‘Mobile men with money’: HIV prevention and the erasure of difference

Abstract

Mobile Men with Money is one of the latest risk categories to enter into HIV prevention discourse. Used in countries in Asia, the Pacific and Africa, it refers to diverse groups of men (e.g. businessmen, miners and itinerant wage labourers) who, in contexts of high population movement and economic disparity, find themselves at heightened risk of HIV as members of a ‘most-at-risk population’, or render others vulnerable to infection. How adequate is such a description? Does it make sense to develop HIV prevention programmes from such understandings? The history of the epidemic points to major weaknesses in the use of terminologies such as ‘sex worker’ and ‘men who have sex with men’ when characterising often diverse populations. Each of these terms carries negative connotations, portraying the individuals concerned as being apart from the ‘general population’, and posing a threat to it. This paper examines the diversity of men classified as mobile men with money, pointing to significant variations in mobility, wealth and sexual networking conducive to HIV transmission. It highlights the patriarchal, heteronormative and gendered assumptions frequently underpinning use of the category and suggests more useful ways of understanding men, masculinity, population movement, relative wealth in relation to HIV vulnerability and risk.

Keywords:

• mobile men with money
• HIV
• sexual risk
• unhelpful stereotypes
• discourse

Notes

1. The use of more global categories such as key populations (KPs) and most at risk populations (MARPs) (Needle et al., 2012; Rebe, Semugoma, & McIntyre, 2012), while not the focus of this paper, is also cause for concern, since these too assume a commonality of positioning vis-à-vis HIV-related risk that may or may not be the case.

2. In this respect the term is similar to the use of the related descriptor sugar daddy.

3. For a discussion of migrant workers as bridge or bridging population for HIV in South Asia see, for example, Saggurti et al. (2008) and Pratap (2013).