender and migration scholarship. If heteronormativity is the “grid of intelligibility” that dictates an “oppositionally and hierarchically defined” gender and sexuality, then the endeavor of queer migration to challenge the heteronormative assumptions in migration scholarship (Luibheid 2004) must extend beyond interrogating non-normative sexualities into a deeper engagement with how gender and sexuality are mutually imbricated in shaping the lives of queer migrants. Combining insights from the queer migration literature and gender and migration scholarship, this article details the gendered effects of queer migration by disentangling gender from sexuality. To do so, I draw from in-depth interviews with 50 skilled Chinese LGBTQ+ migrants in the United States and Canada. Placing the experiences of gay men alongside that of women and non-binary migrants can augment our understanding of the gendered experiences of queer migrants by conceptualizing gender as relational without reifying the premise of heterosexuality. My findings demonstrate how gender provides privileges to a subset of gay men in navigating heteronormative expectations while constraining others. Instead of being uniformly restrictive, however, gendered subjectivities are also reshaped in the process of migration. The findings shed light on the varied impacts of gender and underscore the recursive interplay between gender and queer migration. This article contributes to both gender and migration scholarship and queer migration studies, framing heteronormativity as at once a structuring force and a cultural artifact that is actively negotiated and contested through migration processes.