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


Carlo Handy Charles, University of Windsor

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.

This paper will be presented at the following session: