“Because He Misses His Normal Life Back Home”: Masculinity and Sexual Behavior Among Mexican Migrants in Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract

Context

Labor migration presents an important HIV risk context. Effective health promotion begins with understanding cultural and structural influences on sexual risk.

Methods

This paper presents the quantitative results from a mixed-methods study carried out in 1999 among Mexican migrant men (N=187) in Atlanta, Georgia. The instrument included questions on several domains: Demographic and sexual history, migration motivations, substance use, social support, leisure time practices, and ideas about masculinity, sexuality, and marriage. We created six multivariate regressions to test the association between each of these domains and men's number of partners.

Results

Greater number of partners was associated with being younger, having fewer years of formal education, and owning a home in Mexico (Model 1); taking more trips to Mexico (Model 2); feeling sex wasn't tied to emotional intimacy and power (Model 3); having a larger social network and fewer frequency of contact with network members (Model 4); having a sex worker as a partner (Model 5); and going out dancing and stripclubs on weekends (Model 6).

Conclusion

Emergent visions of marriage that include shared sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy and power imply a reorganization of marital sexuality; yet, only those men who emphasize emotional companionship and equity have fewer extramarital sexual partners. An individual-level intervention may be insufficient to transform men's ideas about manhood; programs must acknowledge and target migrant men's social networks and the spaces in which sexual risk may occur. Multilevel strategies, such as the development of more health-enhancing community spaces, active discussions regarding masculinity, and the promotion of safer sexual practices should form part of comprehensive efforts to reduce sexual risk among migrant men.

Introduction

Circular patterns of labor migration between Mexico and the United States play a significant role in Mexico's rural HIV epidemic^1-6. Migrants' vulnerability to HIV reflects the individual characteristics typical of many migrants, who tend overwhelmingly to be young men with little formal education and limited English skills. In addition, migrant men's vulnerability to HIV reflects the social characteristics of the communities in which they arrive, including generally more permissive norms about sexuality (in comparison to Mexico), the anonymity provided by being in a large urban context far from home, a lack of infrastructure to provide social support for migrants, exploitative working conditions, and a lack of access to health care^6,7.

In response to increasing awareness of the migration-HIV nexus and of the importance of prevention work with Mexican migrants in the US, recent studies have focused on migrants' sexual risk behaviors and reviewed prevention approaches towards Mexican migrants⁸. This work on sexual risk and possible modes of intervention has described the proximate behavioral and individual correlates of sexual risk, but it also has stressed the need for more research on how environmental and contextual factors shape sexual risk practices among unaccompanied male migrants^8-11. A recent review and meta-analysis by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, concluded with a call for research that explores “Hispanic cultural features… along with structural factors to further disentangle the moderators of HIV risk behavior”¹².

This study addresses that gap in the literature, analyzing the associations of cultural and social factors with the sexual risk of unaccompanied migrant Mexican men in Atlanta, Georgia. The primary cultural constructs explored are men's ideas about masculinity, love, sexuality and marriage. Prior work in this migrant community^{5,13,14 15} described a generational shift in marital ideals. Older men and women in rural Mexico emphasized the fulfillment of gendered obligations as a key characteristic of a successful marriage. Men and women born in the 1960s and 1970s, in contrast, shared a marital ideal characterized by a growing emphasis on companionship, pleasure, emotional intimacy, and in some cases, shared decision making. For younger women, this emerging ideal framed a new understanding of sexual fidelity, which became not only a demonstration of respect but proof of love⁵. The study described here sought to explore whether men from a similar migrant community in rural Western Mexico, separated from their wives by thousands of miles and a national border, also saw this new marital ideal as requiring sexual fidelity, or merely greater discretion.

Cultural factors such as shared beliefs about masculinity and femininity certainly shape sexual behavior, but they hardly are the only or even the most important determinants of behavior ^16-18. Prior work suggests that loneliness might be a significant influence on migrant men's sexual risk behavior. Unaccompanied migrant men's sexual behavior is characterized by high levels of sexual risk, both in comparison to those whose wives migrate with them¹⁰ and in comparison to the behaviors of those same men in their communities of origin¹¹. In addition, many men in the qualitative portion of the current study¹⁹ remarked on the relationship between loneliness, the alienation that characterizes migrant life, and sexual risk behavior. One man, for example, explained that a common reason to seek out extramarital sex is that “… he misses his normal life back home”. Therefore, in addition to exploring how cultural constructions of masculinity and sexuality shape Mexican migrants' sexual risk, the survey explored how loneliness, the desire for companionship, and men's leisure time activities may relate to patterns of sexual risk—exploring men's motivations for seeking sex, rather than assuming that pleasure was their only goal.

