Narrative strategies to re-signify sexual violence among gender and sexuality diverse Central American migrants in Tijuana

Abstract

This study discusses how gender and sexuality diverse Central American migrants, currently staying at shelters in Tijuana, reconstruct experiences of sexual violence in their lives, both during childhood and throughout their migratory journey. It analyses the narrative strategies used to re-signify these experiences in the present, to construct possible futures as sexual subjects. In-depth autobiographical interviews were conducted with nine Central American migrants of diverse genders and sexualities and were analysed using an approach inspired by dramaturgical analysis. We identified the most significant events, characters and settings related to experiences of sexual violence. Three main strategies of resignification were identified: the reaffirmation of pleasure, desire, or consent; the decision to emigrate; and entry into loving-affective relationships. The focus on the analysis of sexual violence before and during the migration event represents a contribution to the ongoing debate on sexuality, gender, and migration. Strategies of resignification allow participants to imagine possible narratives future as subjects who wish to express their gender identity and sexuality freely.

Keywords:

• Gender and sexuality diversity
• migration
• sexual violence
• mobility
• dramaturgical analysis

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the migrant shelters that took an interest in our research and allowed us to conduct the interviews. We would also like to thank the migrants who provided us with their stories.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Such individuals exercise dissident gender expressions and sexualities, breaking with the heteronormative regime imposed by a binary gender system, which assumes an unequivocal relationship and correspondence between only two embodied sexes, two gender identities and corresponding forms of sexual-affective desire (Butler 1999; Gómez 2007; Katz 2007). Sexuality cannot be separated from gender identity to the extent that they are both inscribed within repertories of cultural reference on the basis of which individuals describe themselves. Nonetheless we recognise that these identities may be fluid and varied to the extent that gender and sexuality are polysemic and dynamic (Alcántara 2013, 172; Butler 1999; Winton 2017). This term includes individuals conventionally known as LGBTQ+.

2 These included the implementation of Title 42, the suspension of asylum claim processing under the Migrant Protection Protocol regulations, and the shutdown of the land border between the USA and Mexico for almost 20 months (CBP 2020; Olivas 2020).

3 This study took place as part of a larger research project entitled: ‘Prácticas sexuales, cuidados a la salud y comportamientos reproductivos de migrantes centroamericanos en la frontera norte de México’, in which repeat in-depth interviews were conducted with 17 gender and sexuality diverse Central American migrants. For this article, we selected nine stories due to their relevance to the proposed aims.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Cemicamp under a technical agreement with World Health Organization HRP Alliance, which is part of the UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Program for Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction, a program co-sponsored and executed by the World Health Organization (WHO); the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research Science Division at the World Health Organization, and the Center for Perinatology, Women’s Health and Reproduction (CLAP) of the Pan American Health Organization, under Grant 2019/952654-0.