title: Immigrant Sexual Citizenship: Intersectional Templates among Mexican Gay Immigrants to the United States.
abstract: Existing literature on sexual citizenship has emphasized the sexuality-related claims ofde jurecitizens of nation-states, generally ignoring immigrants. Conversely, the literature on immigration rarely attends to the salience of sexual issues in understanding the social incorporation of migrants. This article seeks to fill the gap by theorizing and analyzingimmigrant sexual citizenship. While some scholars of sexual citizenship have focused on the rights and recognition granted formally by the nation-state and others have stressed more diffuse, cultural perceptions of community and local belonging, we argue that the lived experiences of immigrant sexual citizenship call for multiscalar scrutiny of templates and practices of citizenship that bridge national policies with local connections. Analysis of ethnographic data from a study of 76 Mexican gay and bisexual male immigrants to San Diego, California reveals the specific citizenship templates that these men encounter as they negotiate their intersecting social statuses as gay/bisexual and as immigrants (legal or undocumented); these include an "asylum" template, a "rights" template, and a "local attachments" template. However, the complications of their intersecting identities constrain their capacity to claim immigrant sexual citizenship. The study underscores the importance of both intersectional and multiscalar approaches in research on citizenship as social practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology and Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, 1810 Chicago Ave, Northwestern University, Evanston, United States.
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Epstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Sociology and Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, 1810 Chicago Ave, Northwestern University, Evanston, United States hector@northwestern.edu.
authors.forename: Héctor
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Carrillo
keywords: Asylum; Cities; Immigrant; Rights; Sexuality/Sexual orientation; Undocumented