This study contributes to the body of work exploring how gender—conceptualized as relationship-level inequality between men and women as well as the gendered social organization of rights, access to resources, opportunities, obligations, and beliefs—relates to men's reproductive health^20-28. The specific focus is how masculinity, including cultural-specific measures of Mexican migrant men's masculinity, marital ideologies and sexuality, is connected to sexual behavior. Although scales of masculinity exist, most of them have been developed among white American college students^29,30. Existing culturally-specific scales^31-33 developed for US Latinos do not capture the specific generational changes that we observed ethnographically among Mexican men both in Atlanta and in the rural Mexican sending communities¹⁵. These changes emphasize emotional intimacy, shared decision-making, socializing as a couple (rather than having a man spend his free time with his friends), and mutual sexual pleasure as key characteristics of a successful marriage. Furthermore, the preponderance of public health research on masculinity and health emphasizes cognitive and ideological dimensions of masculinity, focusing on roles, beliefs, ideologies, and scripts. Our analyses, in contrast, explore additional domains of gender, including social networks (both size and frequency of interactions) and participation in leisure time activities. The survey included, therefore, a set of items about sexuality, masculinity, and marriage, which were based on findings from the ethnographic portion of this study as well as the first author's prior research with Mexican migrant families in Atlanta and in two migrant-exporting communities in rural Mexico.

Method

Context

In Atlanta, as throughout the southeastern United States, individuals of Mexican-origin account for a growing share both of the foreign-born population and of the growing Latino population. Statewide, 108,922 Hispanics or Latinos of any race were enumerated in Georgia in 1990, compared to 435,227 ten years later^34,35. As a proportion of the state's overall population, Hispanics accounted for 1.7 percent in 1990 and 5.3 percent in 2000³⁵. As indicated by the growing enrollment of children in Georgia's Dekalb County School System (the county in which this research took place), for whom Spanish is a primary language³⁶, this population included families with varying mobility patterns: some families migrated to the area and settled down while other families were seasonal workers. Many others, however, were male labor migrants, drawn by opportunities for employment in residential construction and landscaping, agriculture and food processing, and light industry (such as the carpet mills of North Georgia) ^37-39.

The ten-county Atlanta metropolitan area, which was home to some 3.4 million people when these data were collected, reflects these regional trends. Atlanta includes some of the fastest growing counties (in terms of population size) in the United States. Much of this growth is a result of increases in the size of the Hispanic population⁴⁰. In 2000, the 9.2 million Mexicans born in Mexico who were enumerated in the U.S. census represented almost 30 percent of the country's total foreign born population, as well as the single largest group of foreign-born persons in the country⁴¹. Similarly, the 190,621 Mexican-born Hispanics who were enumerated in Georgia in the same year accounted for 33 percent of the state's foreign born³⁵.

Sample & Eligibility Criteria

The data for this analysis were collected in the study: Mexican Migrant Men in the Urban South: Social Ties and HIV Risk. This mixed-method study consisted of two phases. Phase I consisted of ethnographic observations and 31 semi structured interviews, with questions on demographic attributes, migration, work experience, masculinity, sexuality, marriage, and other sexual relationships of men from Maravatio, Michoacán, between May and September of 1999. Findings from this portion of the research are presented elsewhere¹⁹. Phase II was based on the first phase of research and consisted of a structured survey instrument that was designed to explore the influence of cultural and social aspects of masculinity on the sexual behavior of Mexican migrant men. Inclusion criteria were 1) having been born in the state of Michoacán, Mexico; 2) having been in the United States for a minimum of a month; 3) being married with a wife who was in Mexico or having “una relación de pareja” (a couple relationship) with someone in Mexico.

The lack of a sampling frame for this population, combined with its highly mobile and largely undocumented status, made probability sampling difficult if not impossible⁹. Instead, we selected a community-based convenience sample of Mexican migrant men based on extensive ethnographic knowledge of the migrant community in Atlanta. Phase I of the study involved work with local community networks to choose a soccer team in Atlanta's northern suburbs that represented a particular Mexican sending community. This team represented the universe of ethnographic research inquiry and the center-point for sampling men into the survey. The sample for the survey consisted of 200 men from the state of Michoacán who 1) lived in the apartment complex that was adjacent to the field where this team practiced, or 2) played on any of the soccer teams of the league that practiced at this field. The six Latino male interviewers had attended soccer games throughout the prior season, during which time they became well known to members of the league and inhabitants of the apartment complex.

Procedures

This study was submitted for review to the Institutional Review Board at Emory University. Study goals, instruments, and procedures were also reviewed by a Community Advisory Board, which included representatives from the Mexican Consulate, a prominent local priest whose parish was largely composed of Mexican immigrants, and a social worker who directed a number of service programs at a faith-based community organization. In addition to using IRB-approved procedures for seeking consent from the individual study participants, we sought permission from the managers of the apartment complex and the directors of the soccer league. After this permission was granted, interviewers approached spectators during weekend soccer matches, and players after the matches, to invite them to participate in the survey. Additional participants were recruited by going door to door through the apartment complex, seeking participation from one resident per unit. Given the legal vulnerability of this population, many of whom are undocumented migrants, the Emory IRB granted permission to use oral rather than written informed consent, so that study participants would not be required to sign their name on study documents or even to tell us their names.

Measures

The survey instrument had seven parts: demographic factors; migration experience; masculinity ideologies; social network and social support; sexual risk behaviors; substance use; and leisure-time activities. Our conceptual model examines the association of these domains with Mexican men's sexual risk. The covariates for this analysis are operationalized as follows:

Demographic factors

We used multiple variables to capture men's demographic attributes, including their place of birth (i.e., city, town, or ranch), age at time of interview, highest level of education completed (i.e., primary incomplete; primary completed; high school or more completed), household ownership in Mexico, whether they had one or more children, and all the types of job (e.g., construction, cleaning/janitor, business owner, gardner) carried out since moving to Atlanta.

Migration experience

Participants were asked to report the date (month and year) they migrated to the US for the first time. We then computed participants' average length of stay in the US from this variable. Men were asked whether they had migrated alone, the number of people with whom they migrated, and the number of times they had to return to Mexico. Furthermore, we asked men to provide their primary reason for migrating to the United States in an open-ended question. Answers were coded into the following reasons: 1) to save money to marry; 2) to open up a business; 3) to bring family to the US; 4) to address immediate financial needs; 5) to pay for family; and, 6) to have an adventure.

Masculinity Ideologies

A central contribution of recent research on men and gender is the development of a pluralistic notion of masculinities^42-44. We developed a set of contextually appropriate items drawing on the work of Mirande³¹, modifying the items in his scale slightly and including a additional items about intimacy and pleasure suggested by our prior research in this community ^{5, 15}. Using a response card, interviewers asked men to indicate their level of agreement (NO!!, no, yes, and YES!!) to 19 statements about marriage and sexuality as elements of men's masculinity ideologies (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Masculinity Ideology items (Spanish original text and English translations)

Item	S.I.P.	E.I.P.
Está bien que usted llore o demuestre sus emociones. It's alright that you cry or show your emotions.
Deshonrar su familia es la peor cosa que puede hacer. Dishonoring your family is the worst thing that one could do.
Usted debe de ayudar a su esposa con los quehaceres y el cuido de los niños. One should help one's wife with housework and with taking care of the children.	X
Cuando está con su esposa, tiene que mandar en la casa. When you are with your wife, you have be the one in command.
Aunque estén sólos, mi esposa no debe de corregirme. Even if we are alone, my wife should not correct me.
Prefiere pasar sus ratos libres con sus amigos que con su esposa e hijos. You prefer to spend your free time with your friends rather than with your wife and children.	X(R)
Está bien que su esposa trabaje fuera de la casa. It's ok for your wife to work outside the home.
Cuando tiene un problema, su esposa es la persona con quien mas quiere platicar. When you have a problem, your wife is the person who you most want to talk with.		X
Para salir adelante como pareja, tiene que haber mucha confianza para platicar. To make it as a couple, there has to be a lot of trust to talk.		X
Si le da motivo, le daría una cachetada a su esposa. If she gives me a reason, you would slap your wife in the face.		X(R)
Es importante para usted que la mujer sea virgen cuando se casa It's important for you that a woman be a virgin when she marries.
Cree que es normal que el hombre tenga varias parejas antes de casarse You think it's normal that a man have various partners before getting married.
Tiene derecho a buscar aventuras fuera del matrimonio You have the right to seek out sexual adventures outside the marriage.
Cuando tiene relaciones con su esposa, procura que ella siempre quede satisfecha. When you have sex with your wife, you make sure that she is satisfied.	X
Tiene relaciones con su esposa siempre que quiere, tenga o no tenga ganas ella. You have sex with your wife whenever you want, whether she is or isn't in the mood.	X(R)
Le gustaría que su esposa iniciara relaciones sexuales con usted cuando ella tuviera ganas. You would like your wife to initiate sex with you when she was in the mood.	X
Como hombre, su cuerpo exige el desahogo de relaciones sexuales de una forma que no puede controlar As a man, your body demands the fulfillment of sexual release in a way that you cannot control.
Le gustaría tener relaciones con una mujer que no ama. You would like to have sex with a woman that you're not in love with	X(R)
La persona con quien tiene más confianza es su esposa. The person with whom I have most trust is your wife.		X
Cuando tiene ganas de tener relaciones sexuales, las puede controlar. When you have an urge to have sexual relations, you are able to control them.	X

Note. Respondents were given a card with four pre-printed options (SI!, Si, no, NO!) (YES!, yes, no, NO!) and also given a verbal explanation about indicating the intensity of their agreement or disagreement with each item. As with the rest of the questionnaire, this scale was administered orally by the interviewer. S.I.P. = Sexual Intimacy and Pleasure; E.I.P. = Emotional Intimacy and Power. (R) = Reverse-coded item.

We used exploratory principal-axis factor analysis with Varimax rotation to ascertain the latent factors behind this scale and assessed its psychometric properties. We observed two underlying factors: an “Emotional Intimacy and Power” domain that accounted for 31% of the total variance (Eigenvalue = 6.31) and a “Sexual Intimacy and Pleasure” domain that explained an additional 11% of the variance (Eigenvalue = 2.61). We created a mean composite score for each subscale. A higher score in the “sexual intimacy and pleasure” scale reflects participants' beliefs that emotional and sexual intimacy strengthen a relationship (7 items; Cronbach's α = .86); a higher score in the “emotional intimacy and power” scale measured participants' agreement with companionate views about love, sex and marital life (4 items; Cronbach's α = .86). These two factors reflect and underscore the finding from other⁴⁵ research that men from rural Western Mexican may articulate an intimacy-oriented marital ideology without necessarily expressing a concomitant desire for a gender-equitable relationship^15,45.

Social network and social support

We identified several social network characteristics, including the size of their current social network (“Thinking about the people on whom you can count, how many of them live in Atlanta or the surrounding area”?) and frequency of contact with social network members (“How often do you see one of them?”; answered with the following categories: 0 = Almost never, 1 = 1-2 times per month, 2 = 1-2 times per week, 3 = Every day).

We also measured men's access to social support (i.e., informational support, tangible support, emotional support, and appraisal support). The questions on social support were included to explore social factors associated with sexual risk and to incorporate ethnographic findings from Phase I of the research indicating that some men saw casual sex as a means of dealing with the loneliness and alienation of life as a migrant laborer. Informational support was measured by men's use of social network members to find work in Atlanta (0 = Found work on my own or through a job agency; 1 = Family/Friends helped me find a job). Tangible support was measured by two items: whether the participant has someone to lend him money in an emergency (Yes/No) and whether the participant has a place to stay if needed (Yes/No). Emotional support was measured by several items, including a 4-point scale asking participants how much they like who they live with (1= Not At All to 4 = Like A Lot), and whether participants have someone to talk to when they are homesick (0 = No; 1 = Yes). Finally, we developed an appraisal support scale composed of the mean score of 4 items (“You feel very close to your friends and/or relatives here”; “You have friends and/or relatives here that are always open to talking with you about your problems”; “Your friends and/or relatives here make you feel like you are a valuable person”; and, “When you are with your friends and/or relatives here, you feel calm and at ease”). These items were answered by a 3-point scale (0 = No, 1 = More or less, 2 = Yes). We found this scale to have a strong internal consistency (α = .82).

Sexual Risk Behavior

We defined the number of sexual partners that the men reported to have had since their arrival to Atlanta as the outcome of interest. We included in the analysis other risk factors that could confound the association with number of sexual partners. These risk factors included participants' age (in years) when they began having sexual intercourse and partner type (girlfriend/female friend, prostitute, or another man) at first intercourse. We also asked men to report their partner type (girlfriend/female friend, prostitute, or another man) if they had been sexually active after arriving inAtlanta. We created a dummy variable for each partner type. We did not include “another man” as a partner type in subsequent analyses because only one participant reported same sex behavior.

Substance Use

We included measures on substance use given their association with HIV risk behaviors. We used a dichotomized variable to measure alcohol use (alcohol use in the past month) and a dichotomized variable for drug use (any drug use in the past month).

Leisure-time activities

We measured the association of situational-contextual factors with sexual risk for Mexican migrant men drawing from our ethnographic familiarity with the range of options of primary leisure times in this sample. Men were asked how they regularly spent their free time on Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons: going dancing; drinking; hanging out on the street; playing pool; at a friend's [place]; at a striptease club; at home; doing errands; working; or going to Mass. Participants answered “yes” or “no” to each of these activities for both Saturday and Sunday.

Analytic Strategy

First, we described the sample across the study variables. After ensuring normal distribution of continuous study variables, we excluded 13 cases that were missing data on the outcome (number of partners). To ensure sufficient statistical power for multivariate regression analyses (N = 187) and avoid multicollinearity across domains, we created six regression models exploring the interrelationship between number of partners and our theoretical domains (demographic factors, migration experience, masculinity ideologies, social network and social support, sexual risk behaviors, and leisure time activities). In all analyses, we controlled for significant demographic factors and time lived in the US.

RESULTS

Sample characteristics

The sample of study participants was generally diverse (Table 2). The average age of the men in the study was 28 years (SD = 7.42). Overall, the men had a low level of formal education, with only 13% having completed high school or a higher degree. Among those who reported their place of birth (N = 172), most were born in cities and towns (88%) as opposed to rural villages. The mean age of first sexual intercourse was 17 years (SD = 1.83). As is increasingly common in Mexico ^46,47, most had their first sexual encounter with a girlfriend (46%) or a female friend (31%). One-tenth reportedly had their first sexual experience with a female sex worker, and only about 9% reported having sex for the first time with their wife.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics across Study Variables among a Migrant Sample of Mexican Men (N=187)

	Mean (SD)	N (%)
Demographics
Place of Birth
City		32.1%
Town		48.7%
Ranch		11.2%
No Answer		8.0%
Age (in years)	28.18 (7.42)
Educational Attainment
Did not complete Primary		44.9%
Completed Primary		42.2%
Completed Secondary or Higher		12.8%
Owns home in Mexico		31.0%
Has children		49.7%
Migration experience
Time in the US (in years)	8.02 (0.81)
Came alone to US		55.9%
Number of people with whom migrated	.87 (1.05)
Number of trips to Mexico since initial migration	1.03 (1.19)
Reasons for migrating (more than one answer is possible)
To save money to marry		50.3%
To open up a business		40.6%
To bring family to US		22.5%
To address financial needs		9.1%
To maintain family		42.2%
For an adventure		7.0%
Masculinity
Sexual Intimacy & Pleasure	15.18 (3.62)
Emotional Intimacy & Power	8.99 (2.46)
Social Network & Social Support
Size of social network	3.72 (4.99)
Frequency of contact	2.39(.81)
Friends gave information to find a job		11.2%
Enjoys company of other people in household		66.3%
Has someone to talk to when homesick		63.1%
Access to money in case of emergency		68.4%
Access to a place to stay in case of emergency		53.5%
Appraissal support	5.79 (1.94)
Sexual risk behaviors
Age at first intercourse (in years)	17.04 (1.83)
Number of partners	1.85 (2.83)
Partner Type (if sexually active in Atlanta; N = 113)
Girlfriend/Female friend		24.1%
Prostitute		36.4%
Substance Use
Alcohol Frequency
Almost never		48.1%
1-3 times per week		49.7%
Refused to Answer		2.1%
Any drug use		14.4%
Leisure Time Activities (Saturdays)
Stays home		46%
Running errands		33.2%
At a friend's house		19.8%
On the street		21.9%
At the striptease/other bar		7.5%
Drinking		23.5%
Eating at a restaurant		17.1%
Playing sports		27.8%
Playing pool		22.5%
Dancing		29.4%
Going to mass		8.6%
Working		38.0%
Leisure Time Activities (Sundays)
Stays home		47.6%
Running errands		38.5%
At a fleamarket		47.6%
At a friend's house		12.8%
On the street		12.8%
At the striptease/other bar		3.7%
Drinking		10.2%
Eating at a restaurant		26.7%
Playing sports		50.8%
Playing pool		6.4%
Dancing		6.4%
Going to mass		55.1%

Approximately 56% of the sample migrated alone to the US. The majority migrated to the United States to save money to get married (50%), for economic progress (41%) or to meet immediate financial needs (9%). Only a few received job-related information from friends (11%). Construction work and day labor constituted the bulk of the work realized by the men in the study (68%).

Approximately half of the study population stayed at home or ran errands on Saturday nights and Sundays. The other half worked, played pool, went dancing, played sports, went to eat, to a bar, or to a striptease bar. The majority (54%) also reported attending Mass on Sundays. Several participants reportedly used drugs (14%), but the main substance used in the sample was alcohol (50%).

Multivariate analysis

We present below the main findings of our multivariate regression models exploring the association between number of partners and our theoretical domains (Table 3).

Table 3.

Regression coefficients associated with number of partners across domains among Mexican migrant men (N = 187)

	Model 1 b(se)	Model 2 b(se)	Model 3 b(se)	Model 4 b(se)	Model 5 b(se)	Model 6 b(se)
Intercept	4.49 (2.36)~	3.30 (2.41)	5.95 (2.69)*	6.32 (2.90)	1.08 (2.14)	1.23 (2.04)
Demographics
Age (in years)	-0.9 (.04)*	-0.11 (.04)***	-0.07 (.03)*	-0.06 (.03)~	-0.05 (.02)*	-0.04 (.03)
Educational Attainment	-.96 (.30)**	-0.72 (.32)*	-0.94 (.30)**	-0.39 (.32)	-0.58 (.21)**	-0.67 (.27)*
Owns home in Mexico	1.24 (.52)*	0.96 (.53)~	1.19 (.51)*	0.75 (.51)	1.12 (.35)**	0.73 (.46)
Time in the US (in years)	0.15 (.26)	0.20 (.25)	0.01 (.26)	-0.11 (.27)	0.10 (.18)	0.21 (.22)
Has children	0.15 (.48)
Born in Town vs City	-0.22 (.44)
Born in Ranch vs City	-0.47 (.72)
Migration experience
Number of people with whom migrated		0.27 (.21)
Number of trips to Mexico		0.69 (.21)***
Migrated to Start Business vs. Other		0.12 (.44)
Masculinity
Sexual Intimacy & Pleasure			0.14 (.08)~
Emotional Intimacy & Power			-0.35 (.11)**
Social Network & Social Support
Size of social network				0.26 (.05)***
Frequency of contact with network				-0.64 (.32)*
Friends gave information to find a job				0.59 (.54)
Enjoys company of other people in household				0.18 (.51)
Has someone to talk to when homesick				0.05 (.53)
Access to money in case of emergency				0.15 (.57)
Access to a place to stay in case of emergency				-0.61 (.48)
Appraissal support				-0.23 (.15)
Sexual risk behaviors
Age at first intercourse (in years)					0.04 (.08)
Had Sex Worker as Partner					4.09 (.32)***
Alcohol Use Frequency					-0.46 (.29)
Used Drugs					1.08 (.43)*
Leisure Time Activities
Dancing on Saturday vs. Other Saturday activities						0.90 (.42)*
Working on Saturday vs. Other Saturday activities						0.81 (.40)*
Playing pool on Saturday vs. Other Saturday activities						0.79 (.46)~
Strip club on Sunday vs. Other Sunday activities						3.9(1.03)***
Dancing on Sunday vs. Other Sunday activities						2.58 (.79)***

^~p < .10

^*p < .05

^**p < .01

^***p < .001

Model 1: Demographic factors

Men's number of partners was negatively associated with age and education. After adjusting for other covariates in the model, men who were older and who had a higher level of education were more likely to report fewer partners. On the other hand, men who owned a home in Mexico were more likely to report a greater number of partners, even after adjusting for other demographic predictors. No association was observed between number of partners and time in the US, having children, or being born in a city, town, or village.

Model 2: Migration experience

We found men's number of partners increased as men reported a greater number of trips to Mexico after they migrated to the US for the first time. We found no statistically significant association between number of partners and the number of people with whom the participant migrated to the US or men's primary motivation for migrating.

Model 3: Masculinity Ideologies

After accounting for all demographic covariates, greater emotional intimacy with men's spouse was associated with fewer partners. While a trend (p < .10) was observed in the association between number of partners and the sexual intimacy and pleasure scale, this association was not statistically significant.

Model 4: Social Network and Social Support

We found the number of partners increased as men's social network size increased, after adjusting for the demographic predictors and other social network and social support predictors in the model. Interestingly, participants who reported greater frequency of contact with friends and family in their social network reported fewer partners. We found no association between men's number of partners and the multiple social support indicators.

Model 5: Sexual risk behavior

Men who reported engaging in sexual intercourse with a sex worker were more likely to report greater number of partners, even after accounting for demographic factors and other sex risk behaviors. Men who reported using drugs were also more likely to report greater number of partners. We found no association between number of partners and men's age at first intercourse or alcohol use.

Model 6: Leisure Time activities

Given the number of potential leisure time activities, we explored Spearman correlations between attendance to each leisure activity on the weekends and number of partners. Statistically significant correlations (p < .05) were then included into the regression. Men who reported greater number of partners also reported working or going out dancing on Saturday evenings, after accounting for demographic factors and other weekend activities. Furthermore, we found men reported greater number of partners if they reported attending a strip club or dancing on Sundays. We found a marginal association between men's number of partner and playing pool on Saturdays.

Discussion and Implications

The goal of this study was to understand social and cultural factors shaping migrant Mexican men's sexual risk behavior. In addition, we sought to develop quantitative measures of masculinities that reflect the theoretical state of the art in social science, and to assess the relation between these measures and sexual risk behavior. Overall, the major contribution of this study is our findings that a range of aspects of masculinity—what men think, where they go and who they can rely on—are associated with sexual risk.

The first key finding is that men's marital ideals are associated—in some cases— with their sexual behavior outside of marriage. Factor 1, Sexual Intimacy and Pleasure, which emphasizes the pursuit of mutual pleasure, was not statistically related to men's sexual behavior. Men who had higher scores on the Emotional Intimacy and Power factor, however, were likely to report fewer extramarital sexual partners while in Atlanta. That only one of these factors is significant underscores the need to examine multiple dimensions of modern masculinity in cultural context rather than to assess men's “ranking” on a single, presumably universally applicable scale between traditional and modern masculinity. Each of these visions of marriage diverges from more traditional constructions of Mexican marriage and masculinity, and both potentially imply a reorganization of marital sexuality, as well. However, only those men who emphasize emotional companionship and equity rather than shared sexual pleasure and companionship seem to have fewer extramarital sexual partners. Future research should continue to explore the multi-dimensionality of modern masculinities, rather than focusing on a universalistic notion of “gender-equitable men”³³.

Anthropologists have cautioned against the dangers of overemphasizing the impact of culture and ignoring the ways in which social inequality shapes HIV risk, and researchers whose focus is specifically on sexual risk behavior among Latino communities in the US have echoed this concerns through calls for research that examines how cultural and social factors shape sexual risk. We respond here to those interests by presenting findings on social dimensions of migrant men's lives: the second major finding is that men's sexual risk behavior is significantly associated with both masculinity ideals and leisure time activities. These findings underline the importance of considering masculinity to be not just what men say, but also what they do—and particularly the spaces in which they spend their limited leisure time.

Strikingly, having a greater number of individuals upon whom one can count is associated with a greater number of sexual encounters. This finding may be due to the fact that men with larger social networks are more likely to spend time playing pool, going to strip bars and dancing. Participation in these activities, however, may facilitate both sexual risk behavior and the development of social ties with other men. Interestingly, the association of a larger social network on number of partner is offset by increased frequency of interactions with family members within men's social networks. This finding suggests that men without close contact with family members may seek to create relationships with others to offset the absence of family interactions. As we have found elsewhere^4,48, extramarital sex among Mexican men is frequently a social rather than individual pursuit—something that men do in order to develop relationships with other men as well as for the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake. For Mexican migrant men to Atlanta, the desire to buffer the loneliness of life far from one's family intersects with a social landscape in which the predominant choices are either to pray or to drink. At home in Mexico many of these men might prefer a quiet game of dominos with a compadre, or an ice cream on a bench in the plaza with their families. Particularly in contexts in which physical mobility is a challenge because undocumented immigrants are ineligible for legal driver's licenses, men who find neither the church nor the soccer leagues appealing have few options other than strip bars, dollar dance halls, and pool halls. Research on the associations between masculinity and reproductive health practices should focus on not only what men say regarding their ideals about masculinity but also how their actions as men—during work and leisure time—are associated with sexual risk. The social context of HIV risk practices includes not only the beliefs that migrants have, but also the communities that they encounter upon arrival.

The findings highlight another, broader way in which masculinity relates to HIV risk; the act of migrating reflects “success” as a man in rural Mexico. The vast majority of these men saw migration to the US as a financial necessity— to cover an immediate expense, to help their families get ahead long-term, or to pay for the increasingly splendid weddings that are almost entirely the economic responsibility of the groom in rural Mexico. Although many of these men may have engaged in extramarital sex had they remained in Mexico ⁴⁹, they would have done so in a context in which the overall prevalence of HIV is much lower, and so the relative riskiness of the same behavior is quite different. The act of migration itself, then, is a quintessential expression of the gendered division of labor in Mexican families and a gendered and ethnically stratified US labor market.

Limitations

A few limitations of this research warrant discussion. First, the single-sited study design of this project precludes an exploration of how migrants' sexual risk behavior might vary across neighborhoods or cities. Atlanta's vast physical dispersion, poor public transportation, considerable economic opportunity, and limited bilingual health and social services, for example, present a distinct urban landscape compared to other major migrant-receiving communities. Importantly, the combined effects of these social structures on migrant men's sexual risk behavior are largely unknown. Second, a lack of parallel data collection in the Mexican sending community precludes a comparison of the sexual risk behaviors and ideals of masculinity of otherwise similar migrating and non-migrating men. Third, the survey failed to distinguish the duration of each respondent's current stay in the US (vis-à-vis the length of time since they first migrated to the US). While some men may travel back and forth to Mexico, we were able to only account for the time elapsed since men migrated to the US for the first time. All other things being equal, men who have been away from home for longer and who have been unable to return might be more likely to have had greater numbers of partners. Future research on this topic should measure whether number of partners is associated with men's migration patterns (e.g., number of trips to Mexico and the length of time during each trip). Fourth, given the recruitment procedures used, we were unable to compute the study's participation rate from the total number of eligible men who were invited to participate in the survey. Finally, our findings should be interpreted with caution. Due to concerns related to multicollinearity and statistical power, we were unable to test a model that included all the domains jointly. Consequently, some of the associations across the six regression models may be spurious due to confounding. Furthermore, our cross-sectional design impedes us from making causal statements regarding the study findings. Future research should replicate our findings with a larger sample of Mexican migrant men followed over time.

Policy implications

A growing body of work has called attention to the risk of marital HIV transmission^4,50-53. In this study, men's individual endorsement of specific masculine ideologies was strongly associated with their having fewer sexual partners. This should not be taken to be evidence, however, in support of interventions designed to change men's perceptions about marriage and masculinity. These ideologies are not individually held beliefs. Rather, they are the products of a complex intersection of shared cultural experience, individual life histories, and exposure to national and international political and economic structures as well as to multiple ideological conduits, including educational systems and the media. Myriad social forces are already altering ideas about masculinity in Mexico and the U.S. and a public health intervention alone is unlikely to transform men's ideas about manhood, and thereby affect sustainable behavioral change. Prevention interventions designed to change individually-held beliefs, and to influence behavior through these changes, have failed to make significant contributions to health on the population level⁵⁴. Moreover, the associations described between number of partners and practices of masculinity such as patterns of socializing underline for us the inadequacy of approach masculinity purely as a cognitive construct which could transformed through consciousness raising strategies.

The findings from this study do, however, reveal several promising avenues to mitigate the environmental sources of migrant men's vulnerability to HIV. The development of health-enhancing social spaces could have a powerful impact on sexual risk behavior in these communities. From a migrant's perspective, the risk of HIV may pale in comparison to the more immediate risks of discovery and deportation by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. There are few `safe spaces', for example, where migrants can enjoy leisure time activities. Such safe-spaces might include, for example, community centers, public libraries, and athletic leagues with evening and weekend hours. The creation of internet cafes in predominantly migrant communities may enable migrant men to communicate with their families in Mexico, and thereby reduce the loneliness that leads to risky sex. The Catholic church, which provides an important social resource for men in both the sending and receiving communities, might also explore opportunities to mitigate the sexual risk associated with labor migration. These community-level interventions, moreover, would better integrate migrants into their receiving communities by enabling the development of spaces where men may interact frequently with social network members without the presence of environmental risk factors such as the presence of alcohol and drugs.

The association between number of partners and the characteristics of men's social networks also suggests the potential utility of further research on how integration into social movements might shape individual risk practices. Parallel work on gay rights activism, for example, has suggested that the community organizing which occurred in the early response to the epidemic among urban gay communities in the US played a critical role in shaping individual risk practices by making safer sex “a community practice”⁵⁵. It may be useful similarly to explore the extent to which participation in existing social movements focused on the protection of migrant's social, economic and human rights (such as the organizations which mobilized vast numbers of immigrants to march in support immigration reform during the US Congress 2006-7 legislative session) might relate to sexual risk practices, via either social or psychological mechanisms. At the broadest policy level, an immigration regime such as the current one, in which labor migration from Mexico is officially restricted while at the same time the US economy is heavily dependent on low-wage Mexican workers, is a critical aspect of the HIV risk context